✿ Yume Nikki Episode Bonus page ✿

Yume Nikki is a game that means a lot to me so I really wanted to nail this episode. Part of the challenge making this was creating a video about Yume Nikki that's fresh because I've watched SO many videos about that game that it's hard to say anything new about it.
Part of the challenge was also to reveal as little as possible about the game since LOVEWEB's media-focused episodes are always more about hyping the viewer to check out the content for themselves rather than just watch a video that just spoils everything anout it. I don't like videos that are just recapping what happens in media without any further analysis or input from the creator.
Sooo yeah! This episodes gives you the very basics about what you have to know about the game and focuses more on aspects outside of it like it's mysterious creator and cool community.

Here's a bunch of tiiiiiiny doodles planning out the storyboard of the episode. I always love working with very tiny canvases to make these, it helps me visualizes the whole episode quickly.

Here's the teaser doodle that was posted one month before the episode released! You can see behind Manon that I was already working on covering their walls with Yume Nikki media. Manon's researches are posted in its entirety later on this page when they come into focus.

For this episode, I've constructed Manon's interior in 3D! It was in my best interest to spend the time to make that 3D space so I can easily have both day/night versions made. Also having a 3D version of Manon's place really helps when it comes to taking care of backgrounds for future episodes. Maybe one day I'll learn Blender and the furniture won't have that paper tin-quality to them.

The episode also came out with Manon's very own Yume Nikki fangame: MANONNIKKI
Idk how obvious it was to others but this is meant to be a light parody of Yume Nikki fangames. The latest version being 0.0001, the game never receiving any updates, the lazy name and the massive amount of traffic cones everywhere. If the game ever gets updated, it'd be to add more parodic elements (It'd also be really funny for an update to happen YEARS later out of nowhere and it's just a crappy labyrinth or something lol).

You can already tell from the first shot of this episode that this is 3D because of the messy texture alignment lol

And Cybermare is, of course, just a 2D drawing added in the 3D environment as you can see here. Idk why she's clipping into the ground here, she renders just fine in the camera view. (That yellow box is the camera btw).

The mare is browsing some obscure imageboard for Gondola content, keeping some sort of light continuity with the previous episode. This is also the last episode so far that opens with something related to the previous episode, sad!

What you're seeing now is an actual recording of Manon's computer running Yume Nikki, no video editing trick, this is the real deal. Manon's computer is not some kind of video editing project glued together this time, it's a real virtual machine running on my computer.
I also much prefer the softer colors of Manon's computer now, more pink and less purple. This is also a Windows XP now! It was a Windows 98 for the Gondola episode. Though the UI has been tweaked to look like Windows 98 because this lolcat is still fond of that 98 aesthetic. They really needed that OS upgrade because DAMN, 98 is so limited.
You'll see later in the episode how trying to keep things "real" like using a virtual machine instead of video editing to show Manon's computer is gonna bite me in the butt.

Now she's watching Cybershell's Operation Soda Steal video. I can't believe Cybermare is watching a Youtube video you can actually find, it's almost as if she exists within our current internet or something!!!
Anyway I've chosen this video because Cybershell left a comment on the Gondola episode, and Cybermare is now checking his channel out because having such a big Youtuber comment on a LOVEWEB episode really caught her attention.
I'm lying of course, I picked Cybershell's video because I'm a fan of his content and been watching him since his Sonic 2 bonus video from all the way back in 2017. You can imagine seeing a comment from him on LOVEWEB made me all excited. I'm very very happy to see how much he's been supporting the show. These pages are even called "Bonus pages" because of his bonus videos hehe.
Also everytime I type "Cybershell" my muscle memory gets messed up and I end up typing "Cybermare" everytime lol.

This fake Game Theory thumbnail actually has some lore behind it, because I'm the one who made it years ago. I remember making a fake video on a fake "The Game Theorists" channel to scare people online teehee. The clip used was from this Game Theory episode at the start of the timestamp until the "drugs not even once" joke, and then 8 minutes of nothing to make it seem like it was a legit video.
You can't find that video on Youtube anymore because the entire channel was quickly deleted by Youtube for impersonation which is fairn, sorry Matpat lol!!

Alright NOW is the time to talk about what the heck is going on with the walls.

Despite the lesson of the episode being about not trying to solve who Kikiyama is, I ironically had to go online and look for posts speculating about him to put on the walls since that's what Manon is trying to do.
AQUILLA is the composer for Yume Nikki's 3D reimagining game "Yume Nikki Dream Diary", added to the wall because of the conspiracy theory that this was a secret new handle for Kikiyama.
You can also see a couple times where people tried to RP as the real Kikiyama. The Uboachan community became known for calling into question literally everything everytime because of stuff like that, hence the "FRAUD" image in here.
The Uboachan post "The real Kikiyama was the friends we made along the way." is my favorite thing out of all of this.

The left face of the wall has more focus on trying to figure out Kikiyama's involevment with Yume Nikki Dream Diary and other official derivative content of Yume Nikki. This is because the promotional material for that game made it loud and clear that KIKIYAMA SUPERVISED THIS. There is zero mention of YNDD in the LOVEWEB episode itself because there is no reason at all to bring it up. It saves work not to bring it up and it would have broken the pacing to have Manon bring up that whole rabbit hole.
Something that would have been totally mentioned if this episode was made later is Toby Fox's interview of Kikiyama. I still can't believe that really happened.

The right face of the wall is focused on possible inspirations for Yume Nikki. It also features the website LaInvestigaciónYN which is a group dedicated to finding old versions of Yume Nikki. They've done an awesome job and it's hard to imagine a time in the community where ALL the old versions of Yume Nikki where lost media.

That pose is obviously a reference to the Pepe Silvia Meme from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. (But flipped as to not break 180-degree rule of filmmaking since the imaginary camera is on the right side of Cybermare.

Ok so you might be wondering... "Why does the windows popping up look so bad in this episode?"
The answer is because this is ALL recorded inside Manon's computer, the Windows XP virtual machine. You can see all the tabs are already open at the bottom and I'm using the keyboard to bring out the windows one by one. Sadly the result is PRETTY BAD and limiting so going forward, I animate all that through video editing.

This group of peeps were my top Patreons at the time. It was a way to thank them for supporting me. I didn't do that kind of thing again because this is confusing to literally everyone else wondering who are these random people.

This image is funny in retrospective because a year after the episode, Toby Fox published that interview with Kikiyama I mentioned earlier. Would be a lot easier for Toby to interview him if TOBY FOX AND KIKIYAMA ARE THE SAME PERSON. The plot tickens.................

The ending seem to have confused people so here's the Official explaination:
Cybermare is just shutting off her phone to spend time with Manon instead of looking at her phone like she was doing at the start of the episode.
That's all there is, people who were like "CYBERMARE IS ACTUALLY KIKIYAMA?" were way off track lol.
Also Cybermare's line "I know how to use RPGMaker" is a nod to her ARG games from before LOVEWEB. This is probably why FAKE FANS thought her mentioning she knows RPGMaker was a hint that she is secretly Kikiyama.

The episode's endscreen is all in daytime instead of nighttime is to imply them going to sleep after that busy night they just had.

And that's the end of the Yume Nikki Bonus Page! Not gonna lie, rewatching the episode made me cringe here and there with some of the 15.ai deliveries and weird timing between Manon's line when they're explaining things lol.
Next episode to cover is the Iceberg episode and I guarantee I will have a LOT less things to talk about, see ya then! And thanks for supporting my work!