Rolling Series

About

"Rolling Series", also known as "Rolling with Rolling Girl" (Japanese: ローリングガール転がってみた, Rolling Girl Korogatte Mita) on the Japanese net, refer to a series of hand-drawn animated videos of characters rolling down a hill to the song "Rolling Girl", a Vocaloid-produced rock song written by Japanese musician wowaka.^[1] These parody animations were created by users of Nico Nico Douga after the initial fan video of the song was uploaded to the video-sharing site in the Summer of 2010.

Origin

The animated parody series first kicked-off by an animated fan-video created by Niconico user Gagame (ががめ) and uploaded to the site on August 31st, 2010 in celebration of the three year anniversary of the release of the Hatsune Miku Vocaloid software. The animation features Miku rolling down a hill and performing dramatic flips and acrobatic moves while set to a cover version of her song "Rolling Girl", performed by Niconico singer Korosuke^[2] (転少女) (shown below, left). The animation was later re-uploaded the next day with revisions being made in the video and audio swapped with the original "Rolling Girl" song (shown below, right).

Spread

Vocaloid fans and regular user on Niconico were immediately fascinated by the animations after their uploads, with the first receiving over 710 thousand views and the second getting over 590 thousand. Before long, animators on Niconico began creating their own parodies featuring characters from anime, manga, and video game series. These animations often feature single characters, while others showcasing an all-star cast, doing so by transitioning each character during their dramatic acrobatic stunts. One of the earliest to use that style, according to Nico Nico Pedia^[3], was a Hetalia parody video created by user Moru (もる) and shared to the site on September 12th, where it would be watched more than 72 thousand times.

Meanwhile, Gagaru went on to remake his original animation and uploaded to Niconico and YouTube^[4] exactly a year later to celebrate Miku's fourth anniversary. This animation has been viewed more 139 thousand times on Niconico and became another template for animators to parody. Over 600 parody animation has since been shared to Niconico^[5] as over May 2017 with made having been re-uploaded to YouTube.^[6]

Notable Examples

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.