Shuzo Matsuoka

About

Shuzo Matsuoka is a now-retired Japanese professional tennis player, perhaps best known for his appearance at the Wimbledon quarter-finals in 1995. Since his retirement, Matsuoka has become a popular television sports commentator in Japan. He hosts the “Shuzo Challenge”, an annual tennis camp for young children run by the Japan Tennis Association. Shuzo is mostly known for his motivating and energetic character.

Origin

In 2008, he was featured in ten commercials, tying him with actor Takuya Kimura for most commercial appearances in Japan that year. Most of these commercials are still available on his website.

Most of the popularity Shuzo received was due to the short videos where he motivates people to life in a rather impressive and passionate way, shown in this next video:

Derivatives

Over the next year, many MAD movies were uploaded to Japanese video site Nico Nico Douga. Many of them were then re-uploaded to YouTube at a later date.

Remix with Tohno Youkai Front, October 2008 on NND, January 2010 on YouTube:

Remix with Night of Nights, November 2008 on NND, March 2009 on YouTube:

Featuring Lucky Star’s Opening, December 2008 on YouTube:

Kirby’s Sand Canyon, March 2009 on YouTube:

Remix with Can Can. The subtitles are comments called Nico Nico Art, July 2009 on YouTube:

In September 2009, a user uploaded a video called “A Man of the Highest Heat,” a 26 and a half minutes MAD featuring nearly all the Touhou project music. An account with Nico Nico Douga is required to watch the entire video, but parts were uploaded to YouTube in October 2009:

Shuzo Matsuoka’s reaction

In October 2009, Shuzo Matsuoka got interviewed on Japanese magazine Tennis Magazine about his Internet fame in MADs and remixes :

Translation :

About the videos reusing Konnna Anata Ni

There is no end to the number of people who make remixes reusing the Konna Anata Ni videos from my official website and post them to video sharing services.
I’ll never forgive people who modify my earnest videos by preference and laugh it out! ---- I’m joking, I don’t get angry about this at all. I am surprised and I say to! myself “Wow, it’s amazing!” when I watch those videos.
I also want to congratulate the people behind the well-done remixes. They are marvelous!! At the same time, I hope the lower-quality ones will get more efforts made into it.
I appreciate people making these videos with my heart and soul.
I think we should make more epic videos for you to be able to make more better remixes.

Robert’s potential

Robert’s potential (ロバートの将来性 – Robert no Shouraisei) is a sub-meme coming from a short footage of one of Shuzo’s videos shot in San Francisco’s harbor in which he mischievously and suddenly asked one of his crew member, a young guy, to explain, in Japanese and in less than 5 secondes, the making-of they were shooting.

It was later revealed that his name is Robert (ロバート) and that he was a TV crew member of Japanese TV show 食いしん坊バンザイ (lit. Viva big eater) hosted by Shuzo.
His funny reaction and weak moan/shout, for he had no speech prepared for what he was asked for, making him great MAD material, first appeared in the full video of the show, uploaded to Nico Nico Douga on October 21 2008 [Registration Required].

That led to about 130 videos made of him [Registration Required] on Nico Nico Douga alone.

Here are a few examples from Youtube:

ROBERT_ZONE

Kirby’s Gourmet Race Remixes

ロバートのことなんかぜんぜん好きじゃないんだからねっ！

Following Shuzo Matsuoka MADs’ popularity, Robert become part of it as some sort of accompaniment in his MADs:

Mashup with “Waxing and Wanding” by Beatmania, June 2009 on NND, December 2009 on YouTube:

Remix with Hartmann’s Youkai Girl, December 2009 on both NND and YouTube: