If you've ever watched Japanese news, you may have seen CG crime reenactments using cookie-cutter humanoid forms in blue for men and pink or red for women. These CG graphics are used quite frequently for illustrative purposes, even in situations which, from the perspective of a viewer accustomed to US news shows, don't seem to require it. When it comes to news variety shows, moreover, these CG reenactments tend to be exaggerated for dramatic effect or entertainment value.

Now, thanks to an app called 再現CGメーカー saigen CG mēkā (meaning "Reenactment CG Maker"), available for iOS and Android, these Japanese-style CG reenactments can be easily created on a smartphone. The app allows you to choose from over 200 poses and objects. Some are locked and can be opened if you participate in the gacha (in-game raffle) or as a reward for sharing your work on social media.

Once you have chosen a pose or object, you can move, resize and manipulate (rotate, tilt, etc.) them with buttons and pinch/swipe moves, and change the direction of the light source.

When you're all set, you can edit two text boxes, one title box on the upper right and one for explanation text across the bottom of the screen. English input is also possible. However, the Japanese text 再現CG (reenactment CG) is fixed on the upper left.

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Japanese Twitter users unleash their creativity

Official Account

Although the app really took off from around April 7th, it first appeared in early March. As you can see from this tweet on the app's official account, the developer decided to reenact the case of the middle school girl we reported on, who was taken in by Hyogo Prefecture police for posting "malware" in the form of a link to a harmless browser crasher site:

Hoever, presaging the kind of posts which would come to dominate attention on social media in the app's sudden rise in popularity these past few days, the account also began posting reenactments of famous anime scenes and internet memes. For example, this scene in One Piece:

General Public

Let's take a look at some of the more popular images contributed by the general public using the app:

Game scenes:

Galactic Nova from Kirby Super Deluxe:

The presence of pyramid shapes in the object list was too good to resist for fans of Ozymandias in Fate/Grand Order:

Manga and anime scenes:

The (in)famous Road Roller scene from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders.

From last year's popular anime SSSS.Gridman.

Internet memes:

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Your turn

Reenactment CG Maker is developed by Takuya Motomura and available for free. If you'd like to try it out for yourself, you can follow these links for iOS and Android.