YouTube is an incredible platform with a staggering amount of content. People of all different backgrounds, communities, and skill levels contribute to the insane mess of a video sharing website. You don’t have to look very hard to find a lot of quality stuff. There are valuable educational channels, creative comedy channels, and heaps of talented animators. But today I’m not going to talk about the good content on YouTube. Instead I’m putting the spotlight on the underappreciated dumpster fire that is anime shitposts.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Spoilers Ahead

Let’s start by defining the moderately objectionable term, since I’m sure its usage is far from uniform. To me, a shitpost is any submission to a social media website that is created with the express intent of low quality. Shitposts are bad, and they are meant to be bad. Of course, “bad” is an inconsistently defined word as well, which is where things get interesting. Shitposts may not necessarily be low effort or even poorly made, so long as they are based on an idea that is inherently poor. It is these shitposts that transcend their garbage brethren and become something incredible. Allow me to dive into some examples.

One of my favorite videos on the entirety of YouTube is called “Kiralovania”. In this masterpiece, sound bites from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 4: Diamond is Unbreakable are stitched together rhythmically over the famous tune from Undertale, Megalovania. The amount of time and meticulous effort that must have been involved in the production of this video is terrifying. Determining which lines from the show to use, mixing them properly over the song, and editing the entire mess into something comprehensible had to require a mastery of the video-making craft. “If the execution is so high quality, how could this possibly be a shitpost?” you may ask. Sure, everything about the video is excellent, but the concept it starts with is extremely stupid. Why would you spend so much time making characters from a goofy show speak in time to an unrelated song? Why would you work so hard to make it great? These are the questions that lie at the core of every phenomenal shitpost. I present the video to you here for your viewing pleasure:

Not every shitpost can be that mind-blowingly amazing, but others still engage in high quality editing and creativity to make something hilarious. The video “Umi’s World” parodies the finale of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 3: Stardust Crusaders (yeah alright you caught me, all of these examples are going to be Jojo shitposts. There are other ones, I promise, these are just the best). This one plays audio from the reveal of Dio’s stand over a pillow fight from Love Live. The juxtaposition of the serious, menacing audio over the silly, colorful images would be genius if it weren’t so incredibly stupid. Still, the editing of both the audio and video elements pulls off the combination perfectly, creating something that is simultaneously the best and worst thing to exist in this world.

Of course, some anime shitposts are just as their title implies. These can still be fantastic; the impossible extent of the laziness and idiocy of some of these ideas is awe-inspiring on its own. Take another of my favorites, “Thot Slayer Dio” (the video isn’t as misogynistic as it sounds, don’t worry). All that this video does is change the subtitles of Dio and Jotaro’s initial confrontation to a stereotypical conversation between two toxic anime fans. Watching these two titans of machismo argue about whose waifu is “shitter” is all I need to have a good time. The language is pretty bad in this one, fair warning:

I’m not sure what makes these videos so enthralling to me. Perhaps it simply feels good to take a break from the tiresome search for quality content and to enjoy something dumb every once in a while. There are lots of ways to turn your brain off in order to unwind, and it appears that my preferred method is to watch terrible anime videos on YouTube. I hope you guys enjoyed the videos, and that I successfully introduced you to the magical realm of exceedingly low-quality anime content.