Post by poberteii on Jan 7, 2022 20:00:03 GMT
Thisll be unclean beause I wanna get this out asap before my executive dysfunction sets hold but anyhow here goes
So back in 1995 there was a CGI 2D show that aired in Japan and later other countries named Bit the Cupid. With character designs made by Susumu Matsushita (the guy behind Famitsu's Necky and Maximo, and Adventure Island's illustrations), it was one of the first animated shows to go all out on the what's now known as "digital ink and paint" process, along with minor elements of pre-rendered 3D CGI added in the mix. While there were older examples of digital animation (Mimi Cracra and Puggs in Space come to mind), Bit the Cupid was one of the first to go all out (with characters having what can only be described as gratuitous airbrushing and gradients, a otherwise usual trademark of Matsushita's art). Bit the Cupid was more or less a experiment to see how entire digital ink and paint and CG animated shows would fare, with it basically airing at the dead of the night in Japan when it first aired (about 7 in the evening???).
The show centers around a very loose interpretation of the Greek mythos with a copious amount of anachronism (it's kinda sci-fi, kinda fantasy but also comedy-horror adjacent?). After this tiny fairy can't go up with her peers, she decides to go near a mechanic's works and sees a sci fi being making machine. Drafting out a very crude drawing of a idealized fairy, the machine explodes after generating the being who... to put it lightly came out wrong. This angel is later dubbed "Bit the Cupid" by the fairy, who often gets into shenanigans while attempting to save the day from people who cause mischief or from literal monsters and demons (again, Greek mythos). The show's writing and plot can only be described as "throwing crazy crap at the wall and seeing what sticks", with episodes ranging from straightforward adaptations of things like King Midas to batshit plots like the mass production of sentient whoopee dolls that the town screws with and has a swathe of kids with or Bit piloting a horse sledge that gets possessed by demons to go around and round in circles with the sun getting closer and closer to the earth. It's one of those kinda shows.
With reception that basically amounted to "eh its okay", Bit the Cupid would later get localized in various countries until eventually getting a Saban english dub. Despite this far reach, Bit the Cupid never actually GOT home media of any proper sorts (with a few exceptions with CD soundtrack releases and rental tapes and *some* VCDs) and recordings of the show are insanely scarce (apparently no one bothered recording the show in Japan or anywhere else because of how it aired at the dead of the night). With this preservational recipe of disaster, this meant that Bit the Cupid wouldn't be available on the internet or any modern source for the longest time. Hell, even way back in 2006 finding screenshots or copies of the show in English or Japanese was like a contrived snipe hunt for the longest time.
Bit the Cupid became one of those painful to research "only OPs and EDs are online" animes, and there were practically no clips or episodes online because... well, literally almost fucking no one posted them online. It wasn't like you were gonna get copyright striked, it was just so obscure no one gave a damn about the show until someone remembered it.
Come the year 2021, and I found out about Bit by accident while looking for some other anime. With some of my internet sleuthing skills, I later realized that there really was NOTHING on this show. After deep diving with a few people for god knows how long, I managed to find poor quality rips of the Chinese VCDs of the show, which basically have deepfried visuals and CHONKY audio. Like, this thing was in such poor shape it was hard to look at. Despite this conundrum, I managed to rip the videos off of some shady Chinese website to some success, and then reuploaded them to YouTube. These videos have gained about near-1000 views with a small audience, and I decided to try and find more. Despite this, there hasn't been much else to Bit other than finding a few archived and old articles on the show (which gives insight on how it was made, when it aired, what it was like, etc). Usenet posts about Bit give the impression of a average reception with people noting how shiny and uncanny valley the visuals were since there was almost nothing like it at the time.
As it stands, the original Japanese visuals and audio is completely lost* (EDIT: They have been found, they simply haven't been digitised). There's some clips of the Spanish and Italian dubs with only one short clip of the English dub, but that's it. The damn thing doesn't even have a Arabic dub!
If anyone here has some finds of Bit that aren't anywhere else (e.g. further pictures, videos, commercials, etc), feel free to post and archive them and possibly note them here. This show is insanely scarce and literally anything would be helpful.
Playlist of what remains of Bit:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8VXRWmDRshWXru19d4bkyyFfMEIjkqay
The one single surviving article on Bit:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8VXRWmDRshWXru19d4bkyyFfMEIjkqay
The one single surviving article on Bit:
