Final Fantasy, Pokémon, Godzilla, Evangelion and the Yakuza franchise are just some of the big names inviting you to step into their rendered environments.
Now that more people than ever are staying home to help stop the spread of coronavirus, workers and friends have been dipping their toes into the world of video conferencing apps like Zoom, Skype, and Microsoft Teams to socialise and attend meetings.
As people navigate the tools available to communicate in virtual environments, jazzing up the background scenery has become one of the easiest and most entertaining ways to up your online chat game and add some personal flair to your profile.
In Japan, anime studios and video game companies are seeing this as a prime opportunity to open up their own worlds to fans, inviting them to use their fantasy environments for conference call backgrounds, with the release of free downloadable wallpapers.
Some of the biggest players in the industry are now offering free images, including Square Enix, which has a whopping 17 glorious Final Fantasy VII Remake designs to choose from. These backgrounds feature characters like Cloud, Aerith, and Barret, and locations like Tifa’s bar, 7th Heaven and the Wall Market.
There’s also an impressive selection from Neon Genesis Evangelion, to help you look like you’re conducting business from NERV Headquarters.
At a time when humanity feels under threat, Godzilla makes a timely appearance.
Promare, a 2019 Japanese animated film co-produced by Trigger and XFLAG, is set in a world thirty years after half the globe was destroyed by fire.
If you prefer your background to be a little lighter in mood, with slightly less annihilation, Super Mario has you covered.
As does Pokémon, which lets you appear with cast favourites Eevee and Pikachu peeking out from your head and shoulder.
Nippon Animation is releasing some images from popular TV series like 3000 Leagues in Search of Mother, Anne of Green Gables, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Peter Pan, and Tico of the Seven Seas.
You can also borrow a couple of backdrops from popular vocaloid Hatsune Miku, the girl with the long, turquoise twintails.
▼ Perfect for Hatsune Miku cosplayers.
Sega has a wide variety of backgrounds from the Yakuza video game franchise showing Kamurocho (based on Kabukicho in Tokyo), as well as scenes from Osaka, Okinawa, and Onomichi in Hiroshima Prefecture.
There’s also Tsukimino (based on Susukino in Sapporo), Sotenbori (based on Dotenbori in Osaka), Kineicho (based on Sakae in Nagoya) and Nagasugai (based on Nakasu in Fukuoka).
▼ Shonen Jump is giving us meeting scenes from popular series One Piece, Bleach, and Naruto.
▼ Chinese developers are also releasing scenes from popular titles like Azur Lane…
▼ And Arknights.
▼ There are also backgrounds from BanG Dream!…
▼ Symphogear XD Unlimited…
▼ And Tokyo 7th Sisters.
Working animators are also taking the opportunity to share some of their own designs with people online.
With the Japanese government asking more and more local businesses to adopt work-from-home practices, there are plenty of stunning anime backgrounds being released online every day. If you’re looking for even more to choose from, simply run a search on Twitter for 背景画像 (background image) to find links to some the most popular ones in Japan right now.
Personally, we can’t go past these new ones from Studio Ghibli. Because if you want to draw attention to yourself, there’s really no better way to do it than with a group of Ponyos swimming around your head!
Source: Twitter/背景画像
Top image: Twitter/@SEGA_OFFICIAL
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