Chanology

by Marik Bentusi

"Moe (pronounced "mo-ay") is a Japanese word that refers to feelings of strong affection mainly towards characters in anime, manga, video games, and other media directed at the otaku market." ~ Wikipedia

"Moe anthropomorphism is a form of anthropomorphism in anime and manga where moe qualities are given to non-human beings (such as animals, plants, supernatural entities and fantastical creatures), objects, concepts, or phenomena. In addition to moe features, moe anthropomorphs are also characterized by their accessories, which serve to emphasize their original forms before anthropomorphosis. The characters here, usually in a kind of cosplay, are drawn to represent an inanimate object or popular consumer product. Part of the humor of this personification comes from the personality ascribed to the character (often satirical) and the sheer arbitrariness of characterizing a variety of machines, objects, and even physical places as cute." ~ Wikipedia

There is a tradition in the Joseph Anderson streams community of creating and drawing moe anthropomorphs (also known as gijinkas) related to the streams. The community refers to these as "chans", because the first few that were made all had names ending in the "chan" Japanese honorific. Many chans have been created over the course of stream history, and sometimes old ones make appearances in new fan art. Therefore, in order for the pages on chans on this website to have maximum usefulness, we follow the rule that a page can only be made on a chan if the same design of them has featured in more than one fan art. The phenomenon of creating chans is arguably the most unique and intricate detail of the streams and the community.

Where did chans come from?

The Irony Circle

Irony

As discussed on the homepage of this website, Joe's streams have an ironic weeb dynamic. Towards the beginning of Joe's stream career, he only displayed sincere dislike for anime, for example when cringing at the intense weebiness of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. But as time went on and this became somewhat of a theme of his streams, he started to ironically praise the weeb games he played and their weeb aspects, as a way of mocking them. For example in his first stream of Persona 5, he kept up the running joke of only being allowed to be positive about the game.

This irony is the reason behind the beginning of the chan tradition. But at the point that the creation of chans has now reached, to call it just irony is a reduction of the true complexity of this behavior of both streamer and audience. The Irony Circle will help us understand this, as it illustrates how irony can evolve over time: we start at the top with sincerity, and then we progress to irony, and then to post-irony, and finally all the way around to meta-irony. Post-irony means satirizing irony itself by being ironic in an absurd manner, and meta-irony means being ironic without making it clear that you are or why you are, such that it's indistinguishable from sincerity. The beginning of the creation of chans marks the beginning of Joe's streams slipping from irony to post-irony.

Post-irony

What we might consider to be the first chan, or proto-chan, is from the Silent Hill 2 streams in October 2018. Someone in chat said that they thought the zombie nurse enemies looked hot, and Joe said that there's probably porn of them. Then someone in chat said everything probably has porn of it, at which point Joe said "I bet there isn't porn of the red save square", while standing in front of one of Silent Hill 2's save points. Then it wasn't long until various different viewers started drawing red square "lewds", which Joe displayed on the stream. After this, he said "I knew exactly what I was doing". This is a clear example of post-irony, because it would be absurd for a streamer to sincerely bait his audience into creating lewd drawings of a red square for him to look at and enjoy. It was a satirization of the kind of irony Joe had already been exhibiting.

When looking through the history of chans, one name appears time and time again: Marik Bentusi. Among the hastily-drawn red save square lewds that Joe put on screen, one clearly stood out, and honestly, took the joke of "a lewd red square" way too far. The one which bore a highly-detailed ahegao was drawn by the frequent fan artist Marik Bentusi, who would in future go on to create several more chans that would help to solidify the practice as tradition. After drawing the lewd red square, he next created a more anthropomorphized version of the character, called Red Square-chan. Considering her humanoid appearance and the presence of the word "chan" in her name, this rendition of her is considered to be the first chan. He would then draw his next chan during the Dusk streams in January 2019, in which Joe discovered that each level contains a secret bar of soap which you can throw at an enemy to kill them instantly, leading to him carrying the soap all the way through each level and throwing it at as many enemies as he could. This prompted Marik to draw Soaphie-chan, another humanoid chan and the embodiment of the bar of soap. Unfortunately no recording exists of the moment Joe showed this fan art on stream, but it marks a further important step towards chans becoming what we recognize today.

Red Square Chan by Marik Bentusi

The next time Marik would make a chan, there would be two at once. During the Catherine streams later that same month, he decided to chan-ify the voice line saying "undo" which plays when you undo your last move - creating Undo-chan - and the voice line saying "edge" which plays when a block is held up by the edge of another block - creating Edge-chan. Again, the concept of drawing such characters is absurd and a clear example of post-irony. But their creation also represents several important developments: it solidified the concept of humanoid stream chans, it showed that chans can be representations of abstract things rather than physical things, it showed that chans can have their own distinct personalities, and both of them being in multiple different fan arts introduced the idea of chans as reoccurring characters.

"Catherine gave chans a proper formula. I'd consider Undo/Edge the first proper chans" ~ Marik Bentusi

Another duo of chans which came shortly after in February, again made by Marik, was Bomb-chan and Bandage-chan, who are channifications of the cards The Bomb and Bandage Up from Slay the Spire. Bandage-chan in particular is notable because when Joe saw her, he said "That's actually a really cool character design, what the fuck. I'm angry at how good of a character design that is." This genuine effort which Marik consistently put into making his chans look good - starting all the way back with Red save square-chan's highly-detailed ahegao - had resulted in him starting to create characters that Joe genuinely enjoyed, suggesting that the post-irony of channification was beginning to slip towards meta-irony.

Meta-irony

By this point, Marik had made enough chans for the practice to start being adopted by other fan artists, resulting in the creation of Turret-chan and Cube-chan from the Portal streams, and several absurd chans as part of a joke in a piece of Death Stranding fanart, including Ladder-chan, Truck-chan, and Dead mother-chan. The fact that other people were starting to do this, and that it was no longer just Marik fucking with Joe, suggests that people genuinely enjoyed chans, which is another sign of them becoming meta-ironic.

But the first big step towards meta-irony was the creation of Bike-chan in November 2019, who is another Marik creation. She started out like any other chan, but as Joe's playthrough of Death Stranding progressed, the concept of her existence started having a sincere effect on the streams. This is because Bike-chan is the embodiment of the reverse trike from Death Stranding, and the way Joe played the game involved him trying to use the reverse trike all the time even on treacherous terrain rather than walking, and pushing the game to its limits by getting the reverse trike to very difficult places. This culminated in a moment where Joe decided to get Bike-chan to the top of a mountain through clever use of ladders, after which he famously said "I just got chills". This moment was then turned into Bike-chan fanart by stream artists. When viewed without prior knowledge of Joe's disdain for anime or the tradition of chans thus far, it might appear as though he was genuinely referring to the bike as his waifu. It's only with the full context that you can see that this is meta-irony, but without it, it might appear to be sincerity.

And if you think it would be a stretch to mistake Bike-chan for sincerity, then all ambiguity vanishes by the time we get to FAITOW-chan (Faffing Around In The Open World) from the Yakuza 0 streams in October 2020.

"I gotta say it, Marik, like... she's pretty fucking cute." ~ Joseph Anderson

The Yakuza 0 streams also marked a significant increase in other fan artists making chans, in the direct wake of FAITOW-chan's debut. And this is how the chan tradition arrived to the point where it is today. Without all of this context, you would mistake the Joseph Anderson streams community as a bunch of people who unironically enjoy drawing anime girls for Joe's streams. And that's because it's true.

What counts as a chan?

The Chan Alignment Chart

The broadest possible definition of a stream chan that we can give is "a chan is a character drawn for Joe's streams". But this definition includes things that clearly aren't chans too, so for the sake of deciding which characters to make chan pages of on this website, it helps to create a more precise definition. The Chan Alignment Chart poses a framework for arriving at such a definition. It asks that we decide how lenient we want to be in terms of what a chan must look like, and in terms of what a chan must originate from, and then tells us which characters we would have to consider to be chans in that case. Joepedia takes the form neutral / theme neutral stance, meaning we consider FAITOW-chan, Dryer-chan, Gnome-chan, and Norm-chan to be chans, but we do not consider Trash-chan, Eric, Pickle Nagito, Jomseph, or Beacoi Osfnoe to be chans.

One of the more surprising results of this decision is that Trash-chan is not a chan, despite being a character drawn for Joe's streams, being an anime girl, and even having a name ending in "chan". The reason she is not considered to be a chan is that she is Joe's character that he made in Code Vein. Rather than being the embodiment of something from a streamed game, or being themed around something from a stream, she literally is something from a stream, meaning she violates our theme neutral constraint. Eric is a similar case: He is a name that randomly cropped up on a stream which Joe then started treating as a character, and then people started drawing him, with the design taken directly from a character from Gravity Rush. This again means that he literally is something from a stream. In contrast we have Jom who, despite not being an anime girl, is a character that is themed around Joe, and Joe is "something from a stream", therefore Jom doesn't violate our theme neutral constraint. But because he's not humanoid, he violates our form neutral constraint, meaning he is not a chan. But various fan artists have drawn their own one-off designs of Jom-chan, which we would have to consider to be chans.

Then we also have the special cases of chans who originate from JADS, such as Bat-chan, Knife-chan, and Purple-chan. Joepedia considers these to fall into the theme neutral category, because the things they are related to - Bat vs Knife and The Voting Game - are both topics which had significant developments during streams.

One final observation to make is that the original, non-humanoid version of Red Square-chan would not be considered to be a chan under the form neutral / theme neutral stance. This is a product of the fact that her creation was motivated by Joe asking for lewds of the red save square, rather than for anyone to anthropomorphise it. But Marik's subsequent depiction of her as a human would qualify as being a chan, which is why Red Square-chan is the first chan.

Chan of the year

2019

Since 2019 was the year that chans rose to prominence, Joe decided to host his own Chan of the Year award during his re-stream of the 2019 Game Awards. He announced the nominees in a showcase video narrated by his ex-wife Lili, and then he got chat to vote for the winner in a Twitch poll. The nominees were Undo-chan, Edge-chan, Bandage-chan, Trash-chan, and Bike-chan, and the winner was Bike-chan. However, going by the form neutral / theme neutral stance, Trash-chan shouldn't be considered to be a chan, and therefore shouldn't have been nominated.

2022

The December 2022 Jads Marble Race Game Giveaway was also host to the first ever, community-organized JADSEYA awards show, which included a category for Chan of the Year. The nominees were VTuber Joe, the Mars Needs Senpais bunnygirl, Jomcubbus, NovAdv-chan, Dryer-chan, and Beacoi Osfnoe. The winner was Beacoi Osfnoe. However, going by the form neutral / theme neutral stance, the Mars Needs Senpais bunnygirl and Beacoi Osfnoe aren't chans, and therefore shouldn't have been nominated.

2023

The revamped and official JADSEYA 2023 also included a category for Chan of the Year. The nominees were Anne French Fry, White Line-chan, Carpenter Bee-chan, Sleeping Pill-chan, Trolley-chan, FIAEQ-chan, and Piss-chan. The winner was Trolley-chan. JADSEYA 2023 also included an additional award category titled "Best Of All Time Chan" - or BOAT-chan for short (not to be confused with Airboat-chan). This category was intended to reward one additional chan regardless of which year they were created in. The only rule was that chans who had already won Chan of the Year before couldn't be nominated, because they were already "on the boat". In 2023, this included Bike-chan and Beacoi Osfnoe, although the fact that Beacoi should've been included in this was never addressed. The nominees were Eric, Breaker-chan, FAITOW-chan, Dryer-chan, Quantum Moon-chan, Bomb-chan, and Trolley-chan. The winner of this category was also Trolley-chan, so she was "added to the boat" (even though she already would've been by virtue of also winning Chan of the Year).

2024

There was no Chan of the Year award in the once again community-organized JADSEYA 2024, because Joe didn't stream much that year, so there weren't many new chans. However, there was still a Best Of All Time Chan award. The nominees were FAITOW-chan, Quantum Moon-chan, Piss-chan, Anne French Fry, and Undo-chan. The winner was FAITOW-chan, so she was "added to the boat", which now includes Bike-chan, Beacoi Osfnoe, Trolley-chan, and FAITOW-chan.

Chan relationships

As detailed already, some chans have their own counterparts: Undo-chan and Edge-chan, Bandage-chan and Bomb-chan, FAITOW-chan and Main Story-chan, Golden Rifle-chan and Steel Business Card-chan, Breaker-chan and DeV-chan, Bat-chan and Knife-chan, Grenade-chan and Wrench-chan, and even Piss-chan and Poop-chan. There is also Affinity-chan, who is shown to be able to turn into FAITOW-chan.

In addition to this, some of Marik's chans are related by various different events portrayed in his fanart which show that some chans are fusions of other chans. The first one of these that he drew was the fusion of Undo-chan and Breaker-chan to form Speedrun-chan, from when Joe found glitches in Bugsnax to skip to the end of the game.

The next fusion was from The Voting Game, and is a bit more complicated. Even though Bomb-chan originated from the Slay the Spire streams, she regained relevancy during The Voting Game because of the bomb in the list of voted games, which would explode and destroy the games above it and below it in the list. Marik reused his original design of Bomb-chan from the Slay the Spire streams when he made fanart for The Voting Game, and then decided that it's actually supposed to be the very same Bomb-chan in both instances. Also part of The Voting Game were the dragon angel and the purple dummy. The dragon angel was an entry on the list of voted games which would "ascend" the games above it and below it in the list, meaning that they would win the vote. And the purple dummy was an entry in the list which had no effect, and was also channified by Marik as Purple-chan. There were antics over the course of The Voting Game where people tried to "save" each of these three entries in the list, by stopping them from being destroyed and by ascending them. And by the end of the whole thing, Joe's added lore dictated that the dragon angel was split in two, and that these parts were absorbed by Bomb-chan and Purple-chan, giving them each one wing. So then Marik made a fanart showing Bomb-chan and Purple-chan fusing to form Breaker-chan, and in the process also re-forming the dragon angel, which escaped. This fusion created Breaker-chan because of how these three characters all tried to break The Voting Game.

The third and final chan fusion that has happened so far was from the Half-Life 2 streams, with Trolley-chan. This time it was actually a fission, which is the opposite of a fusion. Marik made fanart of the moment when Joe couldn't take the trolley that he'd been carrying for the whole game any farther, in the form of Trolley-chan being left behind and split in two by Joe using a teleporter. And the two pieces which she was split into were a young Purple-chan and a young Bomb-chan. Marik said that Trolley-chan is a "cute, non-sentient object with explosive power", as a reference to the fact that she's a Half-Life 2 prop who absorbed the power of a train and gained the ability to launch Joe into the air. But this is also a reference to both Purple-chan and Bomb-chan: the bomb's explosive power is obvious, but also the purple dummy was explicitly described by Joe during The Voting Game as being non-sentient and cute.

So this means that the two characters that Trolley-chan was split into grew up and eventually fused back together again to form Breaker-chan, meaning that Trolley-chan was just young Breaker-chan. And this tracks thematically, because Joe used the trolley to break Half-Life 2. So if we combine all of this information, we get the following timeline which details the progression of Trolley-chan, Bomb-chan, Purple-chan, the dragon angel, Breaker-chan, Undo-chan, and Speedrun-chan over time. One important observation is that these characters don't follow the same flow of time as Joe and the real world, because the order in which he streamed these games was actually Catherine, then Slay the Spire, then Bugsnax, then he ran The Voting Game, and finally Half-Life 2.

Chan Relationship Chart by Marik Bentusi