Ultimate Muscle Roller Legend

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About

Ultimate Muscle Roller Legend is a 3D animated short film featuring two Billy Herrington wrestlers dressed in underwear chasing after the steamroller-driving Vocaloid character Kagamine Rin.^[3] Since its release on Nico Nico Douga and YouTube in August 2009, the animation has gained much notoriety for its morphing characters and bizarre imagery.

Origin

On August 20th, 2009, the video was first uploaded online by Nico Nico Douga^[2] user あしトコ and mirror-uploaded by YouTuber SeriouslyPissedOff on the following day (shown below). In the following four years, the Nico Nico Douga upload gained over 1.26 million views and the YouTube upload garnered more than 3.61 million views.

Precursor

The animation mimics the “Bucchigiri ni Shiteageru” videos from Nico Nico Douga (shown below), which parody racing scenes from the Japanese manga and anime series Initial D with Kagamine Rin driving a steamroller from the manga series Jojos Bizarre Adventure.^[1]

Spread

On August 22nd, 2009, Redditor ThePurpleTentacle submitted the Ultimate Muscle Roller Legend video to the /r/WTF^[1] subreddit, where it received upwards of 400 up votes and 70 comments prior to being archived. On August 24th, the video was highlighted by the animation-related news blog Cartoon Brew.^[4] On February 11th, 2010, the video was featured in a Smut Cave segment on the G4TV television channel (shown below).

Sometime between 2010 and 2011, the confrontational catchphrase "Come at me, Bro" became paired with an animated GIF from the original video clip (shown below), in which Billy Herrington takes off his underwear to unveil the face of the baby Aka-san, who then shoots a purple ball of energy out of his mouth (shown below).

On April 24th, 2011, NeoGAF Forums^[6] member likeGdid posted a link to the Ultimate Muscle Roller Legend video in a discussion thread about a beta English-language version of Nico Nico Douga. On November 11th, Redditor Aldundra posted the animated GIF without any caption to the /r/WTF^[7] subreddit, where it gathered over 400 up votes and 50 comments piror to being archived. On October 6th, the pop culture blog Coed^[10] published a compilation of "come at me bro" meme examples, which featured the same animated GIF with the confrontational caption added (shown below, right). On March 16th, 2012, 2Girls1Minecraft Forums^[8] member Moojuice submitted a thread highlighting the animation. On September 15th, a page titled "Web Animation / Ultimate Muscle Roller Legend" was launched on the trope database website TV Tropes.^[5]