About

What's Up, People?! is the second opneing theme song for a Japanese anime series of Death Note by a Japanese heavy metal band Maximum The Hormone.^[1] Its movie was a popular subject for parody videos on Nico Nico Douga (NND).

Origin

The second opening movie featuring this song started after the 26th episode in the animation series aired in 2007, and it featured high peaced and psychedelic scenes from the anime to keep up with the song, witch many fans found misplaced and unfitting to the rest of the series.

The Death Note anime episodes is well known for its slow paced and complex tone compared to other animes, thats why the second opening of the series called so much attention.

Then, people found it should be funny to replace the video with other animes unfitting as well for some comedic value. And then a meme was born.

Spread

2007 was a year of progress for MAD/parody videos because NND was launched and video sharing services spreaded rapidly to the people, and many anime/manga were reused as a resource for them. "What's up people?!" parody video was just one of them. Under this situation, the series of parody videos for this opening movie got much attention due to its incorporation of the high popularity of the original anime/manga series.

However, because the copyright holders, VAP and Recording Industry Association of Japan^[2], have importunately continued deleting parody videos for DEATH NOTE since 2009, the momentum of the series on NND was completely devastated.

As of January 2012, the amount of videos related to this song on NND is only 100.^[3]

On YouTube

As the copyright holder's claim is less effective on YouTube than that on NND, several reuploaded videos in this series are kept alive on there. And several parody videos by westerners can be found.

Notable Examples

NO U Guy/Egashira 2:50: エガノート～EGA★NOTE～^[4]

Donald McDonald – Ran Ran Ru: Dona NOTE^[5]

Westerners Draw

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: Death Note – What's Up Haruhi

Spongebob Squarepants: dEATH sPONGE nOTE pANTS Opening

Search Interest

External References

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