Caramelldansen

About

Caramelldansen (eng. The Caramel Dance) is a series of animated dance videos that use the dance track with the same title. Its original track was released in Supergott^[1] which is the 2nd album of the Swedish pop group Caramell^[2] in November, 2001.

The big sensation was caused on the web by the huge amount of fan-made videos and artworks in such as YouTube, deviantART and the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND) around 2008 to 2009.

Origin

According to Ruakuu’s Blog^[3], The origin of Caramelldansen was the flash loop composed by Sven from Sweden at the first half on 2006, and it was originally posted on his personal website.^[4]

Its visual source is an animated gif taken from an opening movie of the Japanese adult visual novel Popotan released in 2002.^[5] This animated gif of bunny dance was entitled “Popotan dance” and had existed on the web since before 2005. In the interview by Ruakuu’s blog, Sven said he found this animated gif on /gif/ in 4chan.

The song in this flash loop wasn’t the original Caramelldansen, but its sped up verison composed by DJ Speedycake^[6], probably an amateur DJ. He released this remix on 4chan just at that time when Sven was combining that popotan dance animated gif with several dance tunes.

In this way, Caramelldansen was the product of chance by 4chan users.

Spread

This flash loop made with the resources found on 4chan was re-imported to there, and quickly spread out of control across the internet as people made their own parodies featuring other fictional characters performing the dance, and other variations. It was also adopted by the anime community and often featured at conventions- seriously, play it at a con and watch as every cosplayer in earshot starts dancing.

Those animated videos, illustrations and cosplay videos/pictures have been posted to many online communities such as YouTube^[7], deviantART^[8] and NND^[9] since 2007, and the amount of them on the web is over tens of thousands in total.

Japan

Caramelldansen made succeed particularly in Japan. The video that led to a substantial increase in popularity of the series in Japan was posted to NND in Feburary 1st, 2008^[10], and featured the characters from THE iDOLM@STER that was also a huge online phenomenon on NND in those days. In Japan, Caramelldansen was called the popular name “Uu-Uu-UmaUma” (Japanese : ｳｯｰｳｯｰｳﾏｳﾏ(ﾟ∀ﾟ)) that came from a misheard phrase in this song.

By many people inspired by this video had been posting the a large amount of their works with various characters, Caramelldanse caused a big sensation in the first half of 2008.

A Japanese record label EXIT TUNES gained the rights from the original Caramell producers and released the single CD for Caramelldansen, including the sped up version, on the coattails of its popularity on the web in May 21st in that year. This CD was sold quite well and soon ranked in top 20 in Japanese weekly sales chart for the first time since Bon Jovi’s “Have a Nice Day” in 2005. Moreover, Caramelldansen recorded the best sales of international song in 2008, and was awarded single of the year (international section) in the 23rd Japan Gold Disc Award.^[11]

Notable Examples

For more videos, check out the videos section in this entry.

Cosplay Dancing

Compilation

Caramelldansen – Random Series

Search Interest

External References

Editor’s Note: Registration is needed to browse the original videos listed in this section.