About
X Plays the Tambourine, also known as “Just Playing the Tambourine” (Japanese: 叩いてるだけシリーズ, Tataiteru Dake Series) in Japan, refers to a style of MAD or hand-drawn animated video that features a tambourine play in the ending movie for Japanese anime series WORKING!!, also known as Wagnaria!! in North America.[1]
This funny moving has been set to a subject for MAD videos on the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND) since late 2011.
Origin
The visual resource for this fad comes from the ending movie for the 2nd season of Working!! that was aired from October 2011 to December. It is Yamada & Souma who are playing the tambourine on background in later part of this movie.
Spread
Yamada’s surreal and provocative face expression that makes viewers a bit annoying and their unexpected groovy tambourine were caught attention among some Otaku people. Yamada & Souma’s tambourine play was uploaded to NND in October 17th, 2011 (shown below, left)[2], became a laughingstock and soon set to a subject for parodies by them. Among those parodies, the video that led to a substantial increase in popularity of the series was “Suwako Plays the Tambourine” uploaded to NND in October 24th, 2011 (shown below, right).[3] This MAD video featured Suwako Moriya from Touhou Project series.
As of January 2012, the amount of “X plays the Tambourine” videos is over 200 on NND.[4] Besides, Japanese illustrators community pixiv also has dozens of the parody illustrations tagged under this name.[5]
Notable Examples
Left: Gon-san | Right: Touhou Project
Left: THE iDOLM@STER | Right: Pokemon
External References
Editor’s Note: Registration is needed to browse the original videos listed in this section.
[2]Nico Nico Douga – 山田と相馬さんがタンバリンを叩いてるだけ / Posted on 10-17-2011
[3]Nico Nico Douga – 諏訪子がタンバリンを叩いてるだけ / Posted on 10-24-2011 (deleted)
[4]Nico Nico Douga – Search results for 叩いてるだけシリーズ
[5]pixiv – Search results for 叩いてるだけシリーズ