Top Ten "Meet the Bronies" Videos... or "The Bronalysis/Team Fortress 2 Project"

If you’ve been paying attention to YouTube for the past few months, you’ll no doubt have noticed a little project involving some of your favorite (and otherwise) analysis bronies. For those of you out of the loop, here’s the short version: Several well-known brony YouTubers are collaborating on a project that acts as a crossover/parody of the popular Valve game Team Fortress 2, a cooperative/competitive first-person shooter that is marked by its colorful, quirky characters/classes (that’s a lot of slashes for one sentence).

To raise awareness for this project, each participant created a short video in the same vein as the game’s “Meet the Team” advertising videos, which introduce viewers to the personalities and specialties of each character in a humorous skit. In total, there are ten such videos
I’ve known that I would do a top 10 list for all these videos as soon as the last one came out, and now that it has, it’s time to count ‘em down.

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10. Meet the Gibbon:

This one just confused me. To be honest, I don’t watch a lot of Gibbontake’s content. In fact, the only way I figured out he was the Spy was because nopony else had that color of coat (what little could be seen under that mask). The Spy, like everyone else in the game, has a distinct style in terms of his personality and mannerisms, and I thought Gibbon’s video would reflect that.
Instead, we got an actual gibbon messing with a couple of tiger cubs while the Spy’s in-game dialogue played over it.

Okay, to the video’s credit, the editing of the knife following the gibbon’s hand movement is done pretty well. And it was very creative and resourceful of Gibbon to use documentary footage that would actually work well with this setup.

And I suppose you could make the argument that it plays with the audience’s expectations; those who’ve seen “Meet the Spy” likely thought it would be Gibbon’s unique take (heh, heh, get it?) on the same concept. The fact that it wasn’t is somewhat amusing.

But I personally don’t like having my expectations played with, at least not to this degree. There’s a certain appeal to this video, but its radical difference may cause some to question the direction it went in.

9. Meet DRWolf:

This is the video that started it all. If we didn’t know about this TF2 project before, we sure knew it now.

The Engineer is probably the most level-headed and calm character in the entire game, so it makes sense that DRWolf would take the role. The good doctor’s voice is as soft and nonthreatening as ever, perfectly matching the tone of the original video.

Unfortunately, in taking most of his queues from said video, it also shares its problem: being too boring. That’s not to say I wasn’t laughing at this, but most of the humor comes from the sounds off-screen. DRWolf only reacts once in the whole video (during the “My cabbages!” line from Avatar: The Last Airbender).

Still, it was a solid video on its own and gave us something to look forward to.

8. Meet Eliyora:

The Pyro is one of the more interesting and intimidating characters in Team Fortress. And Eliyora sure has the “intimidating” part down pat.

What’s most interesting here is that, in the original video, the Pyro was depicted as… “Mentally disturbed” would be the charitable way to describe it. Here, Eli is depicted as having some really frightening anger management issues (which actually works, given what I’ve seen of her persona), all while maintaining an otherwise calm demeanor. It's like if the Pyro was actually a sane person with a penchant for setting things on fire.

There’s not much else I can say, since the video is so short. I’ll just finish off by saying that even though we’re dealing with a difference Pyro here, the atmosphere set by one still fits the other quite well.

7. Meet the AnY:

Much like DRWolf’s video, this one takes the scenario from the original “Meet the Demoman” and changes it only in the sense that he’s being played by the AnY Pony. That’s not to say, however, that it changes little. In fact, compared to DRWolf, AnY actually has some lines that sound a bit more natural.

Except that last scene. That was just weird. I mean, was he so drunk that he started attacking his own team? If it was the BLU team, I’d understand, but that scene just left me confused.

Ah well. The rest of the video makes up for it.

6. Phantom Checks the Mail (aka Meet the Phantom Horn):

This is the trailer I almost missed. Partly because it was the last to be shown, and partly because it doesn’t look like a TF2 parody like most of the others.

But that’s not a bad thing. In fact, compared to Meet the Gibbon, this actually does the whole “fake out” concept better. Whereas Gibbon set itself up as an actual advertisement for the TF2 project, Phantom acts like a simple sketch until the stinger at the end. This makes it somewhat amusing in that, even though most of us know Phantom Horn is going to be the Soldier, we don’t pick up on it until the video says, “Phantom Horn’s going to be the Soldier!”

This is how one plays with expectations: by making you expect nothing.

5. Meet the Voice of Reason:

Meet the Sniper is my favorite of the original Meet the Team videos. There’s something amusing about the professional attitude he takes toward his job. It’s kinda no wonder that Voice of Reason was cast for this role. I especially like the potshots he takes at the reviewers he shoots in the last part of the video (especially Kimi Sparkle; that guy cannot resist a chance to take a shot at her [or anything Friendship is Witchcraft, really]).

However, much like DRWolf and AnY’s videos, this suffers from the same problem of being all but a direct retread of the original video. Not much has changed between that video and this one. On the plus side, though, no weird, head-scratching moments.

4. Meet the Ink Rose:

Seriously, if there was ever any proof that we should beware the nice ones, this is it. I watch this, and I get the feeling Ink Rose was channeling her inner Pinkamena for this one.

What makes this one stand out from (most of) the others is that it’s all hand drawn. Ink is known for her art skills, with some of her videos showing her making her drawings. A lot of her other videos, though, as you could likely tell, are headcanons. Although this video kinda gives a new meaning to the term.

All in all, this video is funny because it takes the Scout’s narcissism and pushy personality and applies it to a person often associated with emotion and near-cuteness. The juxtaposition is interesting… Kinda like a car crash; you’re disturbed, but you can’t tear yourself away.

3. Meet the Keyframe:

After seeing Voice of Reason playing the Sniper, how many of you were confused as to why Keyframe was playing the Sniper? I’m betting a lot of people felt that way when they first saw this, and I include myself among that number.

I case it wasn’t all that clear, this was more of a joke, a way to help promote the project. Keyframe has done some collab work in the past with both AnY and Silver Quill, so it’s easy to see why she’d do that.

To be honest, compared to the others, this video is pretty lackluster in terms of its editing. But the second half is where it truly shines. After you realize it’s a joke, everything just keeps getting funnier, especially Key’s interaction with AnY.

2. Meet the Silver Quill:

One thing you can always count on with Silver Quill: he knows how to make you laugh.

Like DRWolf, AnY, and Voice of Reason, this video all but copies the dialogue of the original “Meet the Heavy” video, but in a way that makes fun of the whole thing: not knowing the metric system, the cost of actually using the minigun, even the Heavy’s near trademark quote “Cry some more!” This video is probably the best example of derivative parody I’ve seen in a long time, making fun of what it needs to, but not appearing to be mean-spirited about it (*coughFriendshipisWitchcraftcough*).

Also, if you were wondering why he was running away from the Medic pony, well, that’s what our number one is for.

1. Meet the Firebrand:

This one is just brilliant. Whether you call him Firebrand, The Fiery Joker, or just joshscorcher, he still one thing: absolutely hilarious.

This video is genius on multiple levels. First off, while it may not be the “Meet the Medic” video we know, this video is mostly based on the original treatment (the first half, anyway; the latter half was pretty much all him). Second, that latter half is pretty much Josh at his finest: comedically psychopathic (no wonder they called on him for the Medic). I especially liked his anti-Sparity rant while he “operated” on Silver Quill, both because it was funny and I agree him (as an aside, the person he was ranting against was Tommy Oliver, aka BronyCurious).

From the fandom nod to the content itself, I consider this video just about perfect.

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The full project, TF2: Analysis Anarchy, will be released on Thanksgiving day, and I am so looking forward to it.