X is Training

About

X is Training (Japanese: ○○がトレーニング, Marumaru ga torening), sometimes translated as "X on a Treadmill", refers to a series of MAD / hand-drawn animated videos parodying the ending theme of the anime, Fight Ippatsu! Jūden-chan!!.^[1] Most of them feature fictional girls and women, some others either edited or completely made from scratch.

Origin

The anime adaption of the manga, Fight Ippatsu! Jūden-chan!! first went on the air on a pay-per-view channel, AT-X, from June 2009 to September 2009. This anime itself hasn’t been picked up its splendidness by any media in particular because it didn't catch much attention, having a low number of viewers.

Its ending sequence shows the protagonist Plug Cyrostat, jogging on a treadmill while her tiredness caused her to fall on Sento Oumi. The ending's theme titled "Please, Sweet Heart" (お願いSweet heart, Onegai Sweet Heart) was sung by Kaori Fukuhara. Despite the anime being overlooked, it later gained some attention when several people took the ending and reproduced it just for fun.

Spread

On the popular Japanese video-sharing website, Nico Nico Douga (NND), the first "X is Training" video was uploaded on July 9th, 2009.^[2] It it traced the ending sequence by Alice Margatroid, a popular character in Touhou Project.

Then, many followers referred to this and started reproducing the same video with various characters, mostly fictional female ones. The anime first ran on Jun 25th, 2009, while this meme started around two weeks later.

Currently, there are over 600 videos on NND^[3] and many of them are reuploaded to YouTube.^[4] However, the most important thing is that this MADs’ method is awfully easy, even for people who has no creative mind, skill nor talent. Therefore, this meme's first video became popular and most videos are nearly identical. Yes, many people were inspired not by its original animation’s attraction at all but by MAD’s easiness to jump in the meme's bandwagon.

Meanwhile, the one with the most views on NND was“Giant Ayanami is Training", which was uploaded on July 25th, 2009, several days after the first one that started it all, and has over 450,000 views.^[5] There are few people on NND who have creative minds, skills and talents like this video’s editor.

Notable Examples

Westerner's appeal

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

Search Interest

[Not Available]

External References

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