#iris jse

before we start, we have to go back to two important videos: "Chase" (released october 13, 2019) and "You're Not Ready For These Scary Games" (released october 19, 2019, which i'll be reffering to as "You're Not Ready" from now on). "Chase" was so incredible when it came out, and the thumbnail for "You're Not Ready" is literally Henrik's face, so i couldn't be more hyped.

in "Chase", we begin with a note of eviction. the note states that anyone living in the house (namely, Chase) is ordered to "vacate the premises not later than September 2019". according to the notice, it's August 8, 2019. things are definitely not going ok, judging by the state of his car and the bottle of whisky inside the glove compartment. more importantly, his reaction to seeing the picture he just found shows us something terrible has happened. he drives to the woods and walks for a while (with many beautiful shots from the mountains and the forest itself). more importantly, he walks towards a very specific set of rocks, mounted on top of eachother like a memorial of some kind. he rests the photo over it and drinks from the bottle of whisky, before being abruptly teleported from the woods to what seems like a parking lot.

on the other hand, the part that makes "You're Not Ready" interesting is the ending of the video, where Seán's screen is abruptly cut by static followed by a black screen. Henrik immediately appears, worried and writing on a piece of paper in front of a computer screen. we can see he's been woking on mathematical equations, by the papers on his desk; all the ones we can see have the letter 'T' in some capacity. after many mistakes, something in the screen fires up and it glitches. Henrik seems desperate and, after typing something, is presented with a psychedelic tunnel of lights; something seems to have worked.

with this, we can analyze "Anomaly Found" with a little more info. we're told throughout the scenes that Chase's family has been murdered (both his wife and kid, according to Arin's character as well as the photo in "Chase") and he has been somehow involved. at first, he says he's killed them, but then retorts a "i didn't kill them". after the ending, it seems pretty clear that the one responsible for their death was Anti - but Chase took the blame, since no one would believe him if he told the truth. this event is obviously the catalist to all the bad things happening with him, from the eviction note to the heavy drinking.

during one of the scenes in the "Project Iris" livestream, we're presented with a poster saying that "ALTR 5914 IS A TIME THIEF!". since we're already aware that Anti's number is ALTR 114209 because that's how his name is written in numbers (A = 1, N = 14, T = 20, I = 9), 5914's translation is either EIAD or EIN. EIN as in Henrik von Schneeplestein. Henrik is a "time thief" - or, more likely, a time manipulator.

in "You're Not Ready", he seems to be working with time equations (remember the 'T'?), or something along the lines of manipulating time using both math and some weird machine. he seems to be a physicist more than a physician - and that's why i think Henrik is responsible for Chase's teleportation. meddling with time is, essencially, meddling with space, since they're both indissociable. if Henrik's machine did work at the end of "You're Not Ready", he has successfully changed time - or stolen it, in some capacity. the success of Henrik's machine is responsible for Chase's teleporting and, consequently, for his inprisonment in the IRIS facility during "Anomaly Found".

now, on to the best part of this whole ordeal: my baby Anti. he looks great, he looks terrifying, but more importantly: he looks exactly like Chase. if anyone saw him commiting any crime, they would obviously blame it on Chase, since it's "impossible" for such a creature to exist. Anti seems to be making a hell out of Chase's life long before the murder of his wife and kid - "showing him awful things", making him hear strange voices and whatnot. we were already aware of Anti's interest in Chase - my question is: why? why Chase? why is Chase so important to Anti?

i am also very intrigued in the whole "i feel like i've been here before" bit, as well as "i have been in this exact place before, we need to leave". this implies some sort of time cognizance from Chase's part, almost as if he's able to glimpse into the future. that could be either the reason for Anti's interest in him or an effect of his influence. either way, Chase has something special to him - and we don't know what yet.

finally, i wanna take this last paragraph to say how incredibly proud i am of seán for making this. the "Project Iris" livestream as a whole was incredible, an amazing feat that definitely will change the way we think youtube content and viewer interactions for the next years. the cinematography of "Anomaly Found" is also phenomenal, and don't even get me started on that ending scene - I NEED MORE ANTI, SEÁN!!!! WE NEED MORE ANTI CONTENT!!!!!