Merryweather brought webcomics back to life, then VTubing came along Supplied: MerryweatherLucius Merryweather has worn many hats. He\u2019s an author, webcomic creator, and now a VTuber. However everywhere he\u2019s gone, he\u2019s left a legacy of innovation in his wake, reviving and revitalizing online storytelling forever. If you\u2019re on the \u2018anime side\u2019 of Twitter, Merryweather will be a name you\u2019re probably familiar with. You might not follow him, but his comics are quoted by many on a daily basis. He probably get retweeted onto your feed, with each new drop cresting tens of thousands of likes. The biggest hits in the hundreds of thousands. His personal Twitter account, focusing on his VTubing more nowadays, has a following nearing 400,000. His brand account, Merryweather Media (in his name but certainly not solely his own), has more than a million. Iconic characters like Nintendo Switch-chan \u2014 an anime personification of the console \u2014 still deck the halls of conventions across the world. That\u2019s years on from her debut as just a \u2018meme character\u2019 in his broader creative universe. But the truth is Merry can\u2019t draw. He isn\u2019t the artist, but the writer (and in many cases the mind behind the short 4-koma, or four-panel, style comics his studio produces). That doesn\u2019t make his spirit any less creative. In fact, it made him more industrious with how he got into internet fandom, and then stardom, in the first place. When we spoke, he was walking around his hometown in Denmark. He was visiting for a couple of weeks while he awaited his visa to return to work in Japan. Nature was rustling in the background as he regaled stories of every aspect of his life. From the first words he said on that two-hour call it was evident he was born to be a storyteller. The biggest challenge was getting started in the first place. \u201cDenmark is a small country, there were only a few thousand visitors to these annual conventions, but it was the first time for me to really get into and experience anime in this way,\u201d he told Dexerto, recounting his first con experience back when he was 14. \u201cWhat I saw when I entered this anime convention was spectacular. There were a large number of people who liked exactly what I liked, who cosplayed characters I knew from anime, and there were events based on things I knew about. It was the first time I really related and felt a part of something in a larger way. \u201cI was standing there and I was feeling a part of it but I didn\u2019t know what to contribute. I\u2019m not a cosplayer, I\u2019m not an artist, I\u2019m not making anything. I\u2019m not a gamer. \u201cI thought to myself \u2018if I\u2019m to be here, I need to make some effort to be part of this environment.\u2019 It\u2019s a magical experience and I want to be part of it. I thought, what can I do? I can write.\u201d Writing is one thing, but people don\u2019t go to anime conventions to read light novels. In fact, light novels have fallen by the wayside in media since peak popularity in the late 2000s and early 2010s. He didn\u2019t have any money. Merry\u2019s parents paid for his bus ride there and back, and enough to get into the convention. That alone was a big ask. He didn\u2019t even know what a commission was at that time to get some art and bring his stories to life. But that didn\u2019t stop him from trying, walking around the artist alley and asking anyone from the 11 tables there to draw his ideas. \u201cI went up and asked [the first person] \u2018can you draw my manga? I\u2019ve written a story.\u2019 She said \u2018no, why would I do that,\u2019\u201d he scoffed. \u201cShe started explaining how she\u2019s been to Japan, pitched to Shonen Jump \u2014 she started telling me about her career, basically to say \u2018hey little teenage boy, f**k off.\u2019 \u201cI then took one step to the left and asked the guy next to her. His name was Joakim Waller and he is also a Swedish manga illustrator, part of the same studio. \u201cIt was a bit silly in hindsight, but he was too polite and perhaps too shy to say no. \u201cHis response was \u2018maybe someday.\u2019 That was good enough for me.\u201d It wasn\u2019t a perfect plan, but it set the wheels in motion for Merry. The rise of webcomics online Merry didn\u2019t realize it at the time, but he was trying to break out into the webcomics scene. Webcomics were massive in the days of the early internet. XKCD, Cyanide and Happiness, Ctrl+Alt+Del and many others had taken forums by storm, and set the bar for early meme culture. It wasn\u2019t seen as a serious pursuit though. At the time, artists like Waller were trying to get that lucrative manga publishing deal. Even if they weren\u2019t Japanese, there was still a growing demand for print manga. Webcomics, the \u201cnewspaper-style comics on the internet\u201d, was in a lull of popularity. Merry tried for months to get Waller on side though, pestering him with scripts. After nearly a year it paid off. He got Joakim onboard for a print deal in a Danish manga magazine called Comic Party. They were paying around $200 a chapter, or around 50 pages of work. The two got to work and had a polished story ready for release. Then, the volume before they were expected to publish, the magazine was liquidated. They ran out of money, and the work they did went down the drain \u2013 almost. Merry turned to a website called mangamagazine.net. Waller was burned out by the entire process and swore to never return to webcomics, but agreed to publish the work because there was nothing else to do with it. He uploaded it, bit by bit, garnering a small following in the process. When the content ran out, he had to find other ways to keep publishing. \u201cI would be able to save up enough money from my allowance to find a way to order a comic,\u201d he laughed. \u201cI remember my mom was very upset at me because she thought I was getting scammed. She saw on my account that I was sending money to various artists\u2026 she didn\u2019t know what I was getting out of it. \u201cMost people, if their 16-year-old son was sending hundreds of dollars to foreign countries, you\u2019d stop and think \u2018what\u2019s going on here?\u2019 I tried my best to explain it to her, she kind of struggled to understand how much they cost and why I\u2019d be spending money on that.\u201d This was a strategy Merry followed for years. He had his stories like The Steam Dragon Express, Tale of a Time Wizard, Crimson Gain, Magical Police Girl. Every six months he\u2019d order a batch of one-shots with his allowance and publish them slowly. But then he saw Lucky Star. The 4-koma format was all the rage. But beyond its punchiness, he saw it as a way to stretch out bang for his buck. This led to his first hit story called Magnolia Online, something he described as \u201cLucky Star meets Sword Art Online\u201d. He created it with Filipino artist Power-J. \u201cEverything you see me doing now \u2014 Internet Explorer-chan, Goth Girl and The Jock \u2014 it all stems from this one moment where I wanted to try and save money and get more frequent updates with Magnolia Online. \u201cBy switching to four-panel comics, it let me publish at an increased frequency, and it set the foundation for what I\u2019d later consider the thing that made our studio popular.\u201d From there it snowballed. Merry was able to earn a little bit of money through various deals with the 4-koma publishing. He also got a job as a telemarketer at a Danish phone company, and all of his disposable income went into making comics. He had earned enough that he moved to Japan on a working holiday visa for a short while, and it kept paying off. \u201cKnowing I wasn\u2019t going to earn as much money in Japan than Denmark, I prepared for it because I knew I wouldn\u2019t afford making comics to that level, but I still wanted to continue. \u201cWe started up a Patreon for The Crawling City [with artist Paroro]. I just wanted $400 a month. If I could get $400, I could do 4 panels a week, continue the comic, pay the artist and that was it. \u201cIt ended up being $1200 a month which was great because I could make even more comics.\u201d Evolving with the times Merry wasn\u2019t the only person doing 4-koma manga like this to share on various platforms, but he was the one who proved it could be successful. It was a calculated decision, even if there was a bit of luck involved too. People had gone from reading manga on their desktops to mobile. But there was an inherent problem with that. \u201cI don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve tried to read manga on your phone, but you need a very big phone for that to be a good experience. You need to zoom in on each panel, it\u2019s not fun. \u201cMy comics were able to be read on phone, they fit perfectly because they were vertical. My vertical comics were able to be enjoyed in a way that a lot of my colleagues\u2019 work weren\u2019t.\u201d While a lot of his contemporaries pushed forward with the full manga style, Merry\u2019s more accessible and digestible stories took off. Apps like Webtoon elevated the medium further, and with it, the industry had to evolve. The 4-koma style, or the infinite-scrolling manhwa (Korean manga) style is now the gold standard for webcomics and most digital manga. But it wasn\u2019t the formatting alone that made Merry a household name in the space. He found a way to keep up with his audience, tapping into meme culture with series like Internet Explorer-chan, a story illustrated by Princess Hinghoi which personified the clumsy web browser and its rivals. \u201cWhen we posted Internet Explorer-Chan, something kind of changed. [It] blew up to an immense degree. The first chapter got over 10,000 retweets, which was crazy at the time.\u201d \u201cInternet Explorer-chan was meant to be a one-off, an experiment. But it became so popular that we could not resist making it a full series.\u201d Meme comics became Merry\u2019s schtick for a while. Stick Bug-chan and Moth-chan were two such characters following in the same vein of taking absurdist youth humor, personifying the concepts into anime girls, and making even more memes out of it. Simply, it was called \u2018Meme Girls\u2018. The payoff in terms of engagement soon turned into the first bit of vitriol he faced online for his works, years into his career. The tides changed where the memes were too much and ended up dividing his audience. \u201cI remember my surprise when I was reading the quote retweets of our comics where there was a lot of vitriol all of a sudden. I tried to tackle this in a few different ways, but it\u2019s mostly gone away now. \u201cThey disappeared when we stopped focusing on memes and started on narrative comics again like Goth Girl and the Jock.\u201d He also found creative ways to keep pushing his work, using some of the industry\u2019s worst-kept secrets to boost his popularity (and notoriety). \u201cI had this philosophy \u2014 which I still have today \u2014 is you should post everywhere you can. Even if it\u2019s one person seeing it, that\u2019s an extra real human who can become part of the community. \u201cI was struggling to figure out where the piracy sites stole their comics from, but I found them and started posting them pretending they were Japanese comics, and all the piracy sites bots stole it. It gained us thousands of dedicated readers who still follow us to this day. \u201cI\u2019ve had some people discuss the ethics of that, and I thought about it a little bit, and I came to the conclusion I don\u2019t see an issue with it. We didn\u2019t condone piracy. \u201cWhat I did back then was a good thing because it converted a lot of people who were reading pirated manga into reading Webtoon and official webcomics. There was a whole world of legal manga that didn\u2019t have eight malware p*rn ads next to it that you could easily go and enjoy in convenience.\u201d Setting up Merryweather Media All these successes, and no shortage of stories, led Merry to create his own studio. Using artists he had worked with for years, he started Merryweather Media. He would be the CEO and lead writer, hiring writers on salary \u2014 not just contracts \u2014 to keep creating the comics that made them all famous. \u201cI have a lot of artists I work with and communicate with in their own unique ways. They\u2019re very unique people, it\u2019s a fun challenge, and we have a little family going on in the studio. We have about 12 full-time artists working with us, and they have their own quirks. I enjoy it a lot.\u201d This brings us back to the aforementioned Joakim Waller. After going his own way to try and make print manga a career, he has returned to work alongside Merry, 10 years later, on projects such as VShojo Mythos. \u201cHe was still trying to make comics\u2026 but he never got paid very well for it because print manga doesn\u2019t pay very well,\u201d Merry explained. \u201cI asked him what he was doing now, and he said he was working at a meat packing factory and getting paid pennies. \u201cI said I\u2019d double that and told him to come back to art full-time, do webcomics with me,\u201d he said, getting incensed at rehashing the details. \u201cHis art is worth so much. It was a crime against humanity when I heard his story. He even got a back problem from working there. It was awful.\u201d Merry is proud to pay his artists a salary. Gone are the days when he roamed Danish conventions and their artist alleys with not a penny to his name. He offers thousands of dollars a month, mostly to artists in South East Asia and other less-wealthy areas with nevertheless skilled creators, to draw his viral comics. He has secured some major brand deals. He has written stories for Discord and is one of Webtoon\u2019s most successful creators. VTubers can\u2019t get enough of his art, whether it be in the form of 4-koma manga or lore videos. It\u2019s not a mega profitable enterprise, but merch and other forms of monetization are keeping it afloat. And while it\u2019s hard to convince people to spend their $10 here instead of on a big-name subscription service, there\u2019s a dedicated audience who do. \u201cA lot of creative fields, they don\u2019t traditionally pay super well. It\u2019s hard to make money off these fields. \u201cPeople have to realize when you\u2019re in the entertainment business, you\u2019re competing with massive corporate giants. A lot of people spend their money on going to the movies, Netflix subscriptions, and places where you get the most bang for your buck. \u201cBeing an artist who draws funny stuff or makes meme comics, asking for $10 a month is a big ask. There are people willing to pay for it and people who do, and it\u2019s great there are those people who want to support artists. You can get a more unique experience. But we are definitely outgunned by big corporations, even in the anime field. \u201cA $10 a month Crunchyroll subscription is going to get you access to as many 20-minute anime episodes as you\u2019d want. If you\u2019re reading a comic from our studio, you get 10 panels per episode \u2014 and while I think we provide a good quality thing, it\u2019s definitely niche.\u201d VTubing and finding a different audience The transition from webcomics to VTubing was a pretty natural one to Merry. While he hasn\u2019t abandoned webcomics entirely \u2014 or even predominantly \u2014 the virtual content creation world has opened up previously unimaginable channels of expression. For once, he doesn\u2019t really get misconstrued as the artist behind his work. What he can create on stream is similar to the stories he weaves through his writing. The imagination shines, just in a different way. There are many familiar faces in the medium too. Many of the voice actors Merry has worked with over the years to narrate some of his works, like Jonah Scott, are now VTubers. Creators like Lost Pause and AkiDearest, who were popular in the same circles as Merry, brought awareness to the medium. \u201cIt has been the same ecosystem that has evolved throughout the years,\u201d he explained. \u201cPeople have come and gone. \u201cVTubing is a natural escalation I find. People are becoming anime characters \u2014 we\u2019ve talked about them long enough, now we\u2019re becoming them. \u201cThere\u2019s Takahata101 who used to be in Dragonball Z Abridged and now he is a VTuber himself. A lot of these people, characters, they reoccur and it\u2019s fun to see the evolution of everything. It makes me wonder what things will look like in 20-30 years if it\u2019s going to continue.\u201d He was an early viewer of Kizuna AI, and wanted to get on the train early to launch an English VTuber. But there were limited resources at the time. It wasn\u2019t until Project Melody that he felt inspired to try again. \u201cShe was making headlines all over the place and caused the whole VTubing revival in the west,\u201d he said. \u201cShe got pushed a lot in the mainstream media, and then a lot of other VTubers came out of the woodwork like Zentreya, Ironmouse, and stuff. The whole VShojo crew popped up around then.\u201d He had an actor and everything lined up for the first VTuber project he tried before that fell apart. For this second time around, close friend Lumi was the catalyst for it all \u2014 except this time, he would become the streamer. \u201cI remember she was like \u2018we could try that.\u2019 I needed a girl who had acting experience to be a VTuber, and then we were able to get it started. \u201cOriginally I was just Lumi\u2019s mod, watching and giving advice behind the scenes, and then she was able to take over on her own, we switched over to Twitch, and then I also became a VTuber. \u201cI was texting a Japanese artist and asked about getting an illustration for Lumi. They gave me the prices for their Live2D models, and so while they misunderstood me, I took it as an opportunity to get my own Live2D. That\u2019s how I became Merry the Dog.\u201d VTubing for Merry isn\u2019t just a different way of streaming. It\u2019s an entirely different form of content creation from webcomics. It serves a different purpose, and taps into an audience he previously couldn\u2019t reach. \u201cOur main problem as a studio is everything we do is hand drawn, stuff we have to produce. There\u2019s no way for us to reasonably mass-produce content. VTubing, as long as you have the model ready and done, you can mass-produce content five hours a day. \u201cIt gives people a lot to chew into, and it builds a very strong community which we were never capable of doing with our comics \u2014 at least to that level. We\u2019ve had people who are dedicated readers and fans, but it\u2019s been a secondary thing. \u201cWe have people\u2019s part-time attention [with comics]. With VTubing, there\u2019s the potential of having their full-time attention, and that\u2019s what I consider valuable.\u201d Bringing storytelling into VTubing His storytelling ability isn\u2019t just limited to the webcomic form. VTubers, with their plethora of own stories, invites Merry to put his own creative touch on his things. While lore\u2019s place in VTubing is hotly disputed, for him it\u2019s just \u201cfun\u201d. He and his studio have worked on major videos for the whole of VShojo, NIJISANJI\u2019s XSOLEIL branch, and Hololive\u2019s Mori Calliope. He\u2019s currently republishing a webcomic series with NIJISANJI star Vox Akuma. Various indie talents have procured his services too, and fans can\u2019t get enough. \u201cIt gives people an opportunity to see these characters they might have grown attached to in situations that would be difficult to put in a stream. \u201cSomething like VShojo Mythos is like you\u2019ve got the actors, you watch their show, now watch a movie where they play their characters with a fully-fleshed narrative. Ironmouse in a stream, it would be very difficult to visit hell and engage with all the different characters and have full-scale battles. \u201cI know some VTubers play around with the theatrical stuff, but you can\u2019t do it fully-fleshed. Lore videos and stories based on VTubers bring the opportunity to do things like that, that you cannot do in a stream environment.\u201d VShojo Mythos is probably the most expansive of the projects. It\u2019s Marvel Cinematic Universe meets VTubing. Nearly every single member of the agency has received a video at some point in time. Some, like Ironmouse, have gotten multiple. \u201cIt started out being Nyanners and Ironmouse getting lore videos. They both requested me for them because Nyanners knew I did eldritch horror and Ironmouse had seen Mori Calliope do a short video series with us. \u201cI got a message two weeks before her debut asking to do a lore video for her. That was hardly any time, so I was like all hands on deck, we\u2019re going to do an 18-minute-long lore video. There was some apprehension at the beginning about taking the story too seriously, but I think everyone really liked the video.\u201d Thanks to Mythos, Merry became a household name in the VTubing realm, and he felt like a Hollywood star. \u201cIt was very Hollywood vibes,\u201d he laughed. \u201cI got to go to Anime Expo, be behind the scenes during Kson\u2019s reveal, me and Lumi. Overall I just enjoyed my experience with them. \u201cI think a lot of the lore climaxed when Melody got her video, because that gave mainstage to a lot of different members. It was 30 minutes long, and it was a big deal. I lost money on that one. They gave me the same budget on each of them, but we often go above and beyond. \u201cWith a lot of the members leaving, it was a privilege to be their writer, and I think we managed to do something pretty great and unique, and it\u2019s something people are going to remember forever.\u201d Merry\u2019s VTubing journey, much like his webcomics start, set the standard. Now lore videos are a frequent addition to any budding streamer\u2019s debut. They might not have the same production quality as one of his own epics, but more are tapping into their own creativity and telling stories their own way. For him, he now enjoys a new way to express himself online. No longer is he the misunderstood author of some corny meme comics. People get to watch him play games, or hear his stories for hours \u2014 much like he did with me walking around aimlessly in Denmark. It keeps him on his toes, and keeps his mind fresh. \u201cI don\u2019t like only doing one thing at a time because it burns me out. That\u2019s why I like doing multiple comics. \u201cVTubing is the same. It\u2019s an opportunity to do something that isn\u2019t just writing comics and I value it greatly because of that. It gives an opportunity for people to get to know me, not just through what I write.\u201d As our conversation wound down, I asked him how he had time for everything. Between being a CEO, an acclaimed writer, and streaming five hours a day, there\u2019s not a lot of spare time. But his creativity keeps him going, it\u2019s a machine that feeds itself. But after sharing his stories through this fantasy lens, and even dolling up online as a virtual character, VTubing has let him showcase a bit of his authentic self. \u201cOn the webcomic side, people have a lot of ideas on who I am. I remember there were people online who said \u2018I thought he was a neckbeard.\u2019 \u201cI\u2019m kind of a weird person though. I don\u2019t fall under any particular stereotype. I\u2019m from Denmark, my mum is a Turkish immigrant, my dad was a taxi driver. \u201cSome people think I come from a really rich family and that\u2019s how I was able to afford making a webcomic studio. No, not really. I\u2019m just a weird European.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Merryweather brought webcomics back to life, then VTubing came along Supplied: MerryweatherLucius Merryweather has worn many hats. He\u2019s an author, webcomic creator, and now a VTuber. However everywhere he\u2019s gone, he\u2019s left a legacy of innovation in his wake, reviving and revitalizing online storytelling forever. If you\u2019re on the \u2018anime side\u2019 of Twitter, Merryweather will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}