Danjo (男女) (2008)

About

“DAN JO DAN DAN JO DAN JO! DAN JO DAN DAN JO DAN JO! DAN JO DAN DAN JO JO DAN JO DAN JO JO DAN JO DAN JO DAN DAN JO!”

Danjo (男女 / Men & Women or Boys & Girls in Japanese) is a viral dance meme that was inspired by a 2006 Japanese pop song with the same title. In similar vein to Caramelldansen, Danjo dance videos and parodies became immensely popular on Nico Nico Douga and later spread to YouTube, appealing to many non-Japanese users for its WTF-itude. Most Danjo parody videos are set up in the form of animation or IRL dance recitals.

Origins

The original song “Danjo” was made by Japanese singer Taro, who used Garageband to create the song; it was released as a single on December 13, 2006. About a year later, the song made its first appearance on Nico Nico Douga on December 2, 2007.

From that point on, it would only need to be “stepped-up” a little more for it to suddenly explode on NND and enter memedom. On January 9, 2008, Danjo was yet again uploaded onto Nico Nico Douga by a different user under the title, “「男女」って曲が面白いからバカイト兄さんとヘタレン君に踊らせてみた”. It features two Vocaloid characters (Len Kagamine and Kaito) dancing the body-twisting, arm-swinging dance that would soon be known as Danjo all throughout Japan.

Animation Derivatives

Soon after the Danjo animation was uploaded, the following days had NND users posting their own variations of the video, many of which stayed true to the original.

Auto-Mario set to Danjo

Dance Videos

On January 12, 2008, a video of a man with a sack covering his head was uploaded on Nico Nico Douga. It was titled “「男女」を踊ってみた。罪袋で。”. The video shows the man dancing a variation of the original animation’s dance in rhythm to the song. Unfortunately, this video has never been re-uploaded on any other website other than Nico Nico Douga. Fortunately, you can see it on the upper-left corner of the first video below the next paragraph.

After him, many other NND users uploaded videos of themselves dancing the same dance, keeping true to the original dance video by masking their faces.