A Midsummer Night's Lewd Dream (Japanese: 真夏の夜の淫夢, Manatsu no Yoru no Inmu) is the gay porn video released in Japan in 2001.
About
The video came to the attention of the internet, following a scandal in 2002 when it was discovered Japanese baseball player Kazuhito Tadano played one of the characters. Since then, a huge trend has been risen on some popular Japanese websites like 2Channel (antecedents of 5Ch) and Nico Nico Douga (Nicovideo).
Currently “Manatsu No Yo No Inmu” (or in short Inmu) is used as an umbrella term to describe the online video editing subculture on the web. Even some similarities can be noted with other online gay cults or memes in Japan (such as Yaranaika? and Billy Herrington/Wrestling Series), this online phenomena is considered more notorious than others.
Origin
This video "Babylon Stage34 真夏の夜の淫夢 〜the IMP〜" includes 4 episodes. The most popular episode is the first one.
Plot Summary
Three young athletes, Miura, Nakata and Kohai, cause a car accident by rear-ending a car carrying a Yakuza (a Japanese gang) named Tanioka. Nakata, driving the car, has his driver's license taken away, and the three young men are taken to Tanioka's office. To get back it from him, Miura is coerced into sadistic homosexual sex by Tanioka to atone. They later go on the offensive, when Nakata steals a gun from Tanioka. Miura rapes Tanioka aggressively, and, after finishing, Nakata kills Tanioka by shooting him in the anus.
The film is characterized by low quality acting and cinematography.
The Incident
Soon after this video was released, some viewers claimed Miura in this video resembled a famous college baseball player at that time. However, this rumor wasn't spread widely until a gossip paper also reported it in 2001.
This topic finally made the headlines in the middle of 2002. Many Japanese gossip magazines and papers began reporting that a man who closely resembled a candidate of that year's professional baseball draft appeared in a gay porn video with younger players on the same team. Though the reports kept his name a secret, they did so in vain, as it was commonly known that the player was Tadano. The manager of the baseball team at the university where he had gone made a statement saying that there were players on his team who had been in the video. As a result of this, he was unable to hear any offers from other Japanese professional baseball teams, out of fear of scandal.
The baseball player, Kazuhito Tadano, went to the US and managed to continue his career by passing a tryout for Cleveland Indians. In January 2004, he left the comment about the incident to American media for the first time, saying "It was a one-time incident… I'm not gay."
This video itself went out of print. Several episodes were compiled to DVD in later years, minus the first episode.
Spread
2Channel users reacted to this incident in by sharing the footage and thoroughly doxing the actor's personal information. Their research brought the video to many Japanese internet user's attention and surfaced another video starring Tadano and his teammates. This caused people to doubt his statement saying he was straight.
At the same time, the videos' poor acting, cheesy one-liners and nonsensical storylines made it the target of jokes on 2Channel. Many of them became jargon terms/inside jokes among some 2Channel users and many dirty Shift-JIS Arts for them were made. Those began being used in threads for reports about Tadano in MLB in /mnewsplus/ (Entertainment & Sports News) board in 2Channel since he advanced to the major in 2004 and were spread to other threads gradually by trolls. Those jokes, jargons and Shift-JIS arts began being collected to the threads in /gline/ (guide line) board in 2005, and were listed up to the video series' Wiki page.
On Nico Nico Douga
Since Nico Nico Douga was launched in 2007, many of the videos and jokes have been uploaded to there, and some of them have been reused in MAD videos (collage videos).Many characters have their own entry in Nico Nico Pedia, and the threads for their activity on NND have been also launched in the /streaming/ (video sharing service) board in 2Channel.
Inmu videos began to change since the inmufags discovered the fanmade of Marisa and Alice's cookie kiss,
this change consisted in making more videos with the characters, backgrounds, text boxes and the main bgm of that touhou fandmade, and put the characters of the inmu family in those videos. With different silly stories to satirize more the actors.
The supporters are called Inmuchu (淫夢厨, lit. Inmufag) or Homogaki (ホモガキ, faggot kids) in NND and are hated among many users because they often troll video comments with Midsummer Night's Lewd Dream jokes.
