Season 2
Featured on: The SiIvaGunner YTPMV Collab (Eek!).veg
Ripped by JoeBro
A pretty simple observation one can make about the SiIvaGunner YouTube channel, now ten years into its life, is that it’s lasted this long through the quality in its video output. That’s a kind of no-duh thing to conclude, right? There’s a team that makes good stuff, the stuff is liked, and so we get more of the stuff, content produced on a conveyor belt; even if not for the purposes of generating revenue, it has nevertheless generated “social” revenue in increased viewers and subscribers. But as mentioned in my last post (Unovan Sanctuary) and more, a huge motivator for me in running this blog has been in exploring, and relaying, what’s said between those lines, how all of the dominoes fall, rather than how the individual piece looks whilst standing.
You can absolutely gain enjoyment just in individual rips, in just watching stuff like CCC episodes or the King for a Day Tournament, or following events all in isolation from one another. Many of these have the benefit of working near flawlessly in isolation, like the immaculately executed Disappearance of Super Mario event in Season 5, which I raved about on Your Worst Nightmario. And hell, this piecemeal approach is (by its very nature) undoubtedly the most accessible, the easiest way one ever could engage with a channel so vast in size, so borderline impenetrable as SiIvaGunner. But it needs to be understood that all ten years of the channel’s life are built atop of one another, echoing the past, laying out groundwork for the future, every piece part of of a greater tapestry, a history that enriches all that surrounds it in its totality (The aforementioned Your Worst Nightmario post even details this!). Having, myself, had the opportunity to follow the channel since very near its 2016 inception, I’m fortunate enough to be able to trace this history across the years, and to in turn be consistently rewarded for my attentiveness. Sometimes those rewards come in the form of great emotional resonance, with fanservice-y events like what happened over on PRIMEneria, but far more frequently it occurs through just getting to notice and appreciate whenever some well-liked rip I'd remember morphs into a full-on cultural focal point of the channel.
There’s too many examples of this phenomena out there to even try to present concisely – the wiki has an entire page dedicated to “frequently-ripped tracks” which all underwent similar journeys – but I don’t think it’ll ever stop being endearing to see unfold in real time. A wonderful consequence of the channel’s collaboratively-run structure is that rips are just as likely to impress fellow team members as they are the audience, spurring on both parties to start creating tributes. Think, for instance, of the Mad Mew Mew rip phenomena, which began with naught but The Green Spy’s insane mind laid bare into just one rip on Mad Mew Mew Becoming Uncanny, only to spiral into many more tributes built with its same strucutre; all great SiIvaGunner touchstones like this, at one point, began with just a spark of creativity in one ripper’s mind. Hell, when this definition is applied more loosely, there are trends of this nature that generate more views, and are arguably more iconic to the channel than the examples I’m most fond of – Slider, Raft Ride, Friday Night Funkin’, et cetera. But, at least to me, the rips of the song White Wing Dynablade from Kirby Super Star stand out more than these many equivalents when they arrive, in large part due to just how quintessentially “SiIvaGunner” they feel, in spite of a comparative lack of frequency in appearances.
Before delving further into that last point, though, let’s first talk about what we’re actually dealing with. The high-BPM soundtrack of Kirby Super Star has long been iconic to online VGM-postings, long before even SiIvaGunner began, with songs like Gourmet Race playing part in some very early internet memes and tomfoolery. Both on and outside of SiIvaGunner, the soundtrack’s energetic feel has lent iself well to the age-old artform of YTPMVs, be it with Watching Spongebob and Kirby Super Star or Shaky Mountain, its evident that the game’s smattering of sounds and bouncy rhythms makes it the perfect canvas to paste one’s favorite internet memes onto in ways both creative and catchy. With the tradition being so well-honored, the craft so refined, Whitewing Dynablade hardly stands out just for being a YTPMV of Kirby Super Star – rather, it stood out for the direction it took within that classic framework. Like I’ve discussed on posts like 28 Saves Later, there was an odd feeling in the air of the channel in the months after the Season 1 finale. The channel’s sudden revival, meant to be momentary just to cap off 2016 with a bang, had now been extended well into the new year, and the excitement of the CCC was morphing together with a general sense of uncertainty, from both the audience and team, as to what the direction going forward would be. There wasn’t some great executive decision made as to what kind of rips would follow this shake-up in structure, but you began to slowly see rips cropping up that would subtly pay “tribute” to what we now would end up calling “Season 1” of SiIvaGunner, a clear line in the sand had been drawn between the Then and the Now. And sure, that particular feeling of nostalgia was something that was mainly focused on for Season 3, like with Trail on Powdery Snow Halation or CG Man HD Remastered Edition, but first sprung up as a sentiment right here in early 2017. And it was that burgeoning feeling, of a golden era now officially having passed, that Whitewing Dynablade was able to capture like lightning a bottle.
Lots of that celebratory feel, in fairness, comes just from JoeBro as a ripper flexing his well-trained muscle. The guy is classic-YTPMV down to the bone, and you can feel that in every beat’s usage of its chosen source. I love how the Megalovania part switches to a kazoo at almost the exact same pitch as to not be immediately noticeable, and I utterly ADORE how the measures of “Fu-Fu-Fu-Fuck”, followed by the slightly-shorter “Be-be-bees”, is then concluded by a quick “Fuck-Bees”, getting the entire two-word joke into the rip without feeling stretched. But these technical parts are not what make the rip special, since really this was all just part of JoeBro’s bread-and-butter skill. Rather, the magic lies within how the rip, in a matter of mere seconds, moves from Grand Dad, to Snow Halation, to Gangnam Style and The Nutshack, essentially giving you an intense, 40-secound crash-course tour of the channel’s history up to that point. And, like, even by May 2017, the audience listening had recognized that some of the jokes JoeBro was choosing to include, like Angry Joe and the Pokemon GO song, were already old-hat relics of “early” SiIvaGunner, not part of the classic cast of bangers anymore... so why were they here? Because they belonged in the rip just the same; because, just like the beloved bits they sat alongside, they were instrumental in getting the channel to where it was now. In getting to hear them all squeezed so tightly together, without any room to breathe between, it all felt like part of a cohesive whole.
While it’s not an “emotional” rip by any measure, no Outertale or The Paragoomba and the Wiggler, its holistic, celebratory nature gives it a similar vibe to something like Memey Hell or, more accurately, Bramble Blast Collab. Its tone is understated compared to those, and its not exactly a rip that was featured or revered notably upon its release, yet the concise way in which all the pieces gather at one point, to remind you of just how much you’d experienced in the past year, made it a difficult rip not to remember from those early parts of Season 2. As time passed therafter, then, it became all the more clear that I hadn't been the only one who’d seen the appeal in such a dense, concise celebration of channel history. Partway through Season 4 Episode 2, a rip with the title “White Wing Dynablade (Remastered)” was uploaded to the channel by fellow YTPMV-focused ripper Grambam36. This naming practice fell in line with what Season 3 had done before with rips like Fragile Snowman (Remastered), refining some early-channel jank with proper remastering of past work... yet in line with the creative energies of both Season 4 in general and Grambam36 himself, this supposed “remaster” – in truth called WWD 2020 – was a rugpull of a rip, an all-new threat operating within the same structure as what it pays tribute to. The rapid-fire jokes are still there, and it even opens with the very same start as before, Joel’s Grand Dad reaction, but it from there devolves into a celebration of Season 4 and beyond; Dat Boi, Big Chungus, and everyone’s favorite, D.VA Fart, shows up! And I don’t just say that with ironic inflection to make you cringe at its mention; I think this ability to create a super-condensed time capsule of the year, in turn almost inherently dating it for future references, through bits that would gradually be phased out entirely from the channel, is the precise magic spark that makes these rips work. Like so many parts of the original Whitewing Dynablade, WWD 2020 feels “dated” entirely on purpose.
I dedicate this post specifically to the original Whitewing Dynablade, but I really think all its variants are magic for that very same reason. Since WWD 2020, we also got one by Myeauxyoozi in White Wing Dynablade III, which served both as a tribute to the whole Season it was part of, but also as one to Myeauxyoozi himself, having made one hell of a legendary first-year run of contributions throughout Season 5 with rips like Among Drip Drop Galaxy. Season 7 saw a collaborative effort between athenamite, Ellie53 and DonnieTheGuy in White Wing Dynablade IV, which was then given a wonderful "fanmade" video version by fellow ripper DiamondBrickZ. With the video in particular, this fourth entry may very well be my favorite they’ve done, and I can feel myself withholding paragraphs upon paragraphs of affection already - yet it all ultimately circles back to the exact reason why these rips are so memorable to begin with. I love White Wing Dynablade IV, specifically, because its paying tribute to Season 6 and 7 of SiIvaGunner, which is probably still my absolutely favorite stretch of the channel’s whole life, the part during which I had the biggest emotional attachment to SiIvaGunner. As a result, hearing a high-octane little fanfare of all the sounds that defined those years is bound to get me feeling all warm in side.
Put on the page the way I do here, it might seem silly to ascribe terms like “emotional attachment” to 40-second videos with audio from IShowSpeed and Big Chungus. Yes, yes, I’ve been on here many many times before, arguing for the channel’s ability of actual emotional sincerity, the themes and narrative weight it holds in its more self-serious moments on The Life and Times of Wade L.D. and NIGHTMARESCAPE 〜Unrestrained HyperCam 2〜 (Final Boss Phase 2). But I believe Whitewing Dynablade, and specifically how its been able to live on for as long as it has in the channel, highlights the less evident form of emotional attachment us viewers are able to form with a channel like this. Nobody enforced, officially, that Whitewing Dynablade become the tentpole for a proper holiday for the channel, nor has the initiative to continue its legacy been led by any one ripper continuing to make these rips. Each one’s made by different people, and these continued tributes have never felt shackled by their mission to be as such, always releasing on different dates from the original, skipping 2022 and 2024 entirely, and most recently with White Wing Dynablade ~ 2025 Edition ~, we saw the nefarious and sinister Heboyi outright skip the whole joke of these rips entirely, all to pull off yet another layer of genuinely funny rug-pulling. But what all of these tributes have in common is that they came FROM somewhere, from having been affected by that original JoeBro rip in some way. A rip which, despite its seemingly basic fundamentals, came to resonate with enough of the channel’s audience to climb to a whole million views by Season 6. Somewhere along that rise, Grambam36 got the idea to iterate on it, and somewhere down further, I think other rippers realized just what a fun template it is for reliving the past year or two of high quality ripping.
Had I all the time, energy, and reader-retention in the world, I would’ve loved to delve into all the choices made in these derivatives, how they work to get their season’s jokes heard in inspired, funny ways and show the skills of their individual rippers. But, for once on this blog, I feel like doing so would ultimately be missing the forest for the trees. Part of the magic in these rips lie in the details, no doubt, and yet it is the shape of their whole, and all that surrounds them, that matters most. That a SiIvaGunner celebration like this even popped up to begin with, from the ruminations upon the first golden year of the channel’s life now being long gone, to other rippers echoing those same sentiments of nostalgia toward that original celebrations...which, in turn, created a soft-holiday upon the channel so loose as to not hold a day, creator, annual celebration or even necessity to adhere to the core structure… don't you agree that there's just something incredible in witnessing all of that unfold?
#project hail mary
