Renai Circulation

About

Renai Circulation (Japanese: 恋愛サーキュレーション; lit. Love Circulation) is the fourth opening theme of the popular anime series, Bakemonogatari (化物語).^[1] Although this opening theme was only used for one episode, its catchiness solidified it as a song ripe for parody and remix.

Origin

Bakemonogatari is an anime produced by SHAFT which was aired from July 3, 2009 to September 25, 2009. This anime centers around the male protagonist, Koyomi Araragi, who deals with deities and spirits that reflect people’s inner problems.

In the “Nadeko Snake” arc, Koyomi Araragi tries to help Nadeko Sengoku get rid of a curse that will eventually kill her without treatment. The “Renai Circulation” opening theme first appears in episode 10, the arc’s finale aried on September 11th, 2009. It was sung by a Japanese voice actor Kana Hanazawa.^[2]

Spread

Its lovely music and Kana Hanazawa’s cute singing soon got much popularity among viewers of the anime. Shortly after, people began introducing this song to fan creations such as guitar or base guitar covers, music remixes/mash-ups and MAD videoss despite of its full version hadn’t been released yet. Those creations were continually uploaded to the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND).

Among them, a choreography for this song created by NND user MAKOTO (馬琴)^[3] particularly caught much attention.^[4] It became one of the most popular subjects for dance videos among female participants in NND’s dancing cover movement “Odottemita”.

However, from late 2009 to 2010, many popular fan creations including this video on NND were taken down by Aniplex, the copyright holder of this TV anime series, and its parent company Sony Music Entertainment which are famous for their very oppositive attitude against online creations. NND users have been recording their deletion campaigns to niconico Pedia article^[5] in a negative tone.

Although there are more than 4,000 videos of fan creations for this song on NND^[6], many of them are sometimes forced to die because they still continue brutal deletions.

Notable Examples

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

Dancing Covers

Music Performances / Singing Covers

MAD/Parody Videos

Search Interest

External References

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