Tanukism

Tanuki Series are deformed (chibi) horse girls created by Futaba Channel community, which already had a long history of discussing horse racing. There is an independent, enclosed culture at Futaba Channel in which I only had a surface level of understanding. Tanuki Series all started with a fanart of Symboli Rudolf named Shonbori Rudolf or downhearted/depressed Rudolf on Twitter appeared in May 2020. Because the chibi Rudolf looked somewhat like a Japanese racoon dog, so it’s nicknamed Tanuki. After that Tanuki went viral, most of the art were created by the Futaba Channel artists. Because they will disappear in 48 hours, it’s hard to collect them all unless you had been following Futaba for a while. There were also two main series drew in different styles: Jitabata (struggling) series and refined series. Jitabata series were done by various artists and refined series were done by only one person. There were also artists creating Tanuki characters from other franchises.