only my railgun

About

"only my railgun" is the opening theme song for the anime adaptation of A Certain Scientific Railgun, the prequel manga of the light novel series A Certain Magical Index. The song gained massive popularity among fans after its late-2009 release, inspiring a series of remixes and musical covers.

Origin

"only my railgun" was written and performed by the Japanese trance/pop duo fripSide^[1] as the first opening theme for the anime A Certain Scientific Railgun, which premiered in Japan on October 3rd, 2009. The song was then officially released as a single on November 4th, 2009 and later on the group's album "Infinite Synthesis" on December 1st, 2010, with both being the first to feature singer Yoshino Nanjō as the group's lead vocalist.

Spread

The song became an immediate smash upon its release, with it debuting at #3 in the Oricon singles charts and selling over 26 thousand copies in its first week.^[2] Meanwhile, users on Nico Nico Douga began to fixate on the song's rhythmic vocals and started to introduce the song within MAD remix videos, and as well as audio-splicing mashups. In addition, because of the song's rhythmic nature and popularity, Niconico users began challenging themselves in performing their own takes of the song. The most notable example of this was a vocal cover performed by Niconico singer Glutamine (ぐるたみん) and was uploaded to the site on August 8th, 2010.

The somewhat clumsy but passionate vocals helped the video become one of the most watched in the vocal cover movement known as "utattemita"^[3] (歌ってみた; lit. I tried to sing), with it being viewed more 7 million times since its upload. Over 3 thousand videos relating to this song has since been uploaded to Niconico^[4], and many others can be found on YouTube.^[5]

Notable Examples

Musical Covers

MAD Remixes

Search Interest

External References