Meme Research

30,826 total conversations in 4,532 threads

Does "Ran Ran RUUU!" = A Meme?

Last posted Jun 28, 2009 at 10:59PM EDT. Added Apr 10, 2009 at 09:06PM EDT
13 posts from 7 users

The famous Japanese commercial in which you see Ronald talk a little bit and scream "Ran Ran RUUU!" while doing random gestures is being used all over YouTube, but nowhere else. Not /b/, let alone 4Chan. 7Chan is out of the question, since it just got its server back and is still rebuilding. I'll bet there is something about it on Dramatica or somewhere else. I'm to lazy to do research, sooooo… can you gentlemen do it for me? C'mon. I'm a f*cking anteater! DO IT NOW!

Yeah, we've gotten requests in the past about "ran ran ruuu."

Let me start by saying that memes occur in many places on the internet. While /b/ is a great place to find many memes, being found on /b/ is not a prerequisite in considering something a meme.

The Japanese McDonalds commercial has a ton of remixes and multiple reposts of the same instances. It exhibits viral spread and mutations.

I'd say that "Ran Ran Ruuu" could be considered a meme, although I'm not sure yet if we'll add it to the MemeDB. There has been a growing concern in this site's community about whether or not we should cover something that comes from the mainstream and turns into a meme. McDonald's is about as mainstream as things get, but what makes "Ran Ran Ruu" interesting is that it's a remix of a Japanese commercial. So it's really borderline.

Spoofs using Ronald McDonald's image have a long tradition in various mediums. In the grand scheme of Ronald McDonald parodies, "Ran Ran Ruuu" is one of many.

Let's just do an abstract poll, open to everyone:
What do you think about "Ran Ran Ruuu?"

Well, my position is still "you should add it in if the meme /needed/ the Internets to evolve and-or spread. So I'd say Ran Ran Ruu could fit in, but it's so irrelevant that I wouldn't bother adding it. I mean, who needs to come up here to know how it started? Know Your Meme is different than ED for it gives real and serious answers on how a meme started and evolved. I think you should let go anything that has no back story.

tl;dr: unless you find something really interesting to say, fuck it.

Well, I guess "Ran Ran Ruuu" isn't a meme, but a joke. People saw the commercial somehow and thought it was funny how he just screams "RAN RAN RUUUUU!" out of nowhere. Eventually, people told each other about the video and it spread. I think it's only a meme if people find out about it on their own. For example: YouTube Poop. People don't want to talk about it in public, so they use YTP jokes and don't tell people where they came from. The people then research the joke and find all of this YTP stuff. Same thing w/ "Ran Ran Ruuu". Not a meme, a joke.

Tony, that basically is the description of a meme. Whether told by others or individually researched, it spread, which is the true essence of memes.

Also, Ran Ran Ruuu is almost ALWAYS mixed with the song "UN Owen was her" which is part of a much, much bigger video series.

I'd say if anything was considered for memeship, UN Owen would be in line before Ran Ran Ruuu

Did you try 2chan? If you can read Japanese that is.

Most likely this came from 2chan and Nico Nico Douga, and spilled over to the English community via Youtube.

UN Owen is part of Touhou, which is probably the largest Japanese meme ever.

Never personally heard of Touhou, but then again, never personally been on 2chan.

But I heard that it's impossible to access 2chan outside of Japan, since they block all outside IP's. Is that true?

Nothing could be more wrong.

Excellent.
I'll probably view it when I get home.

Also, not meaning to get off topic, but what is Touhou? Just a little background info would probably help me understand UN Owen a lot better.

Thanks in advance.

Okay, I've been doing some research this morning.

Touhou is a Japanese gaming company. They made the video game "Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil" which features the song "UN Owen Was Her."

Here's the level with the song.

Remix videos of this song are already really popular. It seems that someone at some point decided to do a remix of the Japanese McDonalds commercials set to this song.

There are also a number of remixes of the Ran Ran Ruu that don't feature UN Owen Was Her. A lot of the Ran Ran Ruu videos have a lot of overlap with Youtube Poop and other massive mashups.

I haven't gotten very far with 2Chan. Google Translator just can't handle Japanese sentence structures.

But it looks like we're making some progress with this meme so far.

^Adding to research

According to Wikipedia:

Touhou is not a company. It is a PC game series, including Embodiment of the Scarlet Devil, and 11 others. Touhou (full name: Touhou Project) was created by Team Shanghai Alice, whose sole member is called ZUN.

The series was so popular that it has created a large amount of fan works (doujin). During Comiket 74 there were 885 circles selling doujin products out of the participating 35,000.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touhou_Project#reception_and_fanworks

So after UN Owen/McDonald mashup inspired a meme of adding Ronald to any song (mostly Japanese anime music). Because anything + Ran Ran Ruu = Lulz.

Touhou You Should Drink Cucumber Flavored Beer + Ronald