About
RED ZONE is a song by Naoki Maeda featured in the Japanese rhythm game Beatmania IIDX 11 in 2004. There have been a total of 17 Beatmania IIDX releases since 1991.
In February 2009, several remixes of the original version was posted on the Japanese popular video sharing site, Nicodouga. Days later, they appeared on Youtube. Many videos have been reuploaded between the two sites.
It’s RED_ZONE and not “Red Zone.”
Measuring the popularity of “Red Zone” on the English-speaking web becomes problematic because of the general ambiguity of the name.
Likewise, searches for “Red Zone” often result in pages pertaining to University of Nebraska Huskers, University of Georgia Bulldogs, NFL news, and Old Spice Red Zone Deodorant.
The underscore between RED and ZONE is a common trait among RED_ZONE videos on Nico Nico Douga. By using Google Translator, “Red Zone” is translated to レッドゾーン. However, searches for レッドゾーン on Nico Nico Douga are somehwat ambiguous. It is likely that the phrase レッドゾーン is as common in Japanese as “Red Zone” is in English.
However, in 2009 we see a definite spike in searches for レッドゾーン originating in Japan which correlates well with the smaller trend of searching for “red_zone.”
On Nico Nico Douga
The song has started to attract attention once video was featured in the arcade game, depicting a race between two cars. A few MAD movies were posted since June 2007, paroding the scene (Lucky ☆ Star Yui + RED ZONE : 55000 views) but it hasn’t reached its potential yet compared to other Nicodouga videos (131,616 views, 38 videos before 2008).
The RED_ZONE song became really popular in 2009, when this song crossed over many other memes (RAN RAN RU), anime (Lucky star, Death note) or japaneses celibritys (Matsuoka Shuzo), using the RED_ZONE song has a rythm basis and the sound and video of the original video in a mashup.
The first mashup of this genre was HON Zone uploaded the 3thd January. Other followed since February, somes scoring a view count above 500 000. Since then, there are 768 videos tagged as “RED_ZONE”.
The recurring features, besides the music theme used, are the names used to describe the videos : They’re mostly (if not all) romanized and suffixed with “ZONE”.
What’s interesting to note is how Youtube Poop has crossed over onto Nico Nico Douga. For example: “Morshu Zone” has been reuploaded from Youtubein May to NicoNicoDouga in July.
RED_ZONE since has inspired some other derivative works. For example, the song Bloomin’ feeling or Clione, also coming from Beatmania has made people producing MAD movies following the same rules (same music theme, romanized title, title derivated from original music), though, they’re not as popular as RED_ZONE was at its start.
Sources :
RED_ZONE on Nicodouga :
- ordered by recent comments : http://www.nicovideo.jp/tag/RED_ZONE
- ordered by view count : http://www.nicovideo.jp/tag/RED_ZONE?sort=r
- ordered by upload date : http://www.nicovideo.jp/tag/RED_ZONE?sort=f
RED_ZONE, in Nicodouga encyclopedia (japanese) : http://dic.nicovideo.jp/a/RED_ZONE
On Youtube
On February 14th, 2009, Youtube user SinnieOnFre became the first to reupload a RED_ZONE video from Nico Nico Douga to Youtube. This particular video was of Super Mario Bros. footage remixed to the tune of RED_ZONE:
Super Mario Land :
On Youtube there are over 120 RED_ZONE videos and over 243 レッドゾーン videos; although those labeled in Japanese are only partially related to the meme. Videos labeled レッドゾーン actually seem to appear on Youtube on dates prior to being reuploaded to Nico Nico Douga.
RED SHU ZONE :
REDONALD ZONE :
Angry German Kid (AGK) / Keyboard Crasher (KBC) : Keyboard Zone :
KWSK ZONE :
Retro Tone Mad :
Summary:
The Japanese public became aware of the song RED_ZONE in 2004 when Beatmania IIDX 11 was released.
In February of 2009, video remixes set to the song began appearing on Youtube and Nico Nico Douga simultaneously.
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Meme Details
Origin
Beatmania IDXX 11, Nico Nico Douga
Year
2009
