#blindedvanguard573

A majority of the rips on SiIva, and thus by extension a majority of rips on this blog, are intended to be crossovers of some form, be it melody swaps, mashups, rearrangements, covers, what have you. The channel is, in its purest form, a giant tribute to media of all sorts, and part of the fun with every rip is discovering which two-or-more sources are getting crossed over. But every so often, works on SiIva transcend being tributes - into a whole different kind of quality.

Though not the most active contributor, BlindedVanguard573 has almost always been loud and proud about their style in rips. That style, as you may have heard, is primarily in the domain of Eurobeat, which he still does tons of work with outside of the SiIvaGunner channel! I could've picked just about any rip from this selection for this post, but Reach Out To The Truth ~FOR SECRET SILVA~ truly feels like the most natural, genuinely fantastic fit: The energy of Persona 4, as already covered in We Are Number 4 (Golden), is so infectiously fun, and giving it the charm of a Eurobeat song only adds to that in the best way possible. Its not a mashup - its purely BlindedVanguard573's own arranging skills speaking here. The DK Rap section in the middle is a little jarring, but adds character to the rip and serves as a really nice laugh in the middle of its runtime - its the bait-and-switch the channel is known for, after all!

The last post made me nostalgic for Season 1’s ending, so fuck it, here’s another rip from back then - the File Select Fusion Collab, a rip with close to 20 creators involved. What a “Fusion Collab” entails has changed quite a fair bit over the years, as the collaborations have grown larger in size with each year. Nowadays, they now tend to focus on individual artists rendering a specific track in their own style across a longer video, such as with Season 2’s Wood Man Fusion Collab. But with Season 1, the meaning was a lot more nebulous - they were almost all made under the direction of toonlink (otherwise goes by “tunedlink” and “toonlinkirl”), and were made more in the style of YTPMVs, having a base song to build off of with an everchanging barrage of styles and sources intermingling at once.

These were released every now and then over the course of Season 1 and were always appreciated, yet today’s choice in particular stands out among them. Being released during what was effectively presented as the ending of the channel, it has a unique kind of emotional baggage to it, it leans into celebrating the entire legacy of the channel and all of its inside jokes. The full-circle moment of getting Joel Vinesauce himself to narrate a section in the middle of the track was perfect - the person whose joke got the entire channel started, now gets invited to formally close it out, with a speech still very much rooted in that niche joke culture SiIva itself thrives in. And it just keeps going in that direction - the rip builds in a congratulatory, yet bittersweet way to truly signal that the channel is about to end, a giant thank-you letter to the entire community that had been fostered over the channel’s small 9-month lifespan.

Happy One Piece day premiere day, everyone!

Made for Season 1's "Talk like a Pirate Day", Knock Knock It's One Piece is a fantastic encapsulation of everything I love about Season 1. Rips that are rough around the edges, not as expansive as they could be - but go head first, guns blazing into doing jokes that otherwise have next to no traction on the channel. The concept here is pretty simple - taking two songs that are in-jokes within their respective fanbases, Unknown from M.E. from Sonic Adventure and the 4Kids One Piece Pirate Rap, and meshing them together in whatever way works. And, well, as a massive fan of both, the rip works wonders for me!

Though its only the length of the original One Piece Pirate Rap - little over a minute - a lot of effort was evidently put into making this more than a funny mashup. Though its primarily using Unknown from M.E.'s vocals, the opening uses the vocals from the other song as it describes three pirates from One Piece - only now sentence mixed to instead refer to three Sonic characters. Even as the mashup begins proper, the One Piece Pirate Rap's instrumental is never overshadowed or played down from the new vocals - they play in perfect harmony to one another. Both songs feature segments of rap interspersed with more regular-paced singing, and the vocals to Unknown from M.E are placed perfectly along where the equivalent parts would be in the original song.