About

"Fukkireta" (Japanese: 吹っ切れた) refers to a series of hand-drawn animated videos of characters either swaying their hips to or bobbing their heads while singing a denpa-inspired song. A massive amount of parody and remix videos were produced by users of Nico Nico Douga after the initial animations were uploaded to the site in May of 2010, becoming an immediate sensation on the video-sharing site during the Summer of that year.

Origin

The dance parody series was originally sparked by two animated videos created by animator and Vocaloid producer Lamaze-P (ラマーズP), the first being shared to Niconico on May 10th, 2010. The animation features the character known as "8toushin", an offspring of the Mona Shift-JIS art family, suggestively swinging its hips to an instrumental version of "Ochame Kinou" (おちゃめ機能, lit. Mischievous Function), an original song created by Lamaze-P under his pseudonym Gojimaji-P (ゴジマジP). The video's title, "Fukkireta", is the past simple & present perfect simple tense of "Fukkiru" (吹っ切れる). The literal translation is "to blow out" or "break through" but is figuratively interpreted as a colloquial expression equivalent to "getting rid of a thorn in the eye" or to simply “blow off one’s worries” in Japanese.

The next day, Lamaze-P uploaded a video^[1] featuring Kasane Teto^[2] (重音テト), a Vocaloid-inspired character from the freeware vocal software UTAU, for the first time. Partially inspired by an animated music video of his song uploaded to Niconico the month prior (shown below, left), the monochrome video shows Teto bobbing her head side-to-side to her song. On May 12th, user Riotto-P uploaded a colorized version of his animation,^[3] and in response, Lamaze posted a 30 second version of his video titled "Note: Lamaze-P Is Terminated" (shown below, right). In this version, Teto is shown singing while 8toushin is featured in the bottom left acting as a metronome.

The song "Ochame Kinou" is in a style known as a "Denpa Song" (電波ソング)^[4], where the harmony and rhyming of the lyrics are primary to the song having any intelligibility. Even in the native Japanese, the song is rather incoherent but this particular song is more or less about one-sided love.

Lamaze-P

Lamaze-P is a Japanese music composer who specializes in producing with the Vocaloid vocal synthesizer.^[5] Since 2008, he has been known as a major figure on Niconico, with his works like Geddan and Hakata-san sparking animation fads that became well known on the Japanese and English-speaking web. Outside his animated works, he also considered as one of the many influential producers who helped popularize Hatsune Miku and the Vocaloid software outside Japan by producing some of the most infectious hits for Miku like "PoPiPo" and "Triple Baka".

Spread

The short but infectious videos were major hits with Niconico users, with the 8toushin video being viewed more than 2.8 million times while the 30 second Teto video gained over 850 thousand videos in the seven years since their uploads. In part due to the videos' simple animations and Lamaze-P's already established presence on Niconico, users on the site began creating their own parodies with various characters on the same day as the first video's posting. At first, users were creating their parodies with the 3D software Miku Miku Dance, with the earliest being a video of Teto dancing, which was uploaded on May 10th. When the Teto version was uploaded, Lamaze-P shared the source animation data of his two videos,^[6] for which animators began utilizing the Teto template to create their own head-bobbing videos. One of the first of these videos was created by Niconico user Ako (アコ) on May 15th, where it featured K-on! character Himeko Tachibana. This animation would go to be viewed more than 1.1 million times as of May 2017.

Meanwhile, the original Teto video was later extended and fully colorized by Niconico user F91 and uploaded to the site on May 15th. This version is widely considered as the definitive video for the song, attaining over a million views in November of 2013.

Utattemita

Around the same time, users belonging to the site's vocal cover movement Utattemita (歌ってみた; I tried to sing) began trying to perform their own takes of the song featured in the videos. These are oftentimes straight covers or parodies mimicking various anime characters with animations relating to that specific character. One of the most popular covers of the song was performed by Niconico singer Lon (ろん)^[7] and was shared to the site on May 20th, 2010. Her smooth performance of the song garnered immediate praise by users on the site with the cover attaining over a million views in just two weeks and later surpassing Lamaze-P's versions. As of May 2017, it currently stands as being the most-watched video on Niconico's Utattemita category, with it receiving more than 12.6 million views.

Odottemita

Niconico users belong to the dance choreography hub known as Odottemita (踊ってみた, I tried to dance) also began producing dance covers based on the original 8toushin animation. The earliest was arranged by Niconico dancers Guri-ko (ぐり子), Kinako (きなこ), and nia (にあ) and was uploaded to the site by user nanashi^[8] (ななし) on May 30th, 2010. The dance video has since been viewed more than 497 thousand times and help inspire dancers to perform their own covers of this style, some with large number of participants.

Over two thousand animated parodies had since been posted Niconico^[9] within its first month, and over three thousand overall as of May 2017, while many more had been re-uploaded and created on YouTube.^[10]

Various Examples

World's End Dancehall Mashups

On May 18th, 2010, Niconico user Shura (修羅) took the original 8toushin animation and swapped the music to "World's End Dancehall", a Vocaloid dance-rock song produced by wowaka. The mashup was well received with users on the site and spawned a number of parodies^[11], most featuring characters from the Touhou Project series, since it's upload, some being watched over a hundred thousand times.

Rikka's Finger Spin Parodies

The song "Ochame Kinou" was later used in a another style of Fukkireta featuring the Finger Spin motions performed by character Rikka Takanashi, taken from the opening credits of the 2012 anime Chuunibyou Demo Koi Ga Shitai. Created and uploaded to Niconico by user 01 on October 12th, 2012, the video would inspire many other parodies in this style under the Shift-JIS emoticon "（σ回ω・）σ←↖↑↗→↘↓↙←↖↑↗".^[12]

Search Interest

External References

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