The Limbless Anime Girl Fetish | Bad Art History

[00:00:00]I want to cry, bro. I actually want to cry, bro. This is actually so sad, bro.

[00:00:05]I had so much hope. I had so much promise in this. It's I was like, "Oh, this is such a beautiful illustration of somebody's pain, bro, and their road to recovery."

[00:00:15]Bro, little did I know. Little did I know.

[00:00:22]The freaky origin of the limbless anime girl? I have never heard of the freaky limbless anime girl. Well, actually, I don't think she's freaky. The The origin is freaky. But, why would you find that freaky, though? I don't understand, man.

[00:00:38]Let's check out this video.

[00:00:39]>> Have you ever been mildly inconvenienced? Maybe been forced to eat without YouTube or had to use the bathroom just as you were falling asleep? Then you can probably relate to this anime girl whose arms, legs, teeth, and eyes were torn from her body. In 2009, an artist took up the task of drawing anime girls in the most horrific scenarios he could possibly dream up, contributing to a disturbing online community whose roots go back to pre-war Japan. A >> Wait. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

[00:01:05]Whoa. We are not going to fetishize not having limbs and not having eyes and not having a nose. That No. What? No. That's No. We're not doing that, guys. Okay, I know there's so many things that are fetishized online, but this is a step I don't even know if this is a step too far. This is a step that no one ever needs to take.

[00:01:24]>> up the task of drawing anime girls in the most horrific scenarios he could possibly dream up, contributing to a disturbing online community whose roots go back to pre-war Japan. A fetish subcategory responsible for tens of thousands of images of anime broads being torn to shreds for purposes. So, how could there possibly be an audience for this stuff? Who is commissioning it? And what's the actual story behind this meme? This is a case of girls, gore, and anime porn. This is the >> The levels of depravity, they always seem to amaze me every time, man. I can't believe people actually get off to this type. Really, if you're one of the people who have dabbled in this, why?

[00:02:07]Please explain to me. I feel like you can't. There isn't a logical logical explanation to this as to why somebody would find this a rousing in any way whatsoever. It literally makes no sense.

[00:02:20]>> The our origin of the limbless anime girl.

[00:02:26]>> Nah, bro.

[00:02:28]Nah, nah, uh-uh, nah. I feel I don't want to believe it. Nah.

[00:02:34]>> Today's bad art history, the quadriplegic anime girl from 2009, old people who get it on, and the weird underbelly of Japanese image boards.

[00:02:43]Before we begin, I have launched a Patreon for the low low price of 1 to 5 doubloons a month. You get uncensored videos, extended commentary, blooper reels, and a shout-out if you want it.

[00:02:53]Thank you so much to anyone who decides to join. Thank you regardless for watching this slop, and back to the video. So, if you've been online >> So, I got thrown off when she said uncensored videos. I'm like, huh?

[00:03:03]>> who decides to join. Thank you regardless for watching this slop, and back to the video. So, if you've been online recently, you may have seen some variation of this meme. It's a beautiful >> what? I actually have seen that. Now that I'm looking at it, [laughter] I have seen this before, but I've never seen anybody get off to it.

[00:03:19]>> rendered highly detailed depiction of an anime girl languishing in a hospital bed with a bandage around her eyes. Notably, all four of her limbs are missing, and you can make out her chest through her shirt, which is no accident. And for the last year or so, this meme has been making the rounds on Instagram and Twitter. But, you may be wondering, why does this illustration exist? And why is she [ __ ] up? The real answer to that question actually comes from the underground art scene in 1930s Tokyo.

[00:03:45]But, before we can even touch that, a quick timeline. 2009, digital artist S Seneth Lee uploaded this artwork to the Japanese image board Danbooru. And what probably jumps out at you is the sheer despair radiating off this image. Even the website itself has it tagged as soul-crushingly depressing.

[00:04:03]>> Soul-crushingly depressing, yet somebody decided to take that and turn it into le goon material.

[00:04:09]>> [screaming] >> How? How? How?

[00:04:12]>> The comments reflect this, speculating on what, if anything, could be done to give this girl some semblance of a normal life. But what you don't know is that this is actually a part two to a previous illustration in which she is taken and brutally rearranged but kept alive. And though we'll come back to that artwork in detail, trust [music] me. The long and short of it is that this anime girl has been separated from her eyes, ears, teeth, mouth, [music] and limbs. And as the artist explains, "A while ago, there was a local girl who was hit by a truck and ended up losing both her legs and one arm. Visiting victims with this kind of injuries would be pretty awkward, since my cynical self thinks that telling her get well soon would be a little pointless. I wanted to draw a pic with this theme for quite some time. The last pic inspired me to draw this as a continuation. I kid myself that I used up all the blood in the last picture, that's why this one is so clean. But in spite of its shocking >> Look at how chill and genuine the origins are. Literally has nothing whatsoever to do with gooning at all.

[00:05:13]Like making a visually compelling picture of somebody who may have gone through something and trying to empathize, or maybe sympathize, I probably say empathize, with their pain and and using that art to do so. So genuine, so beautiful, so human. But some goddamn deviant out there decided to take that and turn it into goon material, bro. That's what I just cannot get over.

[00:05:44]>> In the last picture, that's why this one is so clean. But in spite of its shocking nature, this illustration lived in relative obscurity on the Japanese internet, only appearing on several small blogs before it made its first real mark on Safe Boru. Safe Boru is one of numerous Boru type sites whose stated purpose is only to repost the safer work images from Dan Boru. And just to be clear, >> Did that look very safe to you?

[00:06:10]>> mark on Safe >> This really really I, bro.

[00:06:17]>> Boru. Safe Boru is one of numerous Boru type sites whose stated purpose is only to repost the safer work images from Dan Boru. And just to be clear, Safe Boru had no business reposting this particular image, but repost they did.

[00:06:30]And in 2014, the limbless anime girl finally made her first appearance on the English web via 4chan. [music] Interestingly, her very first appearance resembles the current meme with an anon joking that waiting for a game to come out made him feel like he was languishing like the girl in the photo.

[00:06:45]And then, [music] 2019, a Twitter user posts this image with the caption, "Went through seven pages of a Dan Boru fat shark account just to find this pic >> in high quality." Keep in mind that this person could immediately tell that this was fat shark. The limbless anime girl ex- >> What do you mean they could immediately tell that this is Uh the only reason people would say that is because of the breasts. That's it. But every woman has them. So, like, what?

[00:07:14]There's really no big deal here unless you make it a big deal. You know what I'm saying? Like, you could see this picture and it's like I don't look at that. That's not the first thing I'm looking at in the first place, bro. I'm sorry. Look at her arms, gang. They're not there. Look at the cute teddy bear. Look at the flowers.

[00:07:32]Look at I don't know what she's doing with this green ribbon or whatever tied it on her hair or whatever. You know what I'm saying? Like, look at everything else. Look at the sunlight in the background. But the first thing you [ __ ] are seeing is that, bro.

[00:07:43]You Oh my god, bro. God, bro. Y'all are disgusting.

[00:07:48]>> Don Boruto fan art account justifying this pic in high quality. And keep in mind that this person could immediately tell that this was fan art. The limbless anime girl exploded in popularity, circulating as a reaction image and soaring to new heights in 2022, when Instagram user Intellectual Incel Group posted the first known variation of today's meme. And I hardly have to explain the rest. The desperately sad nature of the image versus the minor inconvenience in the caption made for excellent shitposting material. And with the advent of AI, there's even a version where she gets her legs back. And that's all fine, but the meme itself is hardly the most >> That's the S dice out like that, you know, a nice little happy ending.

[00:08:27]>> version where she gets her legs back.

[00:08:29]And that's all fine, but the meme itself is hardly the most interesting part of this story. Because that's where the common knowledge about it ends. And I'm sure what you're still wondering is, "Okay, but like, why was this made?"

[00:08:41]Yes, the artist explains his personal reasons, but really think about it, right? Why would an artist invest so much time and skill into mutilating a helpless anime broad? And more to the point, why is it so obvious to so many that this is fan art?

[00:08:56]>> Is it?

[00:08:57]Is it? When you guys saw that, did you like remove the background information that you have about it in your head, right? Let's say you knew nothing about that picture and you saw that picture for the first time. Would you look at that and think that that's some kind of fetish art? I know we're looking at the blurred version. You remember how the non-blurred version looked like? Would you look at that and think, "Yeah, this is sexy.

[00:09:18]Yeah, I can see how somebody likes this.

[00:09:21]Yeah, yeah." No. Now, if you're looking at it and she's about to say that there is a past of people fighting this, you know, sexy and having a fetish for it, and then they say, "Ah, this is that." Okay, I I that. Now you're making a correlation from something that happened in history to what's going on right now. But, if you're telling me that somebody saw this picture and it was like, "Oh, yeah. This looks fantastic." I mean, I do not share that sentiment.

[00:09:47]>> Yes, the artist explains his personal reasons, but really think about it, right? Why would an artist invest so much time and skill into mutilating a helpless anime broad? And more to the point, why is it so obvious to so many that this is fish art?

[00:10:07]Before we can get into any of the truly freaky stuff, I threw quite a few words at you. So, let's define them now. What are boorus? The word itself comes from the Japanese pronunciation of the word board, as in image board. Danbooru, launched in 2005, is among the most well-known Japanese image boards with close to millions of art submissions, many of which are extremely explicit.

[00:10:29]And since making it >> So, it's basically y'all's deviant art.

[00:10:33]Is that Is that right? Is that a good uh comparison?

[00:10:37]>> to millions of art submissions, many of which are extremely explicit. And since making its source code publicly available, dozens, if not hundreds, of copycat booru sites with their own theme and specific audience have emerged. And in case you were wondering, yes, it's almost all Safe Booru, as mentioned before, is a Danbooru clone without any of the adult content.

[00:10:57]>> Well, what happened to art, bro? Where's like the authentic art on the internet?

[00:11:02]Where does that exist? Where does that reside? Do those artists still exist? Or if you just post your art on the internet, it's got to be some kind of goon material?

[00:11:12]Where y'all at? If you're an artist out there who posts your stuff on social media websites and it's not, you know, some kind of corn, let me know [snorts] who you are in the comments section below because it feels like you guys are a dying breed.

[00:11:25]>> Safe Booru, as mentioned before, is a Danbooru clone without any of the adult content. But, clearly, some submissions slipped through the cracks. And as a quick aside, one look at the quadruple amputee tag on Safe Boru should be pretty telling. Because while these artworks don't show anything, they are clearly adult in nature.

[00:11:44]>> Ah, [ __ ] Now it's getting bad.

[00:11:46]>> Attention paid to showing off the cuteness and helplessness of these girls in combination with their limbless bodies is a very strange and obvious contrast. Back to Borus. One thing you have to understand is that they have an incredibly detailed tagging system, which makes it very easy to search for something like, say, quadruple amputee anime girls with green hair being held by a grown man suspended over a Christmas tree.

[00:12:10]>> Look at that picture. Doesn't it look like he's holding, you know, the same way that you would hold a baby?

[00:12:19]And the fact that they're fetishizing that, doesn't that also seem a little bit weird?

[00:12:27]No? Not at all? Perfectly fine? We going to justify it? Make some excuse for it?

[00:12:33]All right, your thing.

[00:12:36]>> What I'm saying is these sites make it incredibly easy to cater to extremely specific fetishes. And with extreme specificity comes extreme content. This brings us to a rather infamous website, Pixiv. Danbooru larger receives its submissions from Pixiv, an art sharing website and Japan's answer to DeviantArt. However, unlike DeviantArt, Pixiv >> Answer? Like remedy or answer like best friend, we got worse [ __ ] than DeviantArt?

[00:13:06]What does that mean, answer?

[00:13:08]>> art sharing website and Japan's answer to DeviantArt. However, unlike DeviantArt, Pixiv allows for a vast array of very explicit artwork. Many of the more gruesome anime shock images of the last two decades originated on Pixiv.

[00:13:22]>> So, it's worse. I see.

[00:13:24]>> Though it's very much still around, mounting pressure from advertisers have forced it to tighten up its policies.

[00:13:30]So, between the sheer availability of violent hentai on Pixiv and the sea of boorus willing to cater extremely specific niches comes gurochan.cx, which may remind you of another highly educational website ending in Though gurochan functions less like a booru and more like a text-based site, kind of like 4chan, it nevertheless contains an exhaustive catalog of images and GIFs showing unimaginable scenes of anime girls being scrambled. And because the nature of this artwork makes it incredibly insular, a small but thriving community of guro fetishists exist in this bubble.

[00:14:05]And the reason I'm telling you all this is so that it's abundantly clear that this drawing, whether it looks that way or not, was specifically intended to be guro. But even if you can't tell by looking at it, how come some people just know? Welcome to anime porn 101.

[00:14:20]>> Oh my god, [screaming] my brain has been poisoned. Oh, now every time I see anybody who's a apt beauty and I see [laughter] that it was drawn from Japan or it's in the anime style, I'm now going to know exactly what it is, bro.

[00:14:39]Oh my god, no. This is bad, bro. This is [laughter] not Bro, I don't even know if I want to blame the websites because the websites are business people. The people behind this, bro, they're business people and they see that there is an audience for this type of thing.

[00:15:00]So, they're going to go and get to the bag, bro. You cannot really like as a business, I get it. Morally, you know, nah. Ethically, nah. But business-wise, I understand it. As for the people who consume this type of content, I don't know what the hell to tell you. I don't understand why you find it arousing. I don't understand why you think it's sexy in any kind of way to look at anime characters, specifically female ones, be, you know, ripped to shreds and then, you know, sexualize them afterwards.

[00:15:36]I'll never understand it and maybe I I don't want to understand it.

[00:15:40]>> One, warning for the entire rest of the video. As a smart and very handsome viewer who is also probably very tall, you may have picked up on my use of the word "guro" instead of "gore" and that's because "guro" is very much its own thing.

[00:15:53]"Guro", known also as "eroguro" or "erotic grotesque", is actually perfectly summarized on Urban Dictionary. It is a Japanese art form that focuses on the bizarre, grotesque, and alteration of one's body mixed with freaky stuff. In the West, "gory tie" is often referred to as "guro", especially if there is a heavily mutilated anime girl covered in blood, missing limbs, or spilling her insides. Often all three is present and the subject is no more.

[00:16:18][music] I'm sorry, that was literally like impossible to clean up for YouTube.

[00:16:21]Please consider subscribing to Patreon and that way I don't have to censor every third word. Nah, there ain't no way, boy. Ain't no way, boy. There's no way these guys actually got real life girlfriends, right? At least I would hope so for the sake of their girlfriends because imagine if they do and that's what they really like and you go and tell your partner, "Yo, could you like I'm not even going to say it."

[00:16:44]I'm not even going to say it, bro. But But you know I'm saying like could you like, you know, do what these uh these pictures are doing? They'd probably never say that because they'd probably be either very ashamed of it or not have a girlfriend entirely.

[00:16:57]>> "Guro" as a term originated from the phrase "eroguro nonsensu".

[00:17:02]Sorry.

[00:17:02]>> This is nonsensu.

[00:17:04]>> "Erotic grotesque nonsense" in Taisho era Tokyo right before World War II.

[00:17:08]This was the name of a counterculture movement among artists who sought to intentionally make subversive and highly offensive art. Kind of like a spiritual sibling to Weimar Germany. And few things are more immediately offensive to the average person than the combination of jerking it and gore. This movement was not long-lived whatsoever, coming under heavy scrutiny by the government and society at large. But much like the other great granddaddy of hentai, Ero Guro's influence has persisted ever since. And just to put into perspective how influential this movement was, Wikipedia cites it as a foundational influence on the development of this. By 1936, however, with the war effort heating up and fewer >> On a on an octopus? On a squid?

[00:17:49]>> resources available for creative pursuits, the Ero Guro nonsense movement was slowly winding down. And its swan song would come in the form of the Sada Abe incident. Highly publicized affair in which adult worker Sada Abe ended her lover, jerked his weenus right off his body, and carried it around with her in her kimono as a keepsake. Artists and society at large was captivated by the symbolic quality of this crime, inspiring a final wave of grotesque artwork and literature immortalizing her story. But between the war effort and the moral panic >> What is wrong with human beings?

[00:18:24]I wonder if the aliens asked that question, bro.

[00:18:27]You know, just look down and you see like [ __ ] are chopping off another man's Johnson and it's symbolic and, you know, art and all that good good stuff.

[00:18:39]And the aliens just look down and they're like, "Yeah, you know what? We don't need to go to that planet, bro. We can skip that one. You know what I'm saying? Like, nah, these [ __ ] still got some evolving to do."

[00:18:49]>> about hot women coming to end you, the movement lost momentum for good. But to connect this back to the limbless anime girl, how can you look at this and just know that it's adult in nature? Think about the voyeuristic quality of the image. Whose perspective are we seeing this from? Why did the artist choose to make her chest visible? In fact, why did he choose for her to still have her chest at all? Why is she posed in such a way as to make fully visible the extent of all her injuries? And why does she still nevertheless have the cuteness and polish of a generic anime girl? Put all together, these are pretty direct tells that this art is not just for art's sake. It's fulfilling a very particular function. And knowing all this, the only thing Trump >> I want to cry, bro. I see what I cry about. This is actually so sad, bro. I had so much hope. I had so much promise in this. It's I was like I was like this is such a beautiful illustration of somebody's pain, bro, and their road to recovery.

[00:19:45]Bro, little did I know. Little did I know.

[00:19:52]Bro, does genuine art even exist? Oh my god, bro. I feel like art is cooked. At least on the internet, art is so cooked.

[00:20:01]>> Truly left unanswered is what is the appeal of this fetish for people who like it. While my aim here is never to pass judgment, I strongly believe that not all fetishes are created equal. And something whose premise is so violent and which necessarily requires another person to suffer, probably warrants a closer look. As this Redditor explains, "It was kept in the realm of fantasy, like many fetishes.

[00:20:25][music] In real life, this stuff is completely unarousing. But here, things are exaggerated, unrealistic, and no real people actually get hurt. There's a divide between fiction and reality.

[00:20:35]>> No, I'm sick and tired of hearing that.

[00:20:38]So sick and tired of hearing that. Well, it's a cartoon, so don't take it so seriously, man. It's not that deep. It's like, nah. That illustration is coming from you. It's coming from you and your imagination and your heart and your personality and your soul. So you're telling me what you like on the inside.

[00:20:58]Don't be coming in here saying like somebody from the outside showed you this and you're like, "Hey, man, you know what I mean? Hey, you You it was shown to me." Especially if you're the one who's creating it. Nah, I don't want to hear that excuse.

[00:21:09]>> human but logical extension of beat them. It could be that some wires got crossed in our brains or something. We don't have a reason, exactly, for enjoying it.

[00:21:18]>> what?

[00:21:19]I I Yeah, I was asking that. Like, "Hey, why why why why why? Tell them that it's human nature I mean it's it literally is just human nature, bro."

[00:21:27]>> Could be that we got desensitized to regular stuff and turned to more extreme stuff because we couldn't use the normal stuff anymore. And as [music] many point out, >> That sounds about right. Hey guys, stop watching corn.

[00:21:39]You know? Or at least like stop watching it as much, you know? Because if you chronically watch it like all the time, bro, you might end up liking this type of stuff, maybe.

[00:21:50]>> and turned to more extreme stuff because we couldn't use the normal stuff anymore. And as many point out, it can be a scary but controlled way to approach trauma. I'm not personally convinced that this kind of weird loving reverence explains the average Gro Chon user. But at the end of the day, the brain is a fascinating place. And whose brain could be more useful when it comes to explaining all of this than that of the artist himself?

[00:22:14]>> [music] >> Sure.

[00:22:18]>> So, to come all the way back to the limbless hospital girl, let's remember that this was a sequel artwork to a piece that was actually uploaded a few months prior in July of 2009. And for the sake of brevity, the original artwork depicts the perspective of a really bad guy as he sits across the table from the anime girl who at this point resembles a raw skirt steak. And this same girl is the one pictured recovering in the hospital. And what's coolest of all is that S Cenith Lee is actually pretty open about why he likes this stuff. On his old blog, he wrote, "I consider this one of the most horrible scenes I've ever drawn. I never understand why some sicko would send taunting letters to the family. Zodiac comes to mind. Scans of his letters always give me the creeps. I recently read a novel called Goth by Otsuichi, in which the harm went even further by sending tape recordings and parts of the victim to her sister. Maybe that's the reason why I woke up to a nightmare of this scene a few nights ago. The very next conscious thought of mine is, of course, I got to draw this down. While it's not clear how much fulfillment >> Okay.

[00:23:20]>> Zenith gets from creating these artworks, he's pretty cavalier about his interest >> That's not even a a terrible reason, you know? You had a nightmare about something and you're like, man, I got to draw this and you're an artist. That seems reasonable to me, but uh I hope he's not doing anything else with that.

[00:23:36]>> and exploring suffering from [clears throat] the perspective of the aggressor and the victim. And while it would be fascinating to get his insight onto the hospital girl as a meme, his last online activity was an illustration uploaded in 2020. He left behind a sizable gallery of incredible, though very explicit, artwork. And his digital footprint is otherwise not known. The only real speculation can be found in this comment suggesting that his deteriorating health led to his absence.

[00:24:02]But to be clear, nobody knows.

[00:24:04]>> The Yeah, you draw [ __ ] like that, yeah, your health is going to go down. There's no way that this is good for your heart, your mind, your soul, nothing, dude.

[00:24:12]>> Limb loss anime girl is far and away one of the best examples we have of what happens when chart reaches a completely unexpected audience and gets taken fully out of context. She was in >> No, I'm glad y'all to get out of context. I'm glad people turned it into a meme where it's like, yeah, I can't do nothing and say nothing and see nothing.

[00:24:29]That's good, okay? The fact that it was originally meant to be some kind of fetish, nah, let's forget about that, let's leave that alone, let's bury that.

[00:24:36]We're going to use it as a meme and a meme alone.

[00:24:38]>> a completely unexpected audience and gets taken fully out of context. She was intense and grim, but just absurd enough to express very real feelings during our current meme era of post-ironic detachment. And unlike the vast majority of fetish chart that gets removed from context and put into memes, many people were able to look at this and immediately clock it for what it was.

[00:24:59]And objectively speaking, is it strange that you can reasonably expect to see fetish art every time you log on?

[00:25:06]Yes.

[00:25:07]>> Yes.

[00:25:07]>> But that's the internet. And I cannot end this video on a pun this week because I genuinely think that making fun of someone who lost all four of her arms and legs sucks.

[00:25:17]>> No. No. No. No. No. No. Fetishizing them is worse.

[00:25:22]Okay. Fetishizing them is very dehumanizing. Y'all let me know what you guys think about this in the comments below, man. I mean Yeah.

[00:25:32]>> Not all fetishes are created the same.

[00:25:34]But this is absolutely disgusting, bro.

[00:25:37]You know what I'm saying? The level of of violence, the level of of I'm going to say misogyny, to be honest with you, because I don't see nobody doing this with [ __ ] you know? No one's doing this with grown men, bro.

[00:25:49]It's just it's girls, and seeing them be helpless and not have any limbs gets guys off. That's That's disgusting.

[00:25:57]Leave a like, subscribe, go check out one of these two videos. I'll see you guys over there. Take care.