An irreverent guide to the many boards of Futaba Channel

By Ordinary K !3GqYIJ3Obs


Futaba Channel was the imageboard site that started it all. It was founded on August 30, 2001 as an image-based counterpart to the text-only 2ch (http://www.2ch.net), during a time that 2ch was in serious danger of dying due to server overload (the brave denizens of the UNIX board saved the day for 2ch, but that's a story for another time and place). Futaba Channel is hosted at http://www.2chan.net, but it is never referred to as "2chan" in Japan, to avoid confusion with the similarly-named 2ch. It's always Futaba.

Although non-Japanese are allowed to view the boards of Futaba, they are not allowed to post. This is necessary to prevent crapflooding and DDoS attacks from foreigners, such as Koreans and weeaboos.

Life on Futaba is even more chaotic than its American counterparts, including 4chan and Idlechan. Although there are dozens of imageboards with specific categories, a large amount of the images and discussions on the boards are completely unrelated to the intended topic, and spammers frequently flood porn site addresses to all boards. Whether this is a result of moderator apathy or poor programming of the Futaba script is unknown to this writer. Anyway, there seems to be little or no outrage expressed by the users at large; on the contrary, they seem to take it in stride. This is something you would never experience on 4chan, where the Internet is Serious Business.

All boards on Futaba use the Futaba script, a bastard child of the GazouBBS script. It can be customized to allow text-only replies, or image replies with text. Most of the boards on Futaba only allow text replies, with the notable exception of the "month" Nijiura boards -- may, jun, and nov. I'll explain Nijiura in detail later.

THE BOARDS (from top to bottom)


ADMINISTRATION


Reserve Board: Called "junbi test" in Japanese, this appears to be a test board for the admins and mods. Text only.

CELL PHONES


Cell Phone Menu: A specialized menu for users of iMode cell phones in Japan.

COMIC


Comic: I'll be honest, I have no idea what's going on here. It's a series of frames from various H-manga by famous artists, but that's all I can figure out. Somebody explain, please!

IDLE TALK (These are all text boards)


Lounge: A general-discussion text board that seems to have a similar purpose as 2ch's board of the same name.

News Bulletins: Theoretically a board for posting national (Japanese) news stories as they happen, but in reality it's a place for spammers to crapflood links to websites.

International News: See "News Bulletins", but for international news (and crapflooding links).

Society: For posting discussions concerning modern Japanese society at large, and crapflooding links to the online pharmacies that make modern Japanese society the way it is.

Weather: How's the weather out there? And where's the gaijin porn at?

Wideshow: If you want to know where to buy Bassett Furniture online, look no further than this board that's supposed to be about variety shows.

SCRIPT


Distribution: Download a copy of the Futaba script here for your own use, misuse, and abuse. Includes instructions (in Japanese, of course) on how to set it up.

SQL: Shift-JIS art of lolis? In MY SQL discussion board? It's more likely than you think!

Oe-SQL: Oekaki of lolis in an SQL discussion board. Whether this is better or worse than the above board is subject to debate.

IMAGEBOARDS (This is why you're here. The imageboards do a little better at staying on-topic than the text boards, but they are still subject to crapflooding.)


News Desk: Discussion of news, with images (usually related).

3-D: Photographs, as opposed to drawings. Thus the name 3-D.

3-D Neta: Popular photoshops, memes, and jokes related to photographs.

Baseball: Baseball and its players, on and off the field.

Soccer: Just like Baseball, except it's soccer.

Soccer Flipside: The irreverent version of the Soccer board (as if the actual Soccer board were serious about discussing soccer).

Sports: Any sport that isn't baseball or soccer.

Mahjong: I'm sad. This board moves at a snail's pace.

Horses: Horse racing, equestrian events, what have you.

Cats: There are two cat boards, one on the may server, and one on the up server. In Japan, EVERY day is Caturday. The cat boards are unique on Futaba, because they almost always stay on-topic.

Animals: If it isn't a cat, it goes here. Some cats tend to wander in here anyway. Cats are like that.

Plantlife: It if grows out of the ground, you'll find it in this board.

Insects: Do you like bugs?

Cooking: If you're dying to see pictures of food, go here.

Sweets: Sugary junk-food goodness.

Ramen: Yes, cheap noodles merit their own imageboard.

Vehicles: The Japanese like to get into Evo vs. STi flamewars too!

Two-Wheeled Vehicles: Mostly motorcycles, but you'll occasionally see a bicycle.

Trains: This is one of the boards that gives Futaba its rich hearty flavor. Train culture is far stronger in Japan than many western countries.

Military: For a country that eschewed war in their post-WWII constitution, they sure like their toys that go boom.

2-D - General: Illustrations, as opposed to photographs. Screenshots of popular anime and scans from manga. Copyright violations ahoy!

2-D - Flipside: Nijiura. The original /b/. An anarchic free-for-all consisting of not one, but SIX unique imageboards: jun, nov, may, img, dat, and cgi. The chaotic nature of Nijiura gave birth to 4chan's /b/, which seems to focus less on anime/manga culture and more on just being ... well, a /b/tard.

Speedgrapher: This board is sponsored by Gonzo. In fact, Futaba has no problem pulling in advertising money, assuring its secure future for many years to come. Of course, the Speedgrapher board has absolutely nothing to do with Speedgrapher, and is simply treated as another /b/.

2-D Live Discussion: This is where users post comments on anime shows as they're airing on TV.

2-D Live Discussion Flipside: The above board, only less serious.

2-D Neta: Memes, memes, memes!

Games: One of the newest boards, this video game board is wildly popular.

Net Games: MMORPG fans rejoice!

Selfmade Artwork: Users contribute their drawings for comment and critique. Many users of Futaba are professional manga artists, so this board is definitely worth visiting.

Selfmade Artwork Flipside: This board turns Selfmade Artwork on its head. Amateur drawings are corrected to the extreme by talented artists who use red lines to correct the sometimes intentionally bad original art.

Yuri: The Marimite Board.

2-D Refugee Shelter: So named because this is where the former users of a now-dead moé imageboard now stay.

2-D Guro: Disgusting drawings.

3-D Guro: Disgusting photos.

Erotic Games: Did you ever want to fuck your twelve little sisters? Eroge makes that dream come alive!

Your PC Photos: Take a picture of your frankenstein monster of a peecee, and post it on the internet! Or just parts of your frankenstein monster of a peecee.

Tokusatsu (Sentai Shows): Guys in color-coded jumpsuits fight against guys in big rubber suits. This is as good as Japanese live-action gets.

Giant Robots: Your anime doesn't have a plot? Just throw in mecha!

Model Kits: Pictures of every type of model kit imaginable, from run-of-the-mill model cars to garage kits.

Model Kits Flipside: The flipside version caters more towards moé character models and Gunpla.

Dolls: Dollfie, Pullip, and other overpriced dolls.

3DCG: Three dimensional computer graphics. 'Nuff said.

Mathematics: The most unlikely topic for an imageboard ever. And it's popular!

Flash: Off-site links to flash files are posted here. Quite different from the 4chan board.

Wallpaper: Non-anime wallpaper.

2-D Wallpaper: Anime wallpaper.

Oekaki: Drawings with a mouse or graphic tablet, using an online drawing program to create a 300x300 image. Results range from horrible to absolutely gorgeous.

Rakugaki: Uses the same drawing program as the Oekaki board. I can't really tell the difference between this board and the Oekaki board, although rakugaki specifically refers to sketches, normally.

Rakugaki Flipside: Drawn porn! Drawn porn! The artists on this board are CRAZY talented.

TEXT BOARDS (this section is a lot shorter than it used to be, probably because of redundancy with 2ch)


Half-Width Characters: I don't know, lol! There are no half-width characters to be seen on this board, so what gives?

Offline Meetings: Where the Toshiaki go to arrange real-life meetings.

Shopping: ... shopping, perhaps?

Johnnys: Johnny's Entertainment is the all-male equivalent to the Hello!Project, boasting such talents as SMAP, TOKIO, Kinki Kids, Kattun, V6, Arashi, NEWS, Tackey and Tsubasa.

Character Neta: Shift-JIS art memes.

Anime: Discussion of anime, without those annoying frame-of-reference screenshots.

MISCELLANEOUS (these boards don't fit well into the above categories, apparently)


Netwatch: A text board focusing on news related to the internet and web culture.

News Images: An imageboard similar to the News Desk board, but focusing specifically in the images, rather than the story.


I hope you've enjoyed this tour of the many image and text boards of Futaba Channel.

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