About

Balsamic Vinegar (Japanese: バルサミコ酢, Barusamiko Su), is a catchphrase coined by Tsukasa Hiiragi in a Japanese TV anime series Luck Star. The quite cute note of this phrase had been a very popular subject for parodies in the early days of the MAD video phenomena on the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND).

Origin

The remark "Balsamic Vinegar" is uttered by Tsukasa in the 5th episode of the TV anime aired in May, 2007. In the scene, she got addicted to the feeling of the phrase from a TV informercial which was strangely emphasising "Su"'s accent, and uttered it repeatedly to enjoy its sound.

Kaori Fukuhara^[1], the voice actor for Tsukasa, revealed that scene was an ad-lib of her in an interview uploaded to the official information page for Lucky Star in June of that year.^[2]

Spread

Lucky Star the most popular TV anime among Otaku in that year also took the part to bring the first light to the dawn of NND's MAD video phenomena. NND users had been sampling many remarkable phrases and scenes from the show and utilizing them in video parodies from 2007 to 2008. In those instances, Tsukasa's "Balsamic Vinegar" was a very popular resource as well as Tsukasa Plays the Recorder scene in the 8th episode and her "Penis" (ちんちん, TinTin; abbr. TNTN) remark in the 15th episode.^[3] Because of this, Tukasa had sometimes triggered fads of new musical resources in NND's MAD video scene. For example, A Touhou Project song "(K)night of (K)nights" became to a popular musical resource by the help of Tsukasa's MAD video in late 2008 (shown below).

Notable Examples

Search Interest

Google insights shows this cooking vinegar (バルサミコ酢) has large peaks during the on-air period of Lucky Star.

External References

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