Sozai Museum

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Angel Sanctuary

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After months of searching I finally hit the jackpot and found Angel Sactuary. The source page of these cute grey rabbits that I am collecting has hereby been found and the creator can be given credit. Her name is Kaoru and she does not reveal too much about herself other than being from the Kanto region. Her page name is inspired by the similar named manga Angel Sanctuary. The website launched in 1998 and seems to have gone offline somewhere around 2004. Her diary mentions her being offline for almost a full year due to private circumstances in 2002. After this there seem to have been not many more updates to the site. What makes Angel Santuary stand out are, first and foremost, the rabbits. Simple, yet elegant and very cute. It's easy to understand their appeal for lots of personal website owners. They also come in lots of variations. There are also lines, backgrounds, buttons and corners making it possible to create a fully rabbit themed site. Kaoru has also created other characters in the same distinct cutesy style. The sad news is that Angel Sanctuary's GIF animations have not been very well preserved on the Internet Archive. I estimate that less than 10% of her works are accessible on her site. For this reasons I have decided to leave the rabbits GIF collection in this exhibition and I will continue looking for rabbit GIFS on the archived personal sites.

Self-portrait of Kaoru

Line-up of characters by Kaoru

Featured Works found from the archived site

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Studio Sudachi

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The works of Studio Sudachi have a strong emphasis on the human body and exercise. The creator describes herself as an amateur creator, but has been featured on several Japanese magazines and websites for her work back in the day. She has a great sense of timing which makes her animation feel alive and convincing. It is certainly worth further exploring the main website of Chakacha Kakando. The creator (actually there are supposedly two creators that go by the names of Chaka-Oh and Sudasudako, but I believe these to be two characters within the universe of this website by the same author) is a real netizen and her website has been running since 1997! Aside from animating she loves to cook and shares her bento recipes on her site. She's made pages about several of her hobbies and life experiences, like the time she broke her hand and had to cook with one hand. She shares recipes that can be easily done with only one usable hand. Her website feels so authentic, personal yet engaging. It's an early internet jewel worth exploring.

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Studio Sudachi has also made a potrait gif for her online friend and fellow material creator Haimi. Her creations are also worth checking out and can be found here

Katsu's GIF Anime

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Katsu's materials site specialises in animals, but really this creator can handle any category of animations. The quality of his content is very high and the volume of his work is impressive. Katsu has made several soothing landscape gifs and headers and has an eye for detail that is often seen among pixel art creators. The website began in 2004 and is still online today. It seems to have been making new works until as late as 2016, when according to Katsu's profile page he stopped creating new materials. What we can gather from the creators profile page is that their hobby is making model cars and airplanes, collecting ultraman figures, maintaining an aquarium and fishing. Katsu seems like the type who loves to dive deep into a new hobby once he starts and his large materials portfolio reflects this attitude.
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Akechoco

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Spend enough time on Gifcities and you're bound to meet this cute ant playing all sorts of instruments. The creator is a woman called Akemi and her sozai page went by the name of Akechoco. It started in 1997 and was online until around 2002. Akemi does not reveal much about herself, but from the little information on her site she comes across as a modest person. She downplays her work as being crude creations made by a housewife. Akemi's work goes far beyond the ants playing instruments. Her main work is actually her big collection of backgrounds and lines, which I think are brilliant in their simplicity. Akemi's style is somewhat introverted, with an excellent eye for detail, which is probably inherent to being a pixel artist.
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