#nape mango

Yeah, okay, this is cheating in a lot of ways - this is not on the SiIvaGunner channel, and its obviously not even a rip. But I felt it necessary to commemorate, as I mentioned briefly in Because I Love You, its finally time for MAGFest once again, and the SiIvaGunner team is to host their own panel there tomorrow! And in the spirit of that, I want to just...talk about SiIvaGunner and MAGFest, at least for a little bit. Because the first two panels in particular, the ones that marked the beginning and end of Season 3, are some of my all-time favorite videos associated with the SiIvaGunner channel.

A big part of the identity and gimmick of the channel itself, as you're likely well aware, is the bait-and-switch - to present it as a faceless entity simply uploading video game music, only to instead feature jokes, shitposts, edits, and so forth. Part of maintaining that kayfabe, then, is to intentionally obscure who makes what behind the scenes, to keep the real people under wraps for those who aren't going to dig deeper, in order to further sell the illusion of being an official VGM upload. The team does of course still give credit when its relevant, as any rip can be featured on an album be given full credits there, but just that degree of separation alone between casual fans and ones willing to download an album has probably led to a few too many people being unaware of who made their favorite rips. Back then, I typically fell somewhere in the middle - I wasn't actively using music listening software and thus missed out on listening to albums for a long time, but was still aware of some of the big names you'd see in comments sections, saw some shoutouts from Twitter, the works.

Yet with the two MAGFest panels of 2018 and 2019 respectively, it felt like the first time that the magnitude of what SiIvaGunner is and how much it means to people was revealed to me for the first time ever. The uploaded recording of the 2018 panel, posted by Chaze's own account, features a shot about seven minutes in that turns the camera to the crowd - and it's an absolutely packed-full room of nerds just like me. And even though I've never been able to go to any of these MAGFest panels due to travel costs and complications...just seeing how many people truly do care about SiivaGunner, in such a tangible way, something more than a number...it resonated with me, yknow?

Beyond that, these panels are just such fascinating pieces of history for the channel, such good time capsules in so many ways - and that's in a lot of ways why I chose to highlight the 2019 panel in particular. Rather than discussing the upbringings of the channel, it features members of the team reminiscing and going through Season 3's timeline of events in particular, going into surprising detail into the thought process and direction the various pieces of the year took - while also giving insights into the production of the Christmas Comeback Crisis, King for a Day Tournament, and more. I feel like with the turn from Season 3 to Season 4 Episode 1, you can really notice that the idea of "hype" for SiIvaGunner content becoming so much more prominent, so much more deliberately handled by the team, which is made all the more evident by the King for Another Day Tournament reveal live on stage.

Man, look, it's an hour-long panel, and there's so many small things that I still remember from it, despite last having seen it five years ago. The members talking about their favorite rips, giving a round of applause to all the rippers who couldn't come join them at the panel or on-stage, the very funny last-minute rips made to "celebrate" the channel being terminated a day earlier (one of which I've embedded as the Bandcamp link), and even some slight discussions on what SiIvaGunner as a channel means to the team, what it represents, and what their goals have been overtime. And, of course, the fucking incredible PowerPoint hijinx with Inspector Gadget, which I am 100% going to take as confirmed canon that Gadget's level of sentience and awareness of the real world is just the same as Woodman's and The Voice.

I have, of course, been told a number of times that I overanalyze SiIvaGunner, that I'm uncovering depth that's clearly not intentional, looking too much into a silly meme channel. And sure, I'd admit that I do overthink things to a degree, anyone who read Vote Responsibly!! should be able to tell you as much. Yet its stuff like these in-depth behind-the-scenes looks, these moments of getting a face and a voice to attach to the works, that really just felt super validating to me even back then - that the intentions and goals of the channel that I myself had picked up on were in fact some sort of direction that the team itself were steering toward. And though Nape Mango does indeed declare in this very panel that "Everything is a coincidence with SiIvaGunner", I'm forever in awe at just how good the team has been at lining those coincidences up into something genuinely incredible.

Do you have any idea how heartbreaking it was to realize, moments after posting yesterday's post on Determination is Magic, that I'd missed the 7-year anniversary of this legendary rip? Like, I've had this request sitting in my drafts for a while, it was meant to go up in a few days from now, yet here I am with egg on my face having missed its birthday in favor of a My Little Pony rip. Ugh, well, alright, better late than never - sitting right alongside The 2:28 Collab as another rip from the same game, Ripping Video Game Music​.​.​.​.​.​.​At Night is an absolute standout rip, and one of my fondest memories from the original Christmas Comeback Crisis event all the way back in 2016.

In a way, Ripping Video Game Music​.​.​.​.​.​.​At Night is a bit of an amalgamation of a bunch of different things I've covered on this blog already. As a smaller-scale medley, the rip was done entirely by the legend himself Nape Mango, who I've previously established as "the GOAT" back with Chillin' Like A Villain - though he's a lot less active on SiIva nowadays, he has an immense knack for good sounding shitposts. The guy was firing on all cylinders during Season 1 and 2 in particular, also being behind Battle! The Trainer Inside Your Head!, another Christmas Comeback Crisis-themed rip from that time that I absolutely adore. Beyond Nape Mango though, the soundscape of Pokémon's fourth generation games is well explored on the channel, with rips like the aforementioned The 2:28 Collab, Eterna's Cocoon, and even rips made this year like Rearranging Furniture in the Underground Secret Base. Put simply, the jazzy sound and distinctive set of instruments featured in the game are beloved by fans and rippers alike, and for good reason.

But crucially, what Ripping Video Game Music​.​.​.​.​.​.​At Night reminds me of most, is the same feeling I described back with It's Snowy but its snowy: its a rip that feels celebratory without being overly triumphant. A lot of the content surrounding the Christmas Comeback Crisis was very triumphant, very much so cheering us in the audience on in excitement over the start of this all-new big story event. Yet in the moments between, we'd get rips like this: rips that, while still feeling like big celebrations, ask us to sit down and reminisce, rather than stand up and clap. Just about every joke featured in its jazzy, smooth-flowing arrangement is one that was made legendary through that original season of SiIvaGunner: Flintstones, Snow Halation, Puzzle Room, mm2wood, We Are Number One - hell, that last one is likely even a reference to how it was Nape Mango himself who *started* the WANO meme on the channel! Its a rip that, even back when I first watched it, gave me this immense sense of communal joy - a toast to everything the channel had done, yet not one tinged with bittersweet melancholy like File Select Fusion Collab or other rips from the Season 1 finale.

Sorry for running so late - but bonus points to you if you could call today's rip ahead of time! For 22/08, we're covering the world renowned duology of Route 228 Collabs, The 2:28 Collab and The 2:28 Collab -The Sequel-.

Its always been really fascinating to me that SiIva's larger-scale projects aren't always pushed to the forefront. These days in particular, Fusion Collabs get tons of buildup and special attention leading up to and following their release, but other kinds of collabs often simply get uploaded and left to the whims of the YouTube audience to discover. Its really interesting to see how the original The 2:28 Collab was still able to land with so many people and, in at least my eyes, become one of the most cherished rips by the SiIva diehard such as myself - it and its sequels represent such a genuine, wholehearted love for the art of music creation and VGM as a whole. The original Route 228 theme is a tune beloved by Pokémon's Gen 4 diehard fans - a lategame tune from games over 15 years old by now, yet it and DPPt's sound is still so fondly remembered.

I've already talked about just how cool I think Nape Mango is as a contributor in a prior post, and I believe it was this rip in particular that solidified that for me. He doesn't show up much, most often being part of collabs or helping out other projects, but almost all of his solo rips have this aura of being perfectly thought through - either something that was blindingly obvious before, or something that FEELS blindingly obvious after having heard the rip.

Though I might be biased having grown up with Pokémon Gen 5 in particular, that kind of retrospective obviousness hits hard as ever with this track. It adapts one of the game's most triumphant battle themes, the battle theme for the Pokémon World Tournament grand finals, into close to a dozen jokes all pertaining specifically to SiIva's own lore. With the album this rip debuted in releasing at the very end of Season 2, after several episodes of the Christmas Comeback Crisis storyline had gotten me woefully invested in it? This rip felt like an unofficial anthem for the channel, hidden only to those turbo-nerds like myself who listen to these albums in their entirety. There's something about how the rip escalates that's always struck a sort of poetic chord with me, as if its a musical retelling of the actual story so far in the CCC. Beginning with the simple Flintstones riff as an intro, leading into a building melody of Kirby: Planet Robobot Music setting up the actual scene of the CCC alongside the repeating Nutshack progression - remember, dear readers, The Nutshack was in a way intrinsically tied to the original Season 1 channel ending. Transitioning from that theme, one almost coded in a sort of doom in the context of the channel, into Snow Halation - a theme of hope and prosperity, it really feels like a narrative is being told with this rip!

Okay, so on a more cheerful note than the last few posts: We all agree Nape Mango is the fucking GOAT, right? Having been a part of the core team since damn near the beginning, Nape is an unrivalled titan in ripping, seeing much success outside of the channel’s boundaries but still being a core member of the team’s Backroom (the guys in charge of the channel’s direction). Though his contributions to the channel have slowed down with each year, he still very much has a passion for the channel, with today’s rip from Season 3 being an excellent example of such.

We Are Number One’s stems and isolated vocals being released by the LazyTown team themselves was an absolute victory for the channel and YTPMV as a whole, and its turned the song from a favorite to a full-on mainstay on the channel. Rips like this show why that is: Its able to turn just about any high-tempo song into upbeat, goofy ska, and each remix feels so distinctly different due to just how many ways WANO can be overlayed onto a track’s various layers. Sonic Advance 3 is already a favorite for me, and hearing the pure joy of Twinkle Snow matched with the raw feel-good energy of WANO just…it just works, okay?