Futaba Channel
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- This article is about Futaba Channel. See 2channel if you are looking for Ni-Chaneru.
Futaba Channel (ふたば(双葉)☆ちゃんねる), or Futaba for short, is one of Japan's series of bulletin board systems. It is considered one of Japan's most popular imageboards dealing in otaku and underground culture. Futaba provides net fads, personifications, laughable crazy collages and new jargons.
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Concept
Futaba Channel is a 'mega bbs' consisting of a matrix of 52+3 imageboards, 50 bulletin board systems with each board for each category, with topics ranging from daily life problems to junkfood, sports, and pornography. There is also an uploader to store niche files. One of the trademarks of Futaba Channel is that it has the same anonymity as 2channel. Foreigners are known to call it 2chan because of it's url address. Futaba is powered by a custom script based off of GazouBBS. Futaba scripts are open source and are still found today on many Japanese imageboards.
History
2001
- Futaba Channel was set up on August 30th 2001, as a refuge for 2channel (or 2ch) users when 2channel was in danger of shutting down from excessive internet traffic. (It is not used as such anymore)
- Futaba imageboard software was developed.
2002
- To solve problems with flooding of ero guro shock pictures, the grotesque board was set up.
- Trouble arose between those who wanted to post anime and manga and others who wanted photography. The nijigenura (anime, computer graphics, and so forth) and sanjigenura (photography and other real-life images) boards were set up.
- Doujinshi scans and anime captures were raising problems, so they were banned from all boards except for the Nijigenura Flip-Side.
2003
- Heika, Waha, and other original Nijiura characters were born.
- The board operator changed the default name from "Anonymous" (Nanashisan) to "Toshiaki", in memory of a spamming troll who called himself Toshiaki.
- The controversial hacking magazine Netrunner copied Futaba characters and sold merchandise, to the dismay of Futaba users. Netrunner boycott began and is still running.
- ME-tan was born.
2004
- Troubled Windows (トラブル・ウィンドウズ), the Flash animation, was made. It became well-known throughout the Japanese Internet. (English fansub)
- Medoi-san was born.
- Toshiaki disappeared from name form due to changes in scripts.
2005
- Due to popularity and excessive bandwidth, nijiura was divided into 4 boards/servers. The roleplay server and creator's server were made hidden to stop flooding by trolls.
Futaba culture
Nijiura style
There are several unspoken rules that are more or less in effect. Some are taken seriously, some are not taken seriously. Here are several:
- Hantoshi-rom: Before you start posting newbie trash, stay a reader for half a year. In the mean while you will be able to post decent stuff just like any other user.
- Stay anonymous: Those who use nicknames are bashed upon. Names (or individuality) are unnecessary. One Toshiaki is as good (or as much a loser) as another.
- Daikuji Ayu Moe: When someone posts a girl with golden braids, Toshiaki will play Daikuji-Ayu-moe word link game. Each Toshiaki will post 1 character of the phrase Daikuji Ayu moe.
- Restrain from showing off. Share your goofups.
Futaba characters
- Toshiaki - the default name for anonymous posters on the "Nijiura" board (as of April 12th, 2003) and also all other "isolated" boards. The origin of this has to do with a certain self-important poster who called himself Toshiaki. Futaba users in general also often refer to themselves as Toshiaki when communicating outside of Futaba as well. Variations of the "Toshiaki" nomenclature exist outside as well as inside Futaba. For instance, the default name on Futaba's yuri board is "Yuriaki".
- Nijiura - kind of an "anything goes"-2D board on Futaba. There are actually three, although only the newest one is being linked from the frontpage. The first one was set up in March 2002 to separate normal anime discussion from the growing trends towards posting of gag pictures and photoshopped images. From July 15th, 2004 to May 25th, 2005, names for users had been completely disabled on the respective default Nijiura board. The two older Nijiura boards are still retaining this custom.
- Waha, Musu and Choia. The cute character Suzuran was featured in the eroge Suigetsu; Toshiaki changed her appearance somewhat and called her "Waha", after a common exclamation she utters in the game. Her sister, Musu, and her "pet human", Choia, are original creations by Futaba artists.
- The Nijiura maids, a collection of maid characters most of whose personalities are based on puns involving their names. The first of these, Medoi-san's name is a pun on "meido", the Japanese pronunciation of the English word "maid". Medoi is slang for "bother", so Medoi-san is finds everything to be a bother. Kudoi-san's name means "verbose", so she always talks a lot. Most of the rest follow a similar pattern.
- Yaranaika? Literally means "Shall we do it?" As it does in English, in Japanese this phrase can have an erotic subtext. It was used in a homosexual erotic comic book "Kuso Miso Technique", which was endlessly parodied by Futaba users.
- Heika, aka 'His Majesty', a strange-looking man with a pointed helmet from the TV show Space Warriors Baldios, has been transformed from a murdered monarch into master pimp by Futaba.
- Taicho, or 'the Captain', in reality Marine Sgt. Parish J. Harvey of Company L, 3/8, whose commanding visage has been mutated into countless parodies. Taicho's appearances are mostly concentrated at Futaba Channel's military related imageboard, even if the pictures he's in aren't.
- Sadako-chan, a bishojo version of Sadako Yamamura from the Ring films. She is sometimes accompanied by a cartoon horse and a tall, attractive blonde version known as "American Sadako-chan".
- Saizensenkun, aka 'Mr. Front Line', a creepy-looking photographer from somewhere in Japan who is infamous for frequenting anime conventions. On Futaba's image boards he is spliced into warzones, crises, press conferences, and movies.
- The OS-tans, a set of fan-made, cute mascots for various operating systems, the first one being ME-tan, posted for the first time on August 6th, 2003.
- A gaijin yonkoma is a 4-panel comic with many variations, usually interspersing 'good' and 'bad' images with two stock reactions. The reaction pictures used show four attendees at E³, apparently a group of editors from IGN responding to news of a Zelda video game. One picture has the four sitting in chairs, with little emotion; the other shows a similar group cheering wildly. The images have also been used as models for anime characters drawn in the same poses, most notably Akane, Mitsuki and Haruka from Kimi Ga Nozomu Eien. An interesting thing to note is that some people have swapped seats and changed their clothing between photographs, whereas the comic form implies they're immediately sequential.
Some of the characters that appear on Futaba Channel have entered the real world in the form of various real-life goods, such as figures, dolls or images printed on pillows. Such items are mainly produced by Japanese dōjin artists and groups.
Influence beyond Japan
The Futaba bulletin board system being popular, spin-offs have formed outside of Japan, most noticeably in the US, China and Taiwan. Because of traffic restrictions and as a measure to prevent DoS attacks, internet users outside of Japan are not allowed to post on Futaba Channel.
A well known american, english-speaking spin-off of the site is 4chan, which is similar to Futaba except that the major board divisions are between pornographic and non-pornographic content as well as two-dimensional and three-dimensional content.
Non-Japanese internet users sometimes refer to Futaba Channel as 2chan, due to the URL of the site. It is frequently unclear whether this is intended to mean Futaba Channel or 2channel, and sometimes it even refers to both, as if they were a single website. To eliminate confusion, the names Futaba and 2channel are often used.
External links
Note: some of these links may not be safe for work (NSFW).