Image credit: CrAIyon:

This is the Anonymous Frog coming to you live from the 11th layer of Hell. I wanted this big ol' mega-analysis post / news announcement to coincide with the 22nd anniversary, but shit has gotten so out of hand, I can't leave this thing waiting. Thankfully it's the 10th in Australia, so that counts. Right? Anyway.

In case you're not under a rock, Neurotically Yours 'Bits' is a new series by Jonathan Ian Mathers, (aka @illwillpress).

It is part of the Neurotically Yours series that started in late 2002-early-2003. Comics were produced as early as September 10th 2001, which is why today is the 22nd anniversary.

These "Bits" episodes, which started coming to Newgrounds in early August, have been winning significant Daily Awards (ie. 1st and 2nd) at a rate faster than what previously came before. So far, 6 episodes have been released over the span of a month, and five have won awards.

To summarize, regular episodes of NY lasted up to a minute, sometimes longer if it's a rant, sometimes shorter. They featured limited animation and a single background / everyone on one shot. New episodes are made every 2 weeks.

Sometimes the background is a traced bitmap of a stock photo (ie. a crude bitmap to vector feature of Adobe Flash),

Pretty much the bare minimum for an animated series, some people still hate it, otherwise not too shabby.

Then there's the "Bits" series. On the other hand, the "Bits" features 7-15 seconds of animation, with an extra 15 seconds of animation-less outro tacked on. It uses an A.I generated background, visuals are even more simplified, new episodes are made every 1 week.

Ultimately, they are pumped out twice as fast, while applying way less than half of the work, or in other words, everything we, as critics of Newgrounds have suspected as being the worst part Neurotically Yours series, have been made even worse, which is why, after winning a high award like Daily 1st or 2nd, they quickly drop down to 3.5 or less. Last time I checked, "Car" dropped down to 2.61 and below. I've LITERALLY had SPAM movies ranked higher than this, and I don't have thousands of followers voting 5 on everything, so that's saying something!

NOTE: While writing this review, I originally caught it at 3.19. It kept dropping, so I kept screenshotting. This screenshot was taken Sep 9th 2023 ~5:32 AM AEST

EDIT: I later caught it at 1.99, but as of December 11th, it currently stands at 1.68/5. Movies are blammed at that stage, Jesus Christ that ain't good J.i.M!

I left two reviews on Apple and A.I. Selfie. I may have left more, but they're probably deleted by now. These reviews pretty much cover EVERYTHING I want to say about the entire series. Nothing more, nothing less.

I want to make this clear. Any form of actual harassment or abuse is not tolerated on Newgrounds! Even if you think it deserves your negative feedback, I am not here to enable your assholeishness. I'm just here to keep fans, critics, haters, and outsiders alike informed, so all I ask in return is to keep things civil. You got me!? Keep it clean!

If you want to keep posting 0 star reviews, you will need to be able to write a proper review and provide useful feedback, otherwise your review will be flagged as abusive and deleted by mods. Simply voting 0 on its own (without a review) is all you need to make a difference.

I know there are some people who have hated Foamy since the very beginning, because the cartoons followed a very barebones structure and a new episode was pumped out every 2 weeks non-stop, affirming your beliefs that the show is shit and the creator and that the creator's only going to make it shittier, but if you keep yelling like idiots, nobody's going to take you seriously! You should probably try to make some cartoons of your own. You might be able to beat Foamy one day. Given the above scores, it shouldn't be that hard.

Some people like a few of the older episodes, but dislike the Rants and Fanmail episodes and other older shit, because of their repetitive nature. I fall into this category, having first seen Foamy in late 2020 because of the magic inflating boobs episode, then over time I started watching old anti-Foamy movies like Zekey's -MASS-, RengadeClock's Foam Shopping Network, rtil's - The Nail -, and those are just the good ones, then all of a sudden, I'm now part of the new generation of Foamy critics because Foamy actually got worse this year.

Though I still somewhat tolerate a handful of modern non-Bits (ie. around 2021-2022, before the Bits).

Some people may have once been huge fans of Foamy, buying at least one piece of official merch, be it the Hot Topic shirts, the DVDs, etc, but have either outgrown him over time, or don't find the newer shit funny anymore, ie. the Simpsons / Family Guy decay, except it now applies to 1-2 minute long webisodes. And I don't blame you, it's effectively a soap opera at this rate. One day, you'll come back to see how far your Lord and Master has fallen, and I don't want to be the bearer of bad news any more than the other guy.

And some of you may have become fans BECAUSE of the newer stuff, like the Bits, or have continued to support him since the golden years, I unfortunately have some bad news. Your demographic, other people like you, is not as big as it used to be (as evident by the ~20-40K viewers on newer episodes on YouTube, compared to 500K-1M of older episodes), and old J.i.M is struggling to both keep you interested and entice new viewers to watch his ever-shrinking cartoons, which in turn causes you the audience to start dwindling in numbers.

There may be a point in time where the combined revenues of Patreon, Twitch, YT ad revenue, merch, music, etc. will not be able to support him full-time. Any additional money you keep paying him through these avenues is only going to be delaying the inevitable. Maybe it's in a few years, maybe it's 10 years from now, who knows? But it ain't getting bigger. Not unless there's a drastic change that actually works this time, which I really wish would be true.

And for those who have never heard of Foamy/illwillpress before seeing this post and/or the Bits entering the Daily Picks. I don't know if you exist, but just note that there are people here that care about the content that gets uploaded here to Newgrounds, and I hope you care too, or at least be able to respect the efforts of other creators that aren't as high.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Madness Day cartoon coming up in 2 weeks, so I won't be dicking around any longer until after it's finished.

Also, J.i.Mmy boy, @illwillpress, if you're reading this, and I heavily doubt you will, if you're not going to stop posting these "bits" to Newgrounds, the least you can do is opt out of awards so that nobody gets mad anymore

The feature was literally created in part due to the HD reuploads you were doing, so use it here!

PS: Happy 22nd birthday. I don't have time to make a parody animation, so here's an old one I made 2 years ago. I bet it still holds up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9d4KqPfuD9Y

PPS: Check out Purple-Joe and lemonteaflower's submissions and give them both a follow.

Do also check out MsidTheTired's movie. They would've gotten 5th had Foamy not been there.

PPPS: Remember iLLegal Immigrant Special?

The offensive single-screen that was blammed back to 2006 and described illegal immigrants as "burrito suckers"? The one that I was never able to find after so long? The one that offended Newgrounds so bad it ended up with a score of 1.44 before it got deleted after just 3 days online?

Turns out it was released on DVD and someone on YouTube was able to find that DVD and upload it to YouTube. I am very thankful to whoever unearthed this unholy monstrosity!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7tycyRMppA

PPPPS: Watch @BrandyBuizel's Summer Fest entry, regarding P-Bot, (or more specifically the shit that gets voted, you know!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCIS-sfsA6w

UPDATE (October 14th). It's been over a month and there's no new Foamy episodes here, leaving Car as his magnum opus. I think I killed him, which calls for a celebration!