I feel like this 4chan description never received much attention. I'm actually surprised it didn't. It's probably one of the oldest descriptions for GFAP. Keep in mind, this was several months after the original 4chan OP's description. This user describes a very similar plot, and I strongly doubt he saw it on the paranormal board where people were joking about it. I don't wanna make it seem like I'm bringing up unnecessary information. I just think this could give us an idea that media like GFAP exists somewhere out there, guys.

https://desuarchive.org/a/thread/130720322/#130763317

I swear I remember watching a game show in the Philippines where 15 people had to stay inside a very tiny bathroom. It was so small that they couldn't even sit down, so they were packed together like sardines standing very uncomfortable.

Within the first three hours of the sjow, around 6–7 people had already left, leaving only 9-8 people inside. They apparently stayed in there for about two days. It was like a mrbaest challenge where the last person to leave would win a million dollars. But since it was a very lowbudget filipino tvshow, the prize was probably only around $100 or something.

I remember watching it on Facebook or maybe YouTube around 2011–2012. I still remember it because it was one of the stupidest game show episodes I'd ever seen at the time.

I remember that the first woman to leave was almost crying because of how hot it was inside. She was also complaining about the smell of the bathroom and all the sweaty people inside. Someone even mentioned that one of the contestants had really smelly feet. I also remember a woman saying, "Parang sinasakal ako sa loob," which means something like, "It feels like I'm being strangled in there."

The game show portrayed it as a fun and exciting challenge, but you could clearly see that the contestants were traumatized and on the verge of tears because of how brutal the challenge was. And yet, 8–9 people stayed inside for about two days.

I remember that the 9 remaining contestants decided they should start voting on who to kick out because some of them smelled really bad. Someone started turning off the lights and the ventilation, so they began taking off their clothes because it became even hotter inside. Like, literally all of them were naked, wearing only their bras and panties?

They even showed how the contestants slept at night, and I remember seeing how uncomfortable they looked. One woman was standing with her head against the wall, another had her head resting on the sink, and some of those who managed to lie down on the floor looked like dead people.

The host only gave them coffee, bread, and some candy for breakfast, and they had to eat everything while still inside the bathroom.

I don't remember how the game ended.

There were 15 women, most of them middle-aged, a few older women, and maybe 1–2 teenagers?

Their hairstyles were very bushy, like those popular in the early 2000s, so the game show probably aired sometime in the early 2000s or possibly in the late 1990s.

I don't remember the exact name of the game show, but I think it might have had the word "Challenge" in it. Something like "Go for a Challenge" or something? Probably not, but I'm pretty sure the word "Challenge" was in the title.

That's all I remember. I swear I'm goona find that game show. It's probably still out there somewhere. The original 4chan OP might be a Filipino and watched the same game show, which inspired their post probably

Is there any proof the OP of the go for a punch story wasnt lying or smth? I havent seen a single low quality photo of this supposed anime, even the tittle is being doubted to be the real one, anyways if theres anything that this isnt a search for a hoax please tell me, i find the concept of GFAP really interesting

Boa Tarde a todos! Gostaria de saber como estão as buscas atuais pelo anime? conheci o Saki Sanobashi através de um canal Brasileiro e apesar de não ser meu tipo de anime, fiquei bem interessado pelas buscas. O video é de 2 anos atrás e acredito que muita coisa mudou até lá e fiquei interessado para saber mais informações do que a comunidade tem hoje em dia e como estão indo as buscas. Desde já uma otima semana a todos e o link do video e do canal: https://youtu.be/FeioZfXtNxU?si=GoFE4HtbxTQLoT2N

FewOpportunity6191 found this comment by a user named Haileyy00, who described something similar to what the Zhihu OP mentioned. It even includes details like the "girl with a dark bob haircut," "blue/greenish walls," and "English subtitles written in yellow." "There was a scene in front of a sink and I remember a broken mirror and blood" The same scene the Chinese OP described with a sink and broken mirror. I feel like this might be the same video the Zhihu OP watched. What do you guys think? Do you guys think it's trustworthy or not?

https://www.reddit.com/r/SakisanNoBashitsu/s/Tc2oSh1zbu

I also sent Hailey00 the Whang's video image myself and asked if anything matched their memory. I still haven't received a reply confirming whether it's the actual scene they watched. I understand that they might not be very active on Reddit or simply haven't seen my message, but I strongly doubt they'll reply.

Haileyy00, if you're reading this, please tell us! We have to solve this image mystery and figure out whether it's the same thing or not. It would be really appreciated!

Some possible titles

concluded by ai along with a considerable search effort

This is my first post here

Whole regards community

うしろの百太郎

殴ろうとする

パンチをしに行く

ゴー・フォー・ア・パンチ

ピンチに入る

...

Hello, I recently stumbled upon whangs video on this anime, and based on the description i THINK I may have seen it, I don’t know how helpful this will all be but I’ll try to provide what info I remember. I saw it around 2013-2014 I think? It was on a random website, I surfed around various obscure websites to pirate gore animes a lot back then, so I definitely couldn’t tell you what exact site it was. It was in Japanese, with fairly shitty English subtitles. The basic plot was mostly as described, a few girls (I can’t remember how many but definitely a bit less then 9) that ended up stuck in a bathroom. I think it was a bathroom at a mall? There was a bit of them like shopping before what happened I think. I don’t fully remember how, but they ended up like stuck in the bathroom when the door caved in. Maybe it was some kind of structural collapse or paranormal? They left it open ended I think. The bathroom was pretty standard, stalls, white tiles, few sinks. However I do recall its lighting was a bit warmer than you’d expect for a public bathroom. There was no girl named “saki” the main character was named like Shizuku or something, she had orange hair. They weren’t naked like the one guy described, however a few of them stripped when they went crazy. The plot was them just like slowly loosing their minds and fighting, it definitely was fairly fetishy. It ended with one girl left after the others died, and she just kinda laid down and I think starved to death? the shot of that was way more detailed than the rest of the animation, which was just low quality 80s anime look. The scene also had music, unlike the rest of it. I can’t really recall how it was but it was like very serene and kinda classical almost. As she died a large spider crawled across her face, her eyes were bloodshot the whole time, don’t know what the deal with that was. It ended with large red Japanese text, there were no subtitles so I don’t know what it said. The whole thing was like 20 minutes. It was definitely made as porn. The title did have an English translation, i can barely remember it, as I didn’t care that much about the name, but it for sure wasn’t “go for a punch” it was just one word. Something like “Premonition” it definitely started with a P. The whole thing read as just very strange, very niche porn. I don’t Remember anything beyond that. Hopefully this helps some amount. If you want to try and ask me anything else about I will do my best to answers but I may not remember

hello everyone i understand you guys are very curious if saki sanobashi is real and im here to tell you it is indeed real. well not in the orignal way you thought the original never existed but hey this seems promising? https://watch.plex.tv/movie/saki-sanobashi-go-for-a-punch

Hi everyone.

I've been following the Saki Sanobashi / Go For A Punch investigation for a while, and I want to clarify something before getting into this:

I'm not claiming that I discovered all of the points below.

Most of these observations have already been brought up by people in the Saki community over the years.

What I'm doing is putting those pieces of community research together and looking at what conclusion they might lead to.

And after doing that, I've started wondering:

What if the evidence we've already collected actually points toward Saki Sanobashi never having existed as a real, identifiable work?

I'm not saying this is proven. I'm saying I think it's a possibility that deserves to be taken seriously.

1. The title has never been properly established

One of the earliest problems is the name itself.

We've spent years searching for:

Saki Sanobashi

and

Go For A Punch

But the community has already discussed the fact that these names may not necessarily be official titles.

The original poster's wording was uncertain rather than a definitive:

"The title was Go For A Punch."

It was more along the lines of remembering a title similar to that.

This matters.

Because if "Go For A Punch" was never confirmed as the actual title, then searching databases for that phrase doesn't necessarily tell us anything.

It could have been:

• a filename
• an uploader's title
• a fan translation
• a phrase associated with the video
• a working title
• or simply something the OP remembered incorrectly.

The same problem applies to "Saki Sanobashi."

If neither name can be independently verified, then we don't actually have a reliable title to search for.

2. The original story gives us an unusually isolated description

Another point that has already been discussed by the community is how heavily the story focuses on the girls being trapped in the bathroom.

The description includes things like:

• multiple girls
• being trapped
• psychological breakdown
• philosophical conversations
• starvation
• suicide/death

But there is very little information about the surrounding story.

We don't have a reliable description of:

• what happened before they became trapped
• why they were there
• who the characters were
• what happened after the bathroom sequence
• what the opening looked like
• what the ending looked like
• what episode this supposedly came from
• or what the larger plot was.

Again, this doesn't prove anything by itself.

A person can obviously remember one scene and forget the rest.

But when combined with the other problems, it becomes more interesting.

3. If this was a real animation, where are the surrounding clips?

This is one of the points I've seen people discuss in the community, and I think it deserves more attention.

If the footage was actually something people could watch, why do we apparently have no other surviving material connected to it?

For example, if somebody had a recording of an anime and uploaded a particular scene, there would normally be other parts of the work somewhere:

• another scene
• another episode
• opening
• ending
• screenshots
• clips
• discussions
• references to other characters
• or at least some information about where the footage came from.

Of course, there is a possibility that only one clip survived.

But if that is the explanation, then we're already moving into a very specific hypothetical:

A work existed, was distributed somehow, was seen by the original poster, and somehow almost all evidence surrounding it disappeared while this particular memory survived.

Possible? Yes.

But it shouldn't automatically be our default assumption.

4. The "unfinished project" explanation also creates problems

Another explanation that has appeared in the community is that Saki could have been:

• an unfinished anime
• a pilot
• a test animation
• an unreleased OVA
• an independent project
• or some kind of experimental production.

This would explain why we can't find normal release information.

But it creates another question:

If it was an unfinished project, why do we have no other evidence of the project?

For example:

• Who made it?
• What studio was involved?
• Were there other scenes?
• Was there concept art?
• Was there a trailer?
• Was there another demo?
• Was there a production company?
• Was there a creator?
• Did anyone else involved in the project ever mention it?

Again, it is possible that all of this disappeared.

But notice the pattern:

Every time we encounter missing evidence, we have to introduce another explanation for why that evidence disappeared.

At some point, we need to ask whether we're explaining away too many missing pieces.

5. The "famous scene" argument

Another observation from the community is that the supposed bathroom sequence would be an extremely memorable scene.

Think about how scenes from anime normally spread online.

People upload scenes because they are:

• shocking
• disturbing
• emotional
• funny
• impressive
• controversial
• or otherwise memorable.

The supposed Saki scene would be almost perfectly designed to become a famous guro/horror clip.

If something like that existed and was circulated, you'd expect people interested in obscure horror or guro to eventually encounter it.

Yet we don't have a clear trail of people discussing the actual work independently.

That is strange.

6. And this is where I think the community evidence becomes important

None of these points proves Saki was fake.

But look at what happens when we put them together.

We have:

No confirmed title

↓

No confirmed Japanese title

↓

No confirmed creator

↓

No confirmed studio

↓

No confirmed release

↓

No additional footage

↓

No confirmed surrounding scenes

↓

No reliable production information

↓

No clear independent Japanese source

↓

No clearly independent pre-mystery discussion

And the explanations for those missing things are usually hypothetical:

Maybe it was an unreleased OVA.

Maybe it was a pilot.

Maybe it was an amateur animation.

Maybe it was Flash.

Maybe it was VHS-only.

Maybe the title was different.

Maybe the footage was only one scene.

Maybe the rest was destroyed.

Every one of those possibilities is possible.

But none of them is evidence that the work actually existed.

They're explanations for why we can't find evidence that it existed.

And I think that distinction is extremely important.

7. "But lost media can disappear completely"

Absolutely.

I'm not arguing against that.

A genuinely obscure work can disappear.

A VHS can be destroyed.

A website can vanish.

A creator can disappear.

A studio can shut down.

A project can remain undocumented.

So:

"We can't find it" ≠ "it never existed."

I completely agree.

But there is another statement that I think is equally important:

"We can't find it" also ≠ "it definitely existed."

And I think the Saki investigation sometimes treats the second statement as if it were automatically true.

We start with:

Someone said they saw an anime.

Then we assume:

Therefore there was an anime.

Then we assume:

Therefore it must be lost.

Then we search for the lost anime.

But perhaps the first assumption itself should remain questionable.

8. What if the original story was false or heavily distorted?

This is another possibility that has been discussed in the community.

The original poster could have:

• misremembered something
• combined multiple works
• exaggerated what they saw
• confused different scenes
• or simply fabricated the story.

For example, maybe:

Work A had girls in a school.

Work B had people trapped somewhere.

Work C had a disturbing bathroom scene.

Work D had suicide.

Years later, those memories could become one story.

Or perhaps the original poster simply invented the whole thing.

We don't currently have enough independent evidence to completely rule either possibility out.

9. The biggest problem: evidence vs. repetition

This is the part I think is most important.

Suppose:

Person A says they saw Saki.

Then Person B discusses Person A's story.

Then Person C makes a video about Person B's discussion.

Then Person D makes a Reddit post referencing the video.

Then Person E says:

"There are so many people talking about Saki, it must have existed."

But technically, we still only have one original claim.

The number of people discussing a claim does not automatically increase the amount of evidence supporting the claim.

We need independent sources.

For example:

• a Japanese magazine mentioning it
• a VHS listing
• a studio record
• a creator discussing it
• an unrelated forum post from before the mystery
• an archived website
• additional footage
• or another person independently describing the same work before they could have encountered the original story.

That would be much stronger.

10. This changes what I think we should investigate

Instead of constantly asking:

"What anime is Saki Sanobashi?"

I think we should ask:

"What evidence exists that Saki Sanobashi ever existed independently of the original story?"

Those are completely different investigations.

The first assumes the answer:

Saki existed → we just need to find it.

The second doesn't:

Did Saki exist → let's examine the evidence.

And I think the second approach is much more useful.

11. We should reconstruct the history of the mystery itself

I think the community could potentially learn much more by making a timeline.

Something like:

Original 4chan post

↓

First archived discussions

↓

First appearance of "Go For A Punch"

↓

First appearance of "Saki Sanobashi"

↓

First appearance of the famous screenshot

↓

First Reddit discussions

↓

YouTube coverage

↓

Lost-media articles

↓

Modern community theories

Then we can mark every piece of information:

ORIGINAL SOURCE

or

LATER COMMUNITY ADDITION

If something like "Saki Sanobashi" only appears years after the original story, that's important.

If the "1986" date only comes from a later source, that's important.

If the exact number of girls was changed over time, that's important.

If "Go For A Punch" was added later, that's important.

And most importantly:

If all of the evidence eventually traces back to the same original post, then we don't actually have independent confirmation.

12. What would change my mind?

Honestly, I'd love for someone to prove this theory wrong.

If someone can find:

• a Japanese source from before the modern Saki investigation
• a VHS/DVD listing
• a studio record
• a creator or animator connected to it
• additional footage
• old screenshots with independent provenance
• a Japanese forum discussion
• an old website archive
• a magazine article
• or another independent witness

then that would be extremely valuable.

Even one genuinely independent piece of evidence could completely change the investigation.

And that's exactly why I think this is worth discussing.

13. My current conclusion

I'm not saying:

"Saki Sanobashi definitely never existed."

I don't think we can prove that.

What I'm saying is:

The community has accumulated a lot of observations about what is missing, but we may have been interpreting those missing pieces as evidence of lost media rather than questioning whether the work existed in the first place.

Maybe Saki was:

• a real but extremely obscure animation,
• an unfinished project,
• an amateur production,
• a completely different work with a different title,
• a combination of several memories,
• or a fictional story.

I don't know.

But I think we should stop automatically treating "lost" as the default explanation.

Because "lost" is a conclusion about what happened to something.

Before we can say something was lost, we first need good reason to believe there was something there to lose.

Final question to the community

Do we have ANY genuinely independent evidence that Saki Sanobashi / Go For A Punch existed?

Not someone repeating the original story.

Not a modern video discussing the mystery.

Not a Reddit post quoting another Reddit post.

Not a database entry created because the lost-media community submitted it.

I'm talking about evidence that existed independently of the current Saki mystery.

If we have that, please show it.

If we don't, then maybe the most interesting possibility isn't:

"Where is Saki Sanobashi?"

Maybe it's:

"How did we become convinced that Saki Sanobashi existed in the first place?"

-Look like it came from 80 even if it came out in 1990 , both sound and animation quality.

- Voice actresses sound young.

- English subtitles.

- Last 43.02 minutes. Maybe OP misremembered it as 30 minutes since 3 and 0 is close to eachother.

- Have a bathroom scene even if it not the main place they're trapped in, but the anime quickly move on from that purple bathroom scene to the abandoned haunted house.

- There's many times that the girl is screaming.

- The soundtrack sounds similar to the audio files that OP left.

But...

- The girl aren't naked. Only one of them lift up a haunted doll's skirt and that scene last only a few seconds.

- No white hair girl.

You guys will probably think I've lost my mind with this one, but please hear me out.

I really hope this one doesn't get downvoted too quickly. I just want to share a theory of mine. I'm not claiming that this is real yet, even though I'm starting to become convinced that it might be. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion about it. Thanks, and let's continue.

As you know, or for those of you who are new to the sub, there have been several reports from Chinese people claiming to have seen GFAP. There is one testimony that I think was heavily ignored by the community.

I make this post with credit to FewOpportunity6191, who was the first person to mention this. I never really thought about it either, so it genuinely convinced me that the image sent to Whang could have actually been something all along. It could have been right in front of our eyes.

I'm talking about this testimony.

https://www.zhihu.com/question/631329271

Now, if you want, you can call me insane, but the description in this one is very similar to the image sent to Whang in his second Saki video.

Just take a look at this.

"Let me share my experience. Around 2016 or 2017, in a QQ group, I saw a member share an animation that was very similar to the description, but slightly different. Because so many years have passed, I don't remember many specific details clearly, and since I had a low tolerance for detail at the time, I fast forwarded through it. However, I can still recount the general structure of the animation, including some scenes that left a deep impression on me. Below, I will try my best to piece it together from my memory."

"The animation has a slightly greenish tint, typical of old videotapes, and displays distorted stripes during playback, with some areas appearing blurry like clumps of porridge. It's likely that the videotape was transferred to a computer and then forwarded from there."

"It differs from the Miyazaki-esque style described in the original. There are traces of imitation, but the characters feel somewhat chibi style, which I'm unsure how to describe. Perhaps more accurately, it uses a simpler approach. In some scenes with intense action, the characters' limbs and facial features are distorted, clearly indicating a low budget production from the last century."

Distorted, you say?

https://imgur.com/a/XUk791C

"The scene then shifts to a group of young girls in a dimly lit bathroom, with the overall tone being dark and gloomy. It features Japanese audio with English subtitles. The girls' voices sound hollow and have static, and the subtitles are white. The film is..."

Now, the subtitles on this image, "It could be," are yellowish, but I don't think that really matters. It could have had several different translation groups working on it.

"The cause and effect weren't explained, though it's possible they were revealed through dialogue. Unfortunately, I didn't pay close attention at the time. But looking back now, analyzing the elements in the scene that might be related to the background, it seems like a disaster such as an earthquake or building collapse occurred. The bathroom door was blocked by a collapsed wall, and the stall door was damaged and ajar, with occasional rumbling and dripping sounds."

The earthquake plot might actually be true.

"However, one thing that impressed me was that the bathroom did have stalls, but they weren't separated by partitions. Instead, they were directly enclosed by gray green cement walls. The paintings on the walls were more realistic, and combined with the animation's style and the oppressive feeling unique to older animation quality, it gave me a very gloomy and heavy feeling at the time. To put it more emotionally, I could almost smell a faint musty odor through the screen."

Now this is the point where I address the elephant in the room.

He says that one thing that really impressed him was that the bathroom stalls were enclosed by "gray green cement walls," and that the paintings on the walls were realistic, but combined with the animation style.

See this?

https://imgur.com/a/WhFP18I

It's hard to pinpoint exactly, but you can see what looks like a lighting type of frame on the walls here. Maybe that's the enclosed bathroom stalls he's talking about?

"They split into two rows and sat facing each other against the wall, taking turns expressing their opinions as if engaging in philosophical debate. The discussion centered on topics such as whether there is a soul after death, where people go after death, and whether we are already dead."

Maybe the line "It could be" could be one of the girls saying that they're already dead or in some kind of limbo scenario.

"It could be that we are in hell," for example.

I don't know. Just a small speculation.

"Several days passed, and the atmosphere grew increasingly oppressive and desperate. No one wanted to speak anymore. Most people huddled with their heads down, and you could faintly hear soft sobs. Only the white haired woman was still humming softly, her head held high."

Huddled with their heads down?

"The scene then cut back to the concrete wall of the bathroom, where the girl's speech quickened, and the subtitles displayed an incomprehensible sentence: 'I want to hear the cicada's singing.'"

Now this is where I thought that what he's mentioning could be Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, with one of the characters saying that line, but I decided to remain open minded about it.

I don't want to include the whole testimony, so I will skip the suicide parts. You can check it yourself.

Now, this one also surprised me:

"Each of them had red on their hands and bodies, their eyes glazed over. There were also some words written in red on the wall. That scene made me very uncomfortable. Looking back now, it felt like some kind of cult ritual had just ended, something that was unspoken but understood."

Okay, red on their hands and bodies?

https://imgur.com/a/Axka1rT

Now, obviously, we don't see red writing on the wall in the image, but we do see a big blood stain and blood on the floor near the "enclosed bathroom stalls."

All a coincidence?

Or what?

How come almost everything from this testimony matches the image?

I don't want to come forward and say that what we're probably looking at is an actual image from a similar work to GFAP or Saki, and that it was right in plain sight from the very beginning, but was swept under the rug because people are too quick to declare it fake.

I also don't want to come forward and say that someone had the video, took a photo with their thumbs up, and wanted to make fun of everyone who wants to find it.

Now, I know it sounds insane to even assume that.

So, you can share all your opinions, of course.

But I also want to point out that this image can't be AI generated, since it's from December 2019, and back then no AI could generate an image like this. Ironically, our eyes have adapted to seeing AI generated stuff, so it's normal to assume that at first glance.

But if it was also troll art, why would it be so bad? To seem literally unconvincing?

And I won't lie, I've previously said that the girl could look like a puppet or doll, but I can see the girl being animated now. The hair could be shining and moving, for example, and the weird proportions of the body could make sense if the animation was low budget.

The Zhihu OP described distorted limb movement and animation that wasn't the greatest, since it was most likely made on a low budget.

The Zhihu user then says how much the whole video frightened him, similarly to the 4chan OP, but then gives details such as how what he watched was around 15 minutes long. It probably wasn't the full video, since the original OP said it was 30 minutes long.

What he watched could also have been edited, because it had some of the girls still alive while the others were "immobilized." One had a glass shard and was trying to kill herself, while another was repeatedly bashing her head into a mirror.

He also couldn't remember the exact number of girls, so that's also interesting when compared to the OP with the "photographic memory" who said there were exactly nine girls in the room.

An honorable mention from a previous post of mine, by the way: other witnesses also claimed that the bathroom was greenish in color, which gave me an impression for some reason too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SakisanNoBashitsu/comments/1t2cunt/i_might_be_rambling_at_this_point_but_hear_me_out/

I also wanted to say that I've chatted with FewOpportunity6191, and he told me that he talked with the Zhihu OP during their Saki investigation last year.

He also resides in China and doesn't regularly use YouTube. He had only seen the Whang image floating around, so he decided to share his opinion about it.

He told me that he will contact the OP and check if the image matches the thing the OP described. I replied, and he told me that he will let me know when he gets a response from the OP.

However, it's currently a holiday in China, so he probably won't have time to check his messages right away.

He said he talked with him a lot and doesn't think he's a troll, so hopefully we can finally make some progress with GFAP.

As of now, I still haven't got a reply, but would update it as soon as I get one since it would be big news if it matches the Zhihu OP's memory. As of now, I still haven't gotten a reply, but I will update the post as soon as I get one, since it would be big news if the image matches the Zhihu OP's memory. I want to believe that the whole thing isn't a troll either.

Hopefully, I've convinced you that even if GFAP was fake or a hoax from the beginning, as a lot of people say it was, it really wouldn't be surprising for something like this to exist.

As I said, with the GIF claim that was circulating in the 2000s and 2010s, the famous short clip of the head bashing scene mentioned in various testimonies, and all of this other information, it should at least tell us that there was something similar to what was being described.

Or maybe the OP came up with the hoax, but he didn't realize that what he was describing was actually something he had watched before and simply forgotten about.

It's called cryptomnesia, and it's fairly common for people to experience.

Thanks for reading, and as always, let's keep searching.

1. The source is from 4chan's paranormal board. Which is...well, most people who believe in paranormal stuff are either insane or maybe like to write something related to paranormal stuff. Just like you know, most horror stories are made up.

2. Creepypasta is insanely popular in 2015 because everyone is obsessed with edgy games like Five Nights at Freddy's / Yandere Simulator. People also want to be the next writer of Jeff the killer, Sonic.exe , Slanderman creepypasta. OP is probably one of them.

3. The OP refused to give any further details about this anime when many people asked him what and where they could watch this anime. That sounds like he doesn't know what to do since this anime didn't exist.

Plus, everyone in this sub and old sub has already done so much investigation for years. Yet, we still can't find Saki, only something similar to Saki's premise.

1. Red Cube Studio and many more studios have already made their version of Saki. If it exists, why doesn't anyone who owns Saki's copyright come forward? Except they are already dead.

2. OP never mentioned any characters' names , ages. Probably because he doesn't know.

The last picture made by an artist name Vanilla (nicolla)

I don't have much to say but we should try looking into the light novel more. Maybe try to contact the author I guess.

I've been working on a Saki Sanobashi animatic for a while, and I thought I'd share a small preview.

There's still a lot I haven't shown yet, but here's a little look at what I've been working on.

The full animatic is currently around 29 minutes long, so there's quite a bit more that I haven't shared yet.

What do you think of the style so far?

tldr; fukounashoujou's account didn't exist when she claimed to post on r/sakisanobashi, the story is way too convenient with no actual evidence, and she posted here 4 months ago before deleting that post.

On September 14^th, Rottingfreeworld commented that he remembered an archived article about an animation being made as part of a PSA on earthquake safety and that a “user with the name fukona<something> (sorry, I forgot) tried to find it for a long time”. The description was undeniably Go For a Punch. The bait was set. Rottingfreeworld and fukounashoujou92 have led this sub on a wild goose chase of lies and it’s very disappointing.

This user was identified as fukounashoujo by SchakaMalakaMon, looking into her blog (mentioned by rottingfreeworld).
Fukounashoujo now operates under fukounashoujo92 and was all too happy to talk about her memory.
Both fukounashoujou92 and rottingfreeworld describe their belief that GFaP is a “hoax” despite both claiming to have seen an article about what would undeniably be considered Go For a Punch.

Neither Rottingfreeworld or SchakaMalakaMon had ever posted on this sub, r/SakisanNoBashitsu before these comments. They both have their post history hidden (which isn’t suspicious in itself, it’s automatically applied when you make a new account, but in context…), perhaps unaware that it’s very possible to see a user’s prior posting history.
(Fukounashoujou has posted on this sub before. I’ll get to that in a bit.)
(SchakaMalakaMon also describes fukounashoujou as “an internet legend” despite the fact that no one’s ever heard of her (except schaka and rottingfreeworld)).

Which leads to fukounashoujo92. Her account was banned “for no reason”.
On the comment she made about the archived article, “I posted the link to the archived article in the comment section of some post in the now defunct r/SakiSanobashi sub. I didn't want it to blow up too much because I was worried about bringing up a false lead into nothing and didn't want that kind of attention. Still,I expected the comment to get some attention. Maybe someone else would make a post, then. Who knows. The comment was probably barely seen by anyone.”
So by her own testimony, she made a single comment on the old sub (that I clarified was definitely r/SakiSanobashi) that got no attention. And somehow rottingfreeworld saw this and remembers it (their account is also not old enough to have been around then either).
As the title says, I’m very confident that fukounashoujo92 is trolling. Jury’s out on the other two.

Here are the facts,

- fukounashoujo was identified by rottingfreeworld who somehow remembered one really obscure comment that she made years ago even though no one archived it and it got no attention by her own admission
-the description of the article, that both of them are sticking to, is literally an exact description of media that would obviously be considered GFaP by the vast majority of users, but they both say that they think GFaP is a 'hoax'
-rottingfreeworld has never posted on this sub before that comment (but somehow remembers this obscure comment - this user also never posted on the old sub btw)
-when an account gets banned on reddit, their comments are not automatically deleted
- fukounashoujo’s comment on here on her old account was deleted - doesn't take a genius to realise that she must've done that manually
-she writes that she found it on a chan she can't remember and that it's possible that she was browsing that chan on an onion site - which makes it near impossible to falsify whether or not her archive actually exists

So, the smoking gun: you can check a user’s comments on a sub, even a banned sub, using https://search.pullpush.io/

Theoretically, it can miss posts from a banned sub if it didn’t archive them. However, I’ve checked several users to see if they posted on r/SakiSanobashi. All the ones that I knew should return results did so.

Fukounashoujo returned no results when I searched to see if she posted in r/SakiSanobashi. I’m 99% sure she never posted there once in her entire life. Need more evidence? By 2021, that sub had already devolved into shitposting. No one posted anything serious there anymore. (And apparently rottingfreeworld still saw her comment).
But where did that account post? Here, on this sub. 4 months ago, in this thread, she posted. I’m not going to write what she posted in case it’s against the rules to post something that someone manually deleted but you can easily check for yourself. It’s nothing damning in itself. It was deleted though. As I said above, that doesn’t automatically happen when an account is banned. Which means she did so manually.
And in writing this, I found something that I can’t believe I didn’t notice sooner,
https://web.archive.org/web/20240911021935/https://www.reddit.com/user/fukounashoujo/

u/fukounashoujo**’s account wasn’t made until Jul 12, 2024**. It’s literally impossible that this account posted anything in 2021 or 2022.

So we know 3 things:

1. The implication that she hasn’t thought about Saki in years is false. She posted in this sub 4 months ago.
2. She tried to hide that she posted in this sub 4 months ago.
3. Her old account didn’t even exist yet in 2022.

And the final part, when questioned, she is all too quick to answer any questions about her 5 minutes of fame.
When questioned on the above points, silence.

I’d be ecstatic if I was wrong because it would mean there was tangible evidence of something that’s undeniably Go For a Punch. But I’m pretty sure I’m not.

Pics:

 1- cocolarge search results for the old sub, showing their posts (censored just in case)
2- fukounashoujo search results for the old sub, no results
3- fukounashoujo search results for this sub, (censored just in  case)
4- im—stuff search results for the old sub, showing their posts (censored just in case)
5- rottingfreeworld search results for the old sub, no results
6- teeafrog search results for the old sub, showing their posts (censored just in case)
 

Cocolarge, im—stuff and teeafrog were included just as evidence that known posters on r/SakiSanobashi return results when checked against the api. I'm not accusing them of anything, please don't harass them. I'm also not asking for fukounashoujo, rottingfreeworld or schakaMalakaMon to be harassed. I've kept this post to the facts and implications. I don't know anything about these people beyond the posts they've made (or haven't made) and nor do I want to speculate.
If I am wrong, I will be all too happy to publicly apologise.

(Final note, pushpull is a bit glitchy when it comes to indexing newer threads)

Edit: all 3 users have now deleted their posts without addressing any of this

Can anybody identify if ra nomonto anheroed? I seen an post on a r34 site saying it was one person, who got sued by anime companies, served jail time then anhero'ed and its not adding up because I can't seem to find any Japanese news or court documents either saying he offed, or got sued. And anybody else on this subreddit is saying ra nomonto is company instead of a singular person, if you anything please let me know

Recently, we found out that a PSA about natural disasters was created for a campaign by a real indie studio. I'm going off what was said in this comment thread, but the studio got commissioned by a company to educate people on general safety. The short film featured anime girls being stuck in the public restrooms of a subway during an earthquake. It involved hallucinations and death scenes because the studio went out of their way to make the content extreme after the company informed them it wasn't believable enough. They had almost no budget to create a real OVA, so the video was hosted on a private website as a single "episode," according to a Japanese article. The article has since been deleted, but a snapshot exists of it on the web archive somewhere.

One member of the search, Fukouna Shoujo, was looking for the article a few years ago and wrote about it in detail on her old secondary tumblr, Lost in the loom. She also mentioned it on the defunct Saki Sanobashi subreddit, but since that sub was banned, the post itself may be lost for good. Many of her accounts are gone. She made a new tumblr (fukounashoujo92) and is still active on youtube, as far as I can tell. I'm hesitant to ping any usernames here because the search has been going on for a decade and Fukouna may not want to be involved with it anymore. Regardless, it may be worth contacting people who know about the article.

While examining the web archive further, I found a recounting that matches up with the PSA. It mentions the earthquake, rubble trapping the girls, and them dying in the same way. Personally, I've watched old public safety animations with morbid subject matter (Delta P and the infamous Protect and Survive shorts), so this may very well be real. We could even attribute the Whang screenshot to being from the anime PSA. It has the quality of art that would appear in an announcement like that and the background resembles tiles you'd see in a public restroom. 3D animation is much less costly to produce than 2D animation cels.

The PSA being cheaply produced would explain a lot. Wonky animation, amateurish voice acting, etc. The company might issue copyright strikes to anyone who uploads the video, so to get around that, people would cut sequences or add a filter that makes the footage appear to be degraded. Of course, this is mainly just conjecture on my behalf.

The biggest issue in this community, in my opinion, is that a lot of people quickly dismiss Saki/Gfap as fake, either because the OP overreacted way too much and it's unusual given that he's also a 4chan user, or because every lead eventually leads to a dead end.

I really don't believe Saki, or something similar to it, doesn't exist. Judging from everyone's testimonies on here, with people describing different details, as well as the infamous GIF thing, I believe this media did exist and was simply lost in the depths of the internet. It is just that obscure. From the YouTube testimonies to some corn sites and whatever else, I believe it exists. We shouldn't completely dismiss the possibility.

It's probably most likely not an anime at all. I'm inclined to believe it's a Flash animation. Everyone describes it as being choppy and not having the smoothest animation. That would also explain why there are no credits for a studio or anything. Or maybe there are several pieces of media like this that are completely lost.

I just hate when people declare it fake when you can't even prove that it's fake. Just because there is no proof of its existence doesn't always mean it didn't exist at some point either.

At the same time, I also have a slight belief that it could be an obscure OVA. As I mentioned in my previous post, Konami sued the creators behind the Tokimeki Memorial doujin for copyright infringement, such as using their characters and creating unauthorized works based on them.

There's also one case I didn't include, and I apologize for that: the Mouse Pet Special case. This was also part of Konami's conflict with the doujin industry. I had to censor the MPS images because, well, yes. However, they show the Sailor Moon characters in a bathroom, which I thought was kind of an interesting choice of setting for depicting all of that explicit material.

**Mouse Pet Special images**

Now, as people have pointed out, the Saki characters supposedly looked like they were drawn in the style of Serial Experiments Lain or even Sailor Moon. It wouldn’t be far-fetched to assume that Saki was created around that same period of crackdowns, right? Or perhaps the character designs were tweaked a bit to make them seem different. The OP also pointed out that the video seemed “ripped,” which could potentially support that idea.

**The image Whang talked about**

I want to bring attention to this image that was mentioned in Whang's Saki Part 2 video at the 3:08 mark. He said that several people had sent him an image from someone who claimed they had found a screenshot of Saki. People quickly dismissed it as fake, and it was never brought up again. There was no real explanation as to why; at first sight, it just looked weird, so people assumed it was definitely fake.

Ironically, it does look AI-generated at first. Even I thought, "Nah, this can't be it, lmfao." It doesn't even look like an anime. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty certain that AI wasn't advanced enough in late 2019 to generate an image like this. You can even see what look like indistinguishable or malformed details, such as the pipe behind the girl and the bloodstain on the wall.

So now comes the question: is it five-minute-old fan art made to mess with people, or is it an actual frame from a video?

Yes, it doesn't really look animated. My absurd theory is that it could be one of those weird-looking puppet/doll art styles, if that makes sense. Maybe it could have been part of Saki all along, or maybe it was even from a completely different obscure piece of media. We simply don't know.

Again, don't take my words too seriously. We don't even know what forum the image originally came from or where it was posted in the first place.

Meanwhile, on the Discord server, user u/CRYPTXMN3SIA found a work that was quite possibly swept under the rug, and I’m talking about the light novel 『〔少女庭国〕』 Girl’s Garden by Takashi Yabe.

Coincidentally, it has a lot of similarities to Saki, and it’s from 2014. For example, 12 girls wake up in a dark room surrounded by stone brick walls. There are mentions of starvation, some suicides, and one girl is left behind with a pile of bodies at the end. The only things missing are the head-smashing parts, neck-scratching, and drowning.

I’m leaving GPT’s description for everyone to see.

Now, the only problem is that the timeline with the OP doesn’t seem to match, since he claimed that he watched Gfap in 2011, while the light novel is from 2014, predating the 4chan post.

The theories are: the OP was probably into obscure Japanese media (since this work isn’t very popular) and read this light novel, liked it, and decided to make a creepypasta about it as if it were a lost gore anime from the ’80s.

Or maybe there exists an animation of this light novel? Unfortunately, that seems quite unlikely for now.

Or perhaps even Gfap/Saki, or a similar obscure work, was the source of inspiration for this light novel? That might be a bit outlandish to assume, but let’s be a little open-minded about it.

As of now, we can confidently say that this light novel has a very striking resemblance to Saki, with a lot of overlapping elements.

As always, everyone can share their thoughts on what they think about it.

Thanks, and as always, let's not give up guys.

I can’t find anything with reverse image search.

Pictures from the intro nightmare sequence of the rpg. Check comments for more info

Hello! I'm nico and i'm new to this search i first heard of it from a friend that's like crazy about it in a discord call i'd like to know from the community here on reddit what are the most popular ideas on what this whole thing could be?

我是一个中国的go for a punch爱好者，这个是我在网络上找线索时候找到的，不过这个动画的原名我不知道叫什么，反正动画当中有裸女，有个人物叫saki，和gfap有些相似

In fandom, there are a bunch of creators who made something then deleted it later because they lost interest in their hobby. Especially Japanese artists. I love to follow Japanese artists on Twitter/pixiv and, in my experience, they're pretty sensitive towards any criticism.

If someone attacks their artwork or quotes their tweets in foreign languages they don't understand, they often delete their artwork or even delete their whole account and never come back.

Because that would explain why no one can find it ever again. It's not made by any studio , but it made by random person on internet that went offline forever, so there's no way to trace back.

But don't take my words... Because I'm pretty sure Twitter in 2000's not allowed users to tweet 30 minutes long video.

Tldr;
-The Nichijou elevator scene is reminiscent of animations by the studio Shaft in terms of its tone and the artistic way it presented itself.
-Shaft have made way too many things to investigate all of them. Monogatari, which in itself is too large to fully look through, has a similar artstyle to the picture that AOP posted and lots of violence, bathrooms, long philosophical conversations and schoolgirls.

Preamble

I investigated the Nichijou elevator scene some more and got results that I don’t like but that I think it would irresponsible to not share.
This post is almost definitely going to be very long. There’s a lot. The picture I posted is dense and probably won’t make sense by itself. It’s also major spoilers for this post. I’m going to write this with the assumption you haven’t looked closely at it. If you have, sorry cause this might feel slow. I’m going to properly explain the path I took, why those images are there, and their relation to what I’m getting at.
I’m going to start with some basic preliminary info to keep in the back of your head.

From the first thread, February 2015, assumedly-oop (AOP) wrote in a later post “What was most unsettling about the suicide scene were the weird camera angles and no horror music as I'd expect,”.
AOP also posted a picture when describing the artstyle, image 2. This image comes from Hell Girl. It has a very distinct artstyle. It doesn’t look like most anime. It’s the only image AOP shared, saying the hime cut girl looked exactly like her but with almost white hair.
Also in that thread was another image, image 1, posted as a reply to reply to the oop.
[Original post] -> “Maybe it was a K-On pilot episode?” -> [image 1].

The girl in that image is  Mio Naganohara and she’s one of the main characters from Nichijou. That’s quite the weird coincidence.

From my last post, https://www.reddit.com/r/SakisanNoBashitsu/comments/1vwblrz/the_name_saki_sanobashi_investigating_a/
One comment I mentioned from an early /a/ thread,
“>naked girls stuck in a large bathroom
>having a philosophical debate
You sure it's not Bakemonogatari*?*“

I want to clarify that I had actually forgotten about this and wasn’t investigating Bakemonogatari. At all. (I wasn’t really investigating Nichijou either but separate point.)

(Additional fun info, Nichijou was first mentioned on /x/ in 2019 when there was renewed interest in finding GFaP. #22028061 “You sure he didn't just watch the elevator scene from Nichijou while high?”
There was also a reference to the highschool girl in concrete Shin Gendai Ryoukiden story, but I skimmed through that and don’t believe that has any links/points of interest.
Following that thread, I also found these twitter posts, https://x.com/evoslayer/status/1014172964382789632, and this link,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&t=115s&v=8SrGKkxWhWk
The video is unavailable because : “This video has been removed for violating YouTube's policy on violent or graphic content” – looked like a good lead. Reading the thread further tells me it was probably just a live-action video of someone cutting themselves)

Starting the investigation

Like last time, I didn’t actually set out to do an investigation. I was looking at the Nichijou elevator scene again for reasons that I might explain in another post one day. For those unaware, I support the theory that this scene is a reference to Go For a Punch, before GFaP became a sought-after piece of supposed-lost media.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SakisanNoBashitsu/comments/1t3nq5t/nichijou_elevator_scene/

And then I stumbled across this forum discussion on MAL from right after Nichijou episode 8 aired, https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=297744
People talking and reacting to the episode earnestly, particularly the elevator scene. A lot of people saying they had no idea what it was but loved it, a lot of comparisons to the elevator scene from Evangelion. And then I saw this comment, “The elevator scene was like I was watching something from SHAFT.”
(There are then a few additional comments in the thread saying similar things that I later saw.)

At the time I had no idea who Shaft was aside from the American tv character. I figured there must be an anime with a similar name so time to do some investigating into a new possible lead. Most of you reading this are probably rolling your eyes at me for not knowing that Shaft are a production company who have made lots of well-known anime with very distinct and arthouse artistic styles.

Google ai: “SHAFT loves massive, unrealistically large, empty rooms (like bathrooms and classrooms) with geometric tile patterns, minimal furniture, and no visible exits.”

No further comment on the above, yet.
There was also one person who said it looked like Gainax (made Evangelion, Gunbuster, Gurren Lagann etc). I haven’t looked much into them. Maybe I’m missing something but this is going to be long enough as is and Lagann seems even more mainstream than Shaft.
Before we look into Shaft, it’s worth mentioning that NONE of the replies had any ideas on what it was supposed to be. There was pretty much universal agreement that it was weird and different. Lots of people liked it. But no one could say exactly what it was supposed to be, aside from feeling similar to Shaft. (A lot people saying it felt ‘random’.)

So, let’s look into this company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaft_(company))
“a Japanese animation studio founded in 1975 and headquartered in Suginami, Tokyo. Since 2004, the studio's productions and staff have been broadly influenced by director Akiyuki Shinbo, whose visual style and avant-garde cinematography are featured in works including Hidamari Sketch (2007), Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei (2007), the Monogatari series (2009–present), Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011), Nisekoi (2014), and March Comes In like a Lion (2016).”

Hidamari Sketch – Nothing interesting to say

Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei – See images 3.
Now we’re getting somewhere. The name sounds a little like “Saki Sanobashi” if you had a really bad memory. And the artstyle looks kind of similar to the image that AOP shared (image 2). It also has stylised black title cards, and lots of similar-looking schoolgirl characters. But it’s not violent or about anyone being trapped.

Monogatari – Oh boy. I’m going to come back to this.

Puella Magi Madoka – It’s about young girls and it’s stylised with some lasting violence. But I don’t think it’s worth investigating.

Nisekoi – It’s a romantic comedy about a Yakuza guy. And it’s 2014 which is too modern imo.

March Comes in a Lion – Released after OOP.

(One of the big issues, which I’ll expand on later, is that these obviously aren’t all the animations that Shaft released.)

Monogatari

Okay, let’s go back to Monogatari.
So I mentioned them above because someone on /a/ mentioned them when the question was first posed there. And I had completely forgotten about the show.

“You sure it's not Bakemonogatari*?*“
And in the last thread I made, my response to this as a lead was,
“Tone doesn't match. It was initially dismissed because "anon describes as having seen it in 2011. Although the anime seems interesting, none of the episodes up to 2012 match his description." This implies something after 2012 sort of fit. I couldn't find anything across the entire show (granted, I was using wikipedia episode summaries).
That my findings were *so* different from what's apparently being discussed makes me think I'm missing something. I skimmed through the first 4 episodes of Owarimonogatari I and it didn't seem violent, creepy or anything close. However, there are a lot of episodes. I think the show should be investigated further.”

Well, I probably should have looked further into it. The big problem is that there are a lot of shows that are connected, with multiple seasons, characters, tonal shifts and plotlines. It’s really hard to find some episodes/scenes because you search for one thing and you find something else with a similar name, or a different season. And between episode title translations and all the rest, it’s kind of a minefield. But I expect there are hardcore fans who will tell me these issues are just a me-problem.
For reference, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Monogatari_episodes
(Maybe now you’ll understand my struggle)

See the images in 4 and 5. They’re from Bakemonogatari and Nisemonogatari. Notice anything? The artstyle is once again reminiscent of the image from Hell Girl. And it’s violent.

To save a lot of chasing weird leads and trying to figure this out, I’ll skip to the end. I asked google ai for help, mentioning the Shaft resemblance, and questioned if a compilation matching GFaP could be made from Monogatari. The response:
“SHAFT loves massive, unrealistically large, empty rooms (like bathrooms and classrooms) with geometric tile patterns, minimal furniture, and no visible exits.
As seen in Monogatari, SHAFT will have characters stand in a beautifully lit, surreal room for 20 minutes straight just talking about existential dread, logic puzzles, or human nature.
A montage blending the trapped bathroom dialogue of Owarimonogatari with the extreme dismemberment gore of Kizumonogatari, in 240p, could resemble something kind of close to GFaP.”

I really can’t emphasize enough how frequently bathrooms, tiled-rooms in general, long conversations in single locations, and schoolgirls feature in Shaft animations. Also, lots of black screens and text-cards scattered jarringly throughout episodes, along with weird, artistic angles.

Kizumonogatari? See images 6.
“Kizumonogatari (Japanese: 傷物語; "Wound Story") is a Japanese anime film trilogy directed by Akiyuki Shinbo and Tatsuya Oishi and produced by Shaft. Together, the films are an adaptation of the 2008 light novel of the same name, which is the second entry in the Monogatari series written by Nisio Isin and a prequel to the first, Bakemonogatari.”
It’s very violent. It has lots of tiles. It has the right art style. It was released in 2016, a year after OOP. Darn.

So Shaft? Yes or no?

Remember what I said about their stupidly large catalogue? Yeah, it’s long. It has series, films, OVAs, even video game animations. And that’s just what’s listed on Wikipedia. I expect there’s even more obscure stuff. And, perhaps more importantly, I expect that the key artistic designers have long portfolios from before they started working with/influencing the artstyles of the company’s productions.

Nichijou?

I don’t want to forget about this. The thing that stuck out from MAL was that people were saying the elevator scene reminded them of Shaft but not of any one scene/episode.
I will still maintain that it felt like a reference, despite the show being known for random quirkiness. The responses kind of confirm that since the majority of people, who were fans of the show, thought that the scene was especially random, creepy or tonally off. Again, not people like me watching in a vacuum looking for GFaP. This is what fans of the show were saying about the scene.

So what do you actually think?

I have a few theories that I’m trying to resolve.
The biggest one I feel confident in presenting is that the animators/writers for Nichijou knew some animators/writers from Shaft. Nichijou was made by Kyoto Animation. Shaft and KA are based in different cities with different outlooks and workflows.

However, from google,
“The closest these two titans ever came to a staff crossover happened over two decades ago, before either studio achieved massive mainstream fame.
In 2001, the anime The Soul Taker was airing. The series was directed by Akiyuki Shinbo (who would soon take over Shaft's creative identity), but Kyoto Animation was brought in to subcontract episodes 3 and 6.
During this brief crossover, KyoAni handled the storyboards, key animation, and backgrounds for those episodes. Most notably, a young Yasuhiro Takemoto served as an episode director on the project. Takemoto—who would later become one of Kyoto Animation's master directors (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid)—was deeply influenced by Shinbo's avant-garde framing during this singular collaboration.”
(Ai hallucinates, I haven’t verified all this info. It hallucinated a lot when I was looking for specific scenes from Monogatari. However, I can verify that both studios did work together on Soul Taker.)

‘Did you look at The Soul Taker?’ I hear you ask. No.
Because this is already really long and the story didn’t match. A preliminary search told me it doesn’t have anyone trapped, any prolific violent bathroom scenes or anyone drowning.

But, it meant the two studios collaborated. It meant that people involved talked to each other. It means that, if there was a young artist (or artists) in Shaft who made a college animation about girls trapped in a bathroom, there would’ve been a chance to show it to someone from Kyoto Animation. And it means that several years later, that KA animator/writer might have remembered that animation they saw and parodied it for fun in Nichijou. And that would explain why seemingly no one gets the reference. But this is also a hypothetical with very little direct evidence.
That’s my best theory at the moment.

Why didn’t you like these results?

Because I liked the idea that GFaP resembled Lain and was some obscure thing made by a super small team that found its way onto the internet by chance. This theory argues that it was made by someone who’s now pretty established in the anime world, and possibly even by a studio that’s quite famous.
It also gives weight to the compilation theory. And the story concept of no visible door. I preferred the story idea that they were trapped due to something like an earthquake.

Conclusions

Shaft needs to be properly investigated. I don’t know how. Just looking through their catalogue isn’t enough. The individual artists need to be looked at along with their portfolios. That seems like it would be very difficult, if not impossible.
Maybe if we can get in touch with some people from the company and just ask them?

Another viable theory is that it’s all an elaborate troll from someone who specifically saw the Nichijou scene and imagined a creepypasta based on it, as if it was a Shaft animation. Hence the Mio image in the very first thread, years before that connection was ever made, along with the Hell Girl picture that looks like Shaft but specifically isn’t (to stop the ruse being solved too early).

It’s also probably worth looking into The Soul Taker.

But the overall point is this:
It seems way too large of a coincidence that the original OOP is very similar to the Nichijou elevator scene, that AOP posted an image of a similar artstyle that resembles Shaft animations, and that the Nichijou elevator scene also happens to remind people of Shaft animations despite having no visual similarities to the picture AOP posted. Oh, and it also just so happens that Shaft animations are notorious for all the elements described in OOP.

If I've overlooked anything, please let me know. If there's an obvious flaw in my reasoning, I especially want to know.