Vinesauce Tomodachi Life

About

Vinesauce's Tomodachi Life, also sometimes known as "Vinny's Tomodachi Life" or "The Vineland Island show", are a compendium of streams that little by little turned into a fully finished web-series made by the well known streamer Vinesauce regarding the Nintendo 3DS game playthrough of Tomodachi Life. It is well known due to its bizarre cast of characters (an anthropomorphic alpaca, a two-faced girl, a ghost clown, etc) and an interesting narrative given by the host, spiced with a good amount of plot arcs ranging from weird to tear-jerker moments that led to a fanbase on its own.

Origins

The series began streaming on June 7, 2014^[1] (when the game itself was released) with the new island named after the creator: "Vineland Island". After the island naming, Vinesauce decided to try creating a set of Miis, giving them different personalities, and seeing how they interacted with each other in the apartment building on his island in the middle of the ocean. The first crew of islanders^[2] consisted of:

• Vinny: The first inhabitant of Vineland Island. The "look alike" of the creator. He's the sane man of this world.
• Witch: A tricky witch (figures) that came to the island. She's an incredibly ugly woman with a heart of gold.
• Wario Bros: Both Wario & Waluigi enter the island in search for a different life. Romance and adventure ahead!
• Two Faced: The iconic character of the series. A gentle soul with a hidden agenda. Can Vinny win her love?
• Lamb Chop: A tinny fluff of cuteness, the first Mii to marry through the series and a big spirit will carry this lamb.
• Ben Drowned: Due to mysterious occurrences, Ben has arrived! Don't be fool, he's not cursed, he's just a child.
• Clown: A good fun-loving (although somewhat creepy) entertainer of the island. What mysteries does he hide?

Vinesauce: This game is fucking weird, but is fun for streaming^[3]

Spread

In no time the sheer weirdness and quirkiness of the game and its characters began to attract the interest of the Vinesauce fanbase, starting to be a current series with an estimate of 3 episodes per week, Vinesauce Tomodachi Life gained a total of 57 episode along the way ranging from 2014 to 2017. Creation of a Wiki^[1] of the own series with interesting facts & data, and a TV Tropes site^[4] for its rich lore, demonstrating the impact the series had inside the fandom, not to mention the huge amount of fan art it obtained along the way.

After some time passed, an online user of the name Captain Southbird^[5] started contributing to the Vinseacue Tomodachi Live series. His contribution being from well-edited videos, cutting the duration of the streams from 3 hours to an approximate 30 minutes, fitting for a palatable soap opera serie. Thus making it easier being up to date with the events transcurring in Vineland Island. These videos and the channel itself quickly began to take impulse, improving the videos with better quality and more notoriety of the fanbase. An unlisted playlist with all the chapters are in his site^[6] (including derivatives and "best of" songs and videos)^[9]

Notable images

The Jahn invasion

A huge amount of events and arcs happened along the streams that had its degrees of drama and comedy, but from episode 34 to 50 a special event occurred that kicked up the notch of the series, changing the happy-cheery place that was Vineland Island to something that could be considered as more serious driven. The arrival of a peculiar set of creatures that came from another planet called: the Jahn. Consisting of the leader of the species along with two followers, their chaotic and somewhat bizarre intentions of "assimilation" provoked a mass of mysterious disappearances along the island, leading to paranormal agents Scully and Mulder to the investigation of this case.^[7]

Resurrection: Survivor Edition

Two months after the previous events: on July 26, 2015 (episode 51) marks the beginning of the Survivor Edition, a Big Brother elimination style of game where the audience at the end of the stream voted for who stayed on the island and who left forever. These episodes who determined the fate of its over 60 islanders where streamed monthly, reaching it's finale on October 12, 2015 and with this, the end of a saga (some more episodes where done, but with a wider gap of time and with a lighter tone than the previous ones that preceded before, making it technically the end of the series on April 1, 2017 [for now])^[8]

External References