Okay, so I was digging around the internet the other day, and I stumbled upon this thing called Newgrounds. I’d never heard of it before, but it turns out it’s been around forever, since like 1995 or something. This guy Tom Fulp started it, and it’s basically a place where anyone can upload their own animations and games and stuff.
I started poking around the site, just to see what it was all about. There’s a whole bunch of old-school internet cartoons on there.
Checked out some old cartoons
- There’s this one called Homestar Runner, which I vaguely remember from back in the day.
- And then there’s another one called The End of the World. It’s pretty out there.
- Oh, and I found this weird one called Salad Fingers. That one’s definitely not for everyone.
But what really caught my eye was this character called Mr. Chan. I guess he’s the dad of some other character named Maker in some series on the site. He’s got black hair, wears a blue shirt, black pants, and dark red shoes. Pretty standard lookin’ Asian cartoon character.
Then I went down a rabbit hole trying to figure out where this Mr. Chan character even came from. I didn’t find much, but I did learn that Japanese comics and animations have been super popular in Asia since the 80s. I guess that makes sense, considering the style of the character.
Funny thing
I also found some other “Chan” characters. Like, there’s this Internet Explorer Chan, which is supposed to be a personification of the old Internet Explorer browser. And get this – there’s even a Corona-chan, which is like an anime character based on the coronavirus. People on the internet come up with the craziest stuff, I swear.
Anyway, after looking at a bunch of stuff, I ended up playing some of the games on Newgrounds. There’s this one called Among Us that’s been pretty popular. You gotta find the alien impostor on a spaceship before they kill everyone. It’s actually pretty fun.
So yeah, that’s what I did. Discovered Newgrounds, got lost in a sea of old internet cartoons, learned a little about this Mr. Chan character, played some games, and basically wasted a whole afternoon. It was a good day. I just wanted to share with you, my friends.
