Caramelldansen

Animation loop from the visual novel Popotan, today known as Caramelldansen.

Caramelldansen (misspelled Swedish for The Caramel Dance) is the first track of the album Supergott released in 2001 by the Swedish music group Caramell. It is also a popular Internet meme that started on the second half of 2006.

The fifteen frame animation loop shows Mai and Mii, characters of the Japanese visual novel Popotan (doing a hip swing dance with their hands over their heads imitating rabbit ears), and the speedup version of the song "Caramelldansen (also known as the Caramelldansen Speedycake Remix)."

History

Popotan first appeared as a Japanese PC game in December 12, 2002. After the anime was aired from July 17, 2003 to October 2, 2003, GIF animations were created from the opening of the anime where Mii is doing a solo dance. This became a loop with sound but was not so popular.

It was not long before parts from the introduction of the PC game were captured and posted as small GIF animations for people to use.

After the second half of 2005, Caramelldansen spread on the Internet in Flash archives and popular communities such as Hongfire and 4chan. Caramelldansen can be referred as the Popotan Dance or Popotan Dansen.

As the meme gained popularity, artists and fans started to copy the animation and include other characters performing the dance. The first ones were based only on the GIF animation. After Caramelldansen was released, most of the later animations were based on it.

At present day, the meme is not limited to the small Flash animation loops. 3D animation shorts have been released performing the dance, and live action videos made by fans.

Popularity

Many versions of the original Flash loop have been released, but it wasn’t till end of 2007 where an explosion of different versions spread on the Internet, distributed in different sites, such as YouTube and Japanese video-sharing site Nico Nico Douga.

At the beginning of 2008 most of the popularity of this internet meme is in Japan, Caramelldansen is known there mostly as "uma uma dance" (ウマウマダンス), because of the song chorus misheard lyrics (soramimi) of "u-u-ua-ua", ウッーウッーウマウマ (u- u- umauma, "uma" is suggested to "yummy" or "horse" in Japanese). Also part of the misheard lyrics "Dansa med oss Klappa era händer" make reference to "Barusamiko-su Yappa irahen de" ("Balsamic vinegar ain't our needs after all" in Kansai dialect) so the song has a different interpretation in Japanese than the original Swedish lyrics.

External links

• www.caramelldansen.com
• Animesuki Forums - Collection of Caramelldansen versions
• The Official Caramell Myspace page
• The Official Vasco & Millboy Myspace Page

See Also

• List of Internet phenomena
• Loituma Girl
• Star Wars kid
• Numa Numa
• O RLY?
• Edgar's fall