Hey want to hear me yap for a bit? No? Too bad.
Ok, so way back in 2016 or so there was a youtuber called Tsuko G. He mainly did kazoo covers and acapella covers of various video game music, thats how I found him at least, and he kept doing that for basically until the end of his channel (more on that later). Eventually he begun doing full vocal covers of anime ops, sometimes in english and sometimes in japanese, and his initial D covers really took off, which lead to him doing more original songs.
These original songs, labrled under the album of "Against The Stream", would be the last thing he posted before releasing a video explaining why he'd be deleting every video on his channel. The explanation he gave, I believe, was because he wanted to be taken more seriously as a musical artist, but I have my doubts on that.
"Reset Man" is one of his original songs, and it tells of someone burning away the life he had due due to dissatisfication wih it. Doing so again again and again until he finally got what he wanted.
"ZONE 99", another original, describes burning bridges and breaking free of chains to reach the titular Zone 99 at any cost.
"Out Of The Matrix" similarly describes escaping from the aforementioned Matrix, the singer not caring if they are being shamed or hated for doing so.
I could go on, but listening to any of his original songs and drawing comparisons between their lyrics and the artist's actions is fairly simple so I'll leave it at that.
These songs were kind of an omen as to where his head was at the time and his desire to escape his past.
So let me tell you why that was fucking stupid.
He had 483 THOUSAND subscribers before he nuked his channel. "Oh so the fans were toxic, right?" No, nothing par from the course, at least from what I remember. Of course no fandom is perfect, but Tsuko had been uploading for almost a decade by this point. Its hard to imagine a few bad eggs just suddenly made him want to quit. People were heartbroken when they heard the news, and there were people who tried to preserve his music after the vidoes were all deleted, but when he requested that these reuploads be deleted, they oblidged and agreed to his wishes. So, again, pretty nice and agreeable fandom all things considered.
"So it cant have been the fandom that made him do it, therefore it mustve been the videos themselves, right? Something bad or just unenjoyable that made him want to start fresh." Except no, everything he put out was at least enjoyable. His kazooing was really impressive and its obvious he was having at least some fun while recording them, and I still have his original songs downloaded so that I can listen to them whenever. It also cant have been his own high exprectations of himself because... well lets finally talk about the real reason why he deleted his videos, or at least a more likely explanatiom than the bs he gave.
After deleting his videos, Tsuko went into the NFT buisness, specifically Music NFTS, and created a company called Meteora for that exact purpose. Meteora, to be clear, now appears to be defunct and/or dead. That should immediatly make a lightbulb shine above your head.
Its likely, if not certain, that Tsuko deleted his videos so he could turn them into Music NFTs. It'd explain why he deleted his videos, why he didnt want any reuploads, and why he stopped using the Tsuko G name alltogether. Instead, he rebranded himself to Nes .B.
As we all know by now. NFTs died fairly quickly all things considered, which left Nes without amywhere to go so: he tried coming back.
And to say his fans did not take this well would be an understatement. People hated this for a variety of reasons, mostly when they found out about the NFT part, and the few positive comments were reportedly mostly from people who either weren't paying attention or didnt event watch the video. But, he was back and rerebranded himself under the name of Anes .B. Yes, he really just out a A before the nes. No, I dont get it either.
Anyways he nuked the channel again and deleted the video due to the negative backlash and, as far as I can find, (I have not looked at twitter or bluesky, I dont have either) seems to have left the internet entirely. Fortunately, someone managed to download the video adn reuploaded it, which is the link provided above.
However. If you look up some of the songs from Against The Stream, you'd find there are some reuploads of them, uploaded by a channel called RhythemGamesMusic with an odd [Cytrus II] in the title. Cytrus II, for those unaware like I was, is a Taiwanese collection of rhythm games by a company called Rayark that makes rhythm games. So, what must have happened, is that Against The Stream was licenced by Rayark and used in Cytrus II.
I cannot fact check this myself, since I do not play rhythm games, but the aforementioned RhythemGamesMusic channel has put four of tsukos G "Against The Stream" in a playlist called "[Cytus II] Graff .J Soundtrack" on their YT channel so, if anyone more knowledgable in rhythm games or Cytus specifically wants to factcheck and see if Tsuko G's music was used, feel free to do so, hero.
Checking these videos descriptions also takes us to Rayark's mostly dead company website, Anes's uber dead YT channel, and the deleted og YT video.
Rayark was also accused of using AI a few years back, but those claims seem to be false, at least for the most part. If a random IGN article is to be believed, they did say they were somewhat interested in investigating using GenAI but those plans seemed to have been halted after fan backlash.
As to how or why Against The Stream got labeled and put into a rhythm game, couldnt tell ya. Maybe Rayark bought the Music NFTs from Meteora and used them before Meteora crashed and burned, or more likely just got the license from Tsuko before he went into NFTs.
What I can tell you is that Tsuko's music is far from gone. The Internet Archive has, more or less, his entire YT library ready for download.at least in audio form. You can find it either on the super dead Tsuko G subreddit, or by just googling it.
Anyways, Im going to bed now and continue listening to my illegitimate downloads of his music because fuck NFTs and fuck AI. Good night tri-state area.
