BARTKIRA

Let's do something silly today and talk a little bit about The Simpsons. This animated show has been going on for 30 years now, despite the fact that the viewer ratings are at an all-time low each and every year for the past decade.

_{source: YouTube}

Why is the series still running then? I saw this video, a couple of days ago, that explained a lot; it's the first video linked in this post. In its 30th season the average viewer-number is, again, at an all-time low of 4 million, and it's been on a steady decline since season 12, with the exception of one small spike between seasons 20 and 21 (source: Statista). There are two main reasons why this ever less popular show still maintains, and they both start with an "M": Money and Memes.

Let's start with the obvious, and follow the money; things that don't seem right are almost always explained by asking the money-question. Why is there always war when no people on earth think war is beneficial to anyone or for anything? We know the answer: someone, somewhere, somehow makes a lot of money. Why is The Simpsons still running when viewership is so low? Someone, somewhere, somehow makes a lot of money with The Simpsons brand. In 2012 the mobile game The Simpsons: Tapped Out was released. It's the typical affair of building a city, a miniature Springfield, and populating it with miniature Springfielders.

As any self-respecting "freemium" game (sometimes referred to as "free to play, pay to win") would do, it's low on game-play and high on in-game purchases and gambling. Even the animated series itself made fun of the exploitative character of this game in season 25 in episode "Labor Pains", when Homer opens the game on his phone and is automatically charged 300 Dollar. I've never played any such game myself, and I probably never will, so this is all I know about "Tapped Out", but in the Wikipedia article we can read that it was developed by, among others, Electronic Arts, who estimates it generated 130 million dollars since its release in 2012. And that's just this game; there's also a myriad of toys, cups, towels and other Simpsons merchandise. This family has become a reliable cash-generator for many.

_{The Bizarre Modern Reality of The Simpsons}

The term meme was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It is like a gene, something that is transferred from person to person and from generation to generation, only culturally instead of biologically; memes are ideas, behaviors, practices and symbols that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, paintings, music and so on. At least that's what it meant before the internet took possession of the term. And this is the second reason why The Simpsons are still engraved in our collective consciousness; rarely has there been a more "memed" subject on the internet than this cartoon-family.

As a meme, The Simpsons are everywhere. Much like the TV show itself, Simpson-memes are used to reflect society's current concerns, news, hopes and fears, most often with a comical undertone. But that's just the beginning of it: you can find Instagram channels dedicated to showing the yellow family in one specific way, like scenic_simpsons or psychedelic.simpsons, fan-remakes centered around one character or even one specific episode, like Steamed Ham, and then there's the most wonderful Simpsons-based creation of them all, Bartkira...

When I saw this, my mind was a little bit blown, I must admit :-) If you are an Anime fan like me, if you adore Akira as much as I do, and even if you just have seen this anime once and liked it even slightly, please watch the animated trailer linked below. This is done so splendidly magnificently well; I've seen Akira dozens of times, and what these animators have done to place the yellow Springfielders in the apocalyptic universe of Kaneda and Tetsuo... is breathtaking and funny in some surreal way that can't be described in any satisfactory manner. Neo-Tokyo is now Neo-Springfield, and that's just where this delightful craziness starts... Just watch it. This trailer is not a trailer for a movie; the creators behind BARTKIRA.com have actually recreated the full 2000 page manga (comic book). And the best thing is that it was done for the love of both The Simpsons and Akira, and it shows. And it's free!
BARTKIRA

_{Bartkira the Animated Trailer}

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