The Downfall of EnchantedMob and ZAMination

enchanted mob and zamination those are names the minecraft animation community is well accustomed to over the course of six years these two studios have become some of the biggest and most influential of their genre and while once they were both projects of passion the curse of time and fame as well as a series of controversies beginning in 2020 took their toll and eventually turned both of them into soulless husks of their former selves but how did all this happen how did sam and emob fall from grace that is what i'll be documenting in this video i think a lot of you watching this video must be familiar with examination and enchanted mob or as i like to call them for short xam and emob both are popular minecraft animation channels specializing in minecraft music videos and by music videos i mean music videos about five nights at freddy's yeah really anyway zam is run by twin brothers zachary and micah prusciato whereas emob is a bit different the face of emob is seth bolanger the creator and main animator during the early years of the channel however the actual manager of emob happens to be his brother zac belanger not to be confused with the other zack from zamination of course i think i'll just refer to them as zac b and zach p from now on now since xam and emob are both huge animation studios it goes without saying that they have animation teams consisting of many more than just the people in charge throughout 2019 and 2020 the zam brothers aka the preschiados also frequently animated for emob in addition to running their own channel thing is it seems as of recently zack b the guy who runs emob made a creative decision with approval of everyone involved to incorporate xaman to emob as a subsidiary studio in other words zam lost its independence both channels still exist obviously but for all intents and purposes they pretty much become one in the same which might have been the final nail in the coffin of the passion and integrity these studios once had i firmly believe that zam and emob have been going downhill since at least 2020 and probably a fair bit earlier at this point they've hit the mariana trench not in terms of user popularity because as you can see they're obviously still succeeding on that front no it's the heart of these two studios that's gone overboard more than anything else but to understand why we have to go back all the way to the beginning just over six years ago the year is 2015 the first age of youtube's domination by minecraft has been going on for quite a few years now and it's ever so slowly approaching its end we've already seen animation channels like element animation and slam a cow pop up and make their mark in this time period some of these animators would serve as inspirations for sam and emop both of which would spread up this year the zamination channel was created on march 30 2015 by the preschiatto brothers on the same day their first animation the enemy was uploaded nowadays it's not that great of course but i think for their first video it served its purpose and at the time it was at least decent it's also important to note that the creation of the channel this year was not the beginning of zach p and micah's animation careers according to zam's 1 million subscriber q a they were introduced to animation by their sister and originally specialized in making short animations and posting into platforms like instagram however once they shifted towards making longer animations they had to switch to youtube and establish a channel due to the length limits on instagram videos this is why most of zam's older videos are short and spontaneous as it would take a while for them to transition towards creating longer more professional animations this means they would be irrelevant for a little while but stay tuned because i'll get back to them in due time now you're probably wondering where emob was at this time seth belanger created the enchanted mob channel on february 26 2014. you'll notice this is significantly earlier than when zam was created but it doesn't really matter since emod was completely under the radar until 2015. similar to zam the earlier videos on emob were just seth's random animations until he uploaded his first music video survive the night which is animated to the fnaf song of the same name it's pretty obvious that survive the night is what first blew up the emob channel as it has a whopping 61 million views compared to the earlier videos almost all of which have used in the hundreds of thousands you may think that's still a lot and it is but it can be assumed that most of the views on these earlier videos were people watching years later after the channel became well known seth knew he had hit the popularity diamonds with survive the night and began working toward creating more music videos he struck again with just gold and then again with die in a fire both of these animations while not nearly rivaling survived the night still amassed millions upon millions of views as time went on seth continued working on more and more music videos knowing they were the heart of his channel this was an era where at least to my knowledge seth himself was in charge and zac b hadn't yet taken control of things these early animations were certainly flawed and they obviously don't look good compared to what the channel produces nowadays but even so they had a far greater advantage passion meanwhile the zam brothers were taking much more sweet time to figure out what they wanted to do as of 2016 they were still mostly doing short animations collab entries youtuber funny moments just anything that could suffice for them at the time it wouldn't be until 2018 when they would create their first music video well that's not quite true they did animate a music video called yandere in the title for minecraft youtuber fanxia in early 2016 but not only was it on his channel and not the zam channel it didn't really make enough fuse to warrant anymore for a while also thanks sia originally made the song as a criticism of the lack of integrity and clickbait in the minecraft community so i find it pretty ironic that zam animated it for him since at this point they've basically become the same thing he was criticizing in the first place now you have become the very thing you swore to destroy anyway what i'm saying here is that in the early years of sam and emob both were growing in amassing popularity mostly separate of each other as someone who's watched lots of older videos on both channels i personally think they were both great at this point in time there was clearly a lot of heart and passion put into these animations and it felt like both seth and the zam brothers were focused primarily on having a good time and making their fans happy but as you all surely know this sort of mindset isn't always permanent especially when you let fame and popularity get to your head before i get on to the next section there's one more thing i need to mention on june 2 2016 another minecraft animator arrived on the stage eckercoaster also known by his real name ethan eckercoaster would go on to be inspired by both sam and emob and create similar videos of his own at first his presence in the community wasn't very important but soon enough that would change i want you to remember ethan because he's the center point of the most integral part of this analysis by far anyhow moving on we're now getting around to 2017 and 2018 an era of which i consider to be the golden age of emob and zam seth's animations were mostly solid in 2016 but i think they started to get really good in 2017 his music videos would consistently rake in millions of views serving as a consistent source of popularity for the channel as mentioned previously zam would stick with standard animations up until 2018 when they would finally upload their first music video the foxy song afterward they would go on to produce plenty more i believe it was most likely late 2017 when seth and the zam brothers became well acquainted with each other november of that year saw the founding of animation sins a cinema sins inspired joint project between zam and emob originally animation sins was founded by these professional animators with the intent of offering constructive criticism towards others seems like a good thing on the surface but it didn't take long for the channel to devolve into the same unfair sarcastic ragging nonsense that cinemasins is notorious for these days i honestly never really liked animation sins and i've stood by the opinion for years that they've done considerably more harm than good to the people they've criticized keep all this in mind because believe me it's going to be important later 2017 and 2018 also saw the gradual rise of zack b seth's brother while seth was an animator at heart zach was much more of a businessman and as such he became the manager of emob while seth continued to take care of the animation front this in and of itself was perfectly fine but zack's influence would only continue to grow as time went on and as many people would discover later he was not exactly the type of person deserving of that much power at the time though things were still pretty good i actually had an insane xaman emob phase back in late 2019 so trust me when i say i've watched all their older quote unquote golden age animations seth's music videos were still clearly filled to the brim with passion and effort and the same held true for those produced by zam there were some i liked more than others but i pretty much liked all of them to some degree nonetheless there were problems with this content model especially for emob most of seth's music videos were based around whatever game franchise was popular at the time as such his animations were primarily based around fnaf with a couple about bendy and undertale mixed in just to vary it up a little there's obviously nothing wrong with that on the surface level but it does contribute to a problem i like to call the consistent content trap basically the consistent content trap is when you as a youtuber spend an extended period of time repeatedly pumping out the same type of video to such a degree that you've essentially made that type of video your main identity and your primary source of views this means that if you were to try to make something new and unique it would most likely underperform because your audience is only following you for that type of video you usually make not for your channel as a whole i've had to deal with that situation at least three or four times myself in the four years my current channel has existed so trust me i would know consider the following example saddist who i'm sure you've heard about at least once has made a huge name for herself because of her dream smp animatics each of which have raked in millions of views of course she has an incredible talent and deserves all the popularity and praise she gets regardless of how i feel about dream which is like a whole other can of worms but the issue is that if she were to diverge from those animatics and try something else if she even so much as made an animatic not about the dream smp i guarantee you it would be critically underviewed when compared to her animatics that are about the dream smp if you still don't understand what the consistent content trap is supposed to imply just look at songs of war which you have to be somewhat familiar with if you follow me as a creator songs of war performed horribly compared to most animations produced by bps and while there were many other factors at play discussed already by director david rb it wouldn't be so outrageous to assume that the underperformance of the series was in part due to its divergence from bbs's normal content so the reason i explained all this is because the consistent content trap to some degree applied to seth belanger as well sprinkled in the middle of his video game centric music videos was a lone animation not linked to fnaf bendy undertale or anything besides plain old minecraft this music video was fly again in my opinion fly again is genuinely flipping fantastic and by far my favorite music video by emob but the issue is because it wasn't linked to any game franchise emob's audience had become used to seeing it noticeably underperformed compared to the other music videos the one time seth tried to do something truly special and unique it didn't pay off even though it really should have as such i believe he may have noticed this and reasoned that his best course of action was to stick with the norm he'd established for the channel and that is exactly what he did even with these constraints however the channel was still going strong and made plenty of music videos worth watching to this day i still think the disconnected series was at least fairly good the same held true for zam who at this point were still new to making music videos anyway in 2019 however things began to change 2019 was when seth really started to lose control of things i can only assume zach b was at the absolute height of his power by this point since by now emog was a full-fledged studio hiring other animators to work on music videos originally these animators must have been under sef's guidance but that wouldn't last forever it was also this year when imob and zam became really intertwined with both zach p and micah becoming animators for emob in addition to running sam later in 2019 zam also began hiring animators of their own with just monika being the last video done entirely by zak and micah don't interpret any of this as me saying hiring animators is bad if you run a massive studio of course you should hire people to help you i would do the exact same thing if i was in their position but in this specific case it was a step towards the eventual corporatization of the studio and to make mathers worse there have been allegations presented by former emob animators that management was awful to them even threatening to fire their employees if they so much as demanded better pay or better treatment granted i don't know if this has been absolutely proven but yikes there's not really that much more to say about this segment of the video despite the gradual shift towards corporatization xam and imob were both still going strong and if you were to disregard the existence of animation sins they were most definitely a positive impact on the community at this point however 2019 was their last year in the clear 2020 was when everything would really begin falling apart it was the middle of 2020 the coveted pandemic and its consequences had by now ravaged the world but sam and emob were still pumping out videos just as per usual however not everyone was so fortunate you'll remember eckercoaster otherwise known as ethan the independent animator i mentioned way earlier his current situation was to say the least by no means ideal over the previous few years ethan had made plenty of animations of his own taking heavy inspiration from sam and emob as he saw them both as role models it's important to understand that he did not copy anyone being inspired by another creator does not mean you're stealing their content there's nothing wrong with using ideas from others to make something of your own i firmly believe ethan did nothing wrong but at that time many people did not share that opinion ethan was not seen in a positive light by the communities of zam and emob with many considering him a lesser copycat of both channels he was also viewed as toxic by some which is weird because as far as i know there was nothing toxic he ever did to add insult to injury his animations were harshly criticized by animation since the point where their own writers would eventually speak out against it it's undeniable that ethan's animations weren't perfect and had flaws but that didn't justify the borderline insults in the everything wrong with videos unfortunately all the hate from the community had a horrendous impact on ethan's mental health i'm obviously not going to elaborate on this specific point because it's personal and i have no right to but the basic information you need to know is that ethan was internally struggling and losing faith in his animations because people were constantly crapping on him every time he made one with no effort from sam or emob taken to stop them it got to the point where ethan would take breaks for months on end and it seemed like he was going to fizzle out completely until july 17 2020 honesty the unexpected happened although some were aware of the harassment even had been receiving it was previously thought that this was only the fault of toxic members of the community but that day the truth was revealed ethan uploaded the video with an attached document explaining everything and in doing so he revealed that the situation had been far worse than anyone could have imagined ethan's video contained a compilation of some of the most vile comments he'd received from toxic community members not only were these people insulting him in his animations they were making false accusations that he was the toxic one and an attention seeker despite the fact that neither of these claims had any merit there was one discord message talking about ethan that said and i quote the community is better off with him dead look i couldn't make this up if i tried this was beyond disgusting and that wasn't even the end of it the document attached to ethan's video went into detail on the role zam and emob themselves played in this situation not only did they turn a blind eye to the harassment ethan was receiving there were at least three people who were either actively contributing to the problem or refusing to even acknowledge it when specifically asked to by ethan these people were zach p one of the zam brothers seth the original creator of emob and worst of all zack b the current manager of emob as for micah the other sam brother there is still to this day no indication that he had anything to do with this so assuming he was in the dark he seems to be the only innocent one of the four and get this when i say zack b was the worst in this situation i really really mean that the way he treated ethan as established in this document was legitimately psychotic in just one instance he went as far as to manipulate blackmail and threaten ethan all because he rightfully pointed out that his outro had been stolen by emob in one of their music videos any reasonable human being would simply stop using that outro or at least have the decency to credit ethan for it but as you can probably conclude by this point zac b was not and is not reasonable nor is he a decent person by any means seth was nowhere near as bad as his brother in this situation but that's saying basically nothing when ethan contacted him asking for action to be taken against the toxicity in the emob community seth displayed a tremendous amount of apathy and completely dismissed the problem to this day i still find it hard to believe seth was unaware of just how bad the situation was so i don't think he had an excuse to completely ignore ethan's plea for help he displayed a similar level of apathy on the topic of the criticisms on ethan's videos by animation sins which we know were unfair and overly harsh because at least two of the writers who sympathize with ethan admitted that fact to him as for zach p aka zack from zam ethan never actually mentioned him in a document nor did he show any particular instance of zach p treating him badly however we still know he was involved somewhat because he admitted it himself after the situation came to light even though he completely backpedaled on it later again there is still nothing to suggest micah was a direct contributor to the problem and the same can be said for the rest of both studio's members but i wouldn't be surprised that there were a few more bad apples in the bunch who never really got called out to summarize what was established in ethan's document the harassment directed at him was not only disgusting it was also a consistent string of behavior from the community over the past couple of years that was both ignored and contributed to by both zam and emob this was all bad enough to outsiders looking in but if you were to think from the perspective of ethan himself it would be like being verbally abused and having your problems dismissed by the people you look up to the most the good news was that even had overcome his mental struggles and was determined to come back to youtube stronger than ever before but this also meant the tables had turned with the cat out of the bag zam and emob were about to face a massive storm it wasn't long before the comment section of zam's latest video their million subscriber q a was flooded by people demanding the studio to take accountability for what had happened to ethan this happened to emob as well but zam was targeted much more likely because those who read ethan's document confused the two zacks and wrongly assumed zac b's actions were those of zach p i was there when the situation was first blowing up and initially i defended zach p because i could distinguish the two and at that point there was nothing to suggest he was part of the problem however once the zam brothers noticed what was happening zach p was quick to address the situation in a pinned comment on the q a admitting he had a part to play in a mistreatment of ethan at the time i thought this apology should have gone in an actual video or channel announcement so more people would have seen it but it still seemed adequate enough and i respected zac p for owning up to his actions and promising never to repeat them until he deleted his apology i was notified of this recently by a friend of mine on twitter and i went to check to see if it was true and yeah sure enough the comment's gone the apology is completely gone and i know i can't really say for sure but i can assume that the reason why he deleted his apology was because he never actually cared in the first place and was only apologizing because he was called out but i guess in his defense at least he apologized in the first place unlike seth or the other zach it's been well over a year since this happened and i've still not heard a single indication that either of the belongings have done anything to make up for their actions if i'm wrong or if i miss something tell me but i genuinely doubt it and in zack b's case even if he did apologize i'm sorry wouldn't really cut it after the way he treated ethan i've heard people say this doesn't matter because all of it happened in the past because you know apparently 2019 is a long time ago according to someone's logic and just for the record someone who did something crappy a while ago should not be absolved at what they did just because they did it a while ago they should be absolved if they've genuinely grown as a person and made up for it which at the very least zach b certainly hasn't i guarantee you all that the internet would be a much better place if we all accepted a simple truth time does not heal wounds accountability heals wounds so anyhow you might be wondering what happened in the aftermath of this drama things ended well for ethan as a weight had been lifted off his chest and he was now back to making content he enjoyed so far it seems he's been doing great since and that makes me happy too as for zam and emob they mostly just brushed off the whole situation and kept pumping out music videos as per usual this is just a minor detail but around this point in time zam switched their animation software from blender to maya the one emob always used presumably so they could become more uniform along the way to the merger of the two studios meanwhile animation sins was completely abandoned not a single video was made after ethan had come forth for his document and their most recent video was uploaded three days prior so it can be reasonably assumed that emob and zam stop producing content on animation sins for fear of sparking more controversy now that ethan had exposed them for being unfair to his animations so far as i know this abandonment was never officially addressed by anyone involved with animation sins it was simply left as a relic of history and if you ask me thank god it was about time but if you think this was the end of things oh boy you could not be more wrong somehow zam and emob ended up screwing over the reputation even more don't come crying was a collab between zam and emob uploaded in very late 2020 that stands to this day as the last fanaf music video from either studio although it would still be followed up by non-fanaf related music videos like alex and the dragon and angry alex but the important thing to note about don't come crying is that it was the source of yet another emob controversy quite frankly this was what finally killed my last bit of faith in imob because well don't come crying is really bad i don't mean to suggest its animation is bad because obviously it's not just like every other xaman emob production it's fluid engaging and stylistic visually don't come crying is great but the issues i have with it are a whole different can of worms entirely you see don't come crying originally written and sung by tryhard ninja is a song about circus baby there's nothing wrong with that and clearly none of the blame can be put on tryhard for how zam and emob decided to adapt his song but the thing is she's portrayed as excessively sassy in the animation emphasis on the air quotes there for this music video they also decided to update her model to include noticeable breasts this would make sense if the same treatment was given to other female robots in the animation like ballora but it's not this inconsistency leads me to believe that the circus baby model was given breasts purely for the sake of sexualization especially because of how she's animated and portrayed in general i mean there's literally a butt shot and a scene of her bathing despite the fact that her mental age is probably around like 10 at most as can be assumed by how elizabeth afton is portrayed in fnaf circus baby is elizabeth as elizabeth sol occupies the robot so the fact that circus baby is a child character should not be up for debate therefore i find the way she was portrayed and don't come crying questionable at best and completely disgusting at worst as a matter of fact many people watching the animation felt the same when it came out and emob was criticized harshly due to being the ones in charge of the project of course dignified hero and moral champion zack b came to the defense of his studio trying to prove that no one had done anything wrong and as such he delivered the most flawless and irrefutable argument ever made i'm joking of course what you what how many drugs do you think zack b was on when he wrote this she was 14 in sister location and it's been four years since that game released so now she's 18. you need a minimum of like four brain cells to understand why this statement is idiotic what possessed this man to think that the release date of the game has any bearing on elizabeth's age i feel like matpat needs to come over to zach b's house and give him a lecture because sister location does not take place in 2016. in no way does the timeline in the lore correlate with the timeline of game releases fictional characters don't age with the passage of real life time genius she's still 14. hell she's probably even younger than that since she doesn't even have a confirmed age and zac b is just pulling us out of his sleeve his defenses are pretty much on the same level as well my version of the character is a different age and hold just as little merit so yeah this excuse was absolute trash and people didn't buy it it only added feel to the fire and basically proved that emob had intentionally sexualized circus baby on the assumption that was perfectly justified which it was not once zach b realized he'd effectively shot himself in the foot he tried to double back on his previous statements with a fake apology and reshaped the narrative to make it look like the studio had just made an honest mistake i'm really not sure why he didn't just say that in the first place but he clearly isn't the sharpest tool in the shed so go figure at the end of the day emob had at least to an extent sexualized an underage character in their minecraft animated music video which they must have known would have a viewer base consisting mostly of children i really shouldn't have to explain why this is a problem sam is less at fault but they were complicit and can still be blamed because they were involved in the project as well thankfully a lot of people seemed to share my opinion on the matter and condemned imob but ultimately beyond zac b's soulless twitter apology the studio did nothing to right their wrongs just like the last time it had gotten into a controversy and that was it the year is 2021 seven years since the creation of emob and six since the creation of zam both channels had a good run but after all the controversies of the previous year zack b's rise to power and the gradual corporatization of the studios this is when we finally see what were once animation channels filled with passion and heart degrade into the husks they are today ever since the release of don't come crying zam began to fill their second channel to the brim with in my opinion some of the laziest content possible said channel had once been home to behind the scenes videos and stuff like that which i actually found interesting but now it's just a billion copies of the same music video with slight variations cloned for the sake of reaching as much attention from the algorithm as possible i mean just take a look at this point it wouldn't even be hyperbole to say they might upload a video like insert animation here but we change the color of one pixel in one frame emob's second channel has more of that nonsense too albeit a lot less but hey at least these are just our second channels i'm sure they have their priorities straight on their main well crap basically all the context you need to know is that around the time emob incorporated zam both studios began to destroy away from music videos this year and began making minecraft and half animated series like fazbear and friends in circus baby's world i've watched the first two episodes of fazbear and friends and well it is serviceable entertainment for kids but it's not all that special it's impossible for me to know this for sure but it just feels like zeph and the zam brothers don't really care about putting passion into their work anymore they'll just pump out whatever keeps them relevant or gets them views and that's basically it it explains why the studios haven't bothered to do anything to make up for their mistakes because they have legitimately zero integrity left to spare according to omega-63 a friend of mine seth only ever does lighting these days as far as his contributions to emob productions go so yeah it's safe to say he's had a fall from grace i feel like i need to clarify something and no way am i saying zam and emob's animations look bad the animators working there are unbelievably talented and obviously dedicated to their jobs but here's the thing unlike with say black plasma studios the animators don't decide what to animate they're handed instructions by the higher ups and expected to follow through with them sure they do it well but as harsh as it may sound i just don't care the fact that xam and emub's animations are visually impressive is cool and all but that's not why i used to watch them the objective quality has no bearing on my enjoyment i watch minecraft animations because well they're fun just compare the current state of xamarin emob to the current state of bps you can criticize bps for using insufficient facial rigs or for not bending over backward to prevent so much as a single instance of clipping or foot sliding but in my opinion none of that matters when i watch bps animations i feel things i feel the passion and heart the animator put in i feel how much they cared about what they were making and it's not just bps i feel that with element animation with echo coaster with saddest and with so many others i used to feel the same way when watching animations by xamarin emob but not anymore i feel nothing watching their latest content if you enjoy current emob and zam that's fine don't let me dictate what you can and can't like but i really hope no one tries to sit me down and explain to me that stuff like this is the epitome of creativity because at that point you might as well go around crazing five-minute crafts i'm not trying to crap on anyone who works at these studios except zac b he can stub his toe every day of the week for all i care but this is just how it is sam and emob used to be something special but that era has come to pass and now it's as if they're just shells of their former selves and i feel like it's gonna stay that way for years to come if they even survive that long to begin with and there you have it everyone the downfall of enchanted mob examination i hope you enjoyed this analysis or at least found it interesting or useful in some way but if not well that's on me at the end of the day all i can say is this you either die a passion project or you live long enough to become a soulless business [Music] you

Channel: PosiHangsOut

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Length: 28min 0sec (1680 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 11 2021