About
Motteke! Sailor Fuku (Japanese: もってけ！セーラーふく; English: Take It! Sailor Uniform) is the opening theme song of the Japanese TV anime series Lucky Star. The cute and well-made animation has been a subject for fan works and parodies mostly uploaded to the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND).
Origin
The TV anime series for Lucky Star was aired in Japan from April to September in 2007, which was produced by Kyoto Animation. Its opening theme “Motteke! Sailor Fuku” was a typical “Denpa Music” style song composed by Satoru_Kōsaki[1], famous for his many anime/game songs including THE iDOLM@STER series and The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It was sung by voice actors of the main characters in the anime: Aya Hirano,[2] Emiri Katō,[3] Kaori Fukuhara,[4] and Aya Endō.[5] Besides, Kyoto Animation produced a cute and smooth animated dance in the movie, as well as Hare Hare Yukai in their previous work The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. This dance was partly performed in the opening movie (shown below, left), and its full version appeared in the last episode aired on September 16th, 2007 (shown below, right).
Spread
Similar to the Hare Hare Yukai, both the full dance and the opening animation have spawned numerous parodies and live action performances with the help of Kadokawa’s accommodating attitude to fan creations on the web.[6][7] In addition, the popularity of these gave rise to other memetic material such as Timotei and Lucky Star’s version of Paffendorf Dance.
User-made Buying Campaign
Many Japanese anime Otaku inspired by this song began an online campaign that attempted to give the highest rank in Oricon weekly music sales chart[8] to the first-week sales of this song’s CD released in May 24th, 2007. In the background, there were Otaku people’s strong complaints against Japanese popular music scene that had looked down on anime-related songs and given them wanton treatment in music programs even though they ranked in top 10 in sales charts in those days.
They launched a wiki page for this campaign titled “Let’s Go to the Top of Oricon Chart with Lucky Star!”.[9] They called on each other to join the campaign via NND, 2Channel and Japanese social network service mixi. A large number of people had joined offline meet-ups for buying the CD or performing the opening dance, which were held in several Japanese cities, and these were reported by blog media.[10][11]
Offline Meet-up Photos
Dance Performance Photo & Video
Finally, “Motteke! Sailor Fuku” sold 65,907 copies in its first week--quite remarkable sales as an anime song in those days--but lost to a Japanese idol group by 2,000 copies, ranking 2nd in Oricon’s single CD sales chart for that week.[12] Bandai Visual, the parent company of a publisher of this song, published a press release announcing these unbelievable sales the following day,[13] as did several online news sites.[14]
Notable Examples
Dance Performances
Parodies
Left: Touhou Project[15] | Right: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya[16]
Left: Ran Ran Ru[17] | Right: Final Fantasy[18]
Search Interest
External References
[1]Wikipedia – Satoru Kōsaki
[2]Wikipedia – Aya Hirano
[3]Wikipedia – Emiri Katō
[4]Wikipedia – Kaori Fukuhara
[6]niconico Video – Search results for もってけ！セーラーふく
[7]YouTube – Search results for もってけ！セーラーふく
[9]livedoor Wiki – 「らき☆すたをオリコン1位にしよう」まとめサイト (Japanese)
[10]Akiba Souken – アキバで大規模な「らき☆すた」祭！ 「もってけ！セーラーふくをみんなで買おうオフ」本番の様子 / 05-23-2007 (Japanese)
[11]オタロードBlog – もってけ！セーラーふくをみんなで買おうオフin大阪日本橋 ダンスOFFはギャラリーもいっぱい / 05-23-2007 (Japanese)
[12]ORICONSTYLE– 今週の注目ランキングトピック一覧！ / 05-29-2007 (Japanese)
[13]Bandai Visual – シングルＣＤ『もってけ！セーラーふく』 ウィークリーオリコンチャート2位の大ヒットを記録！ / 05-30-2007 (pdf, Japanese)
[14]Akiba Souken – 「もってけ！セーラーふく（「らき☆すた」OP曲）」オリコン週間ランキング初登場2位！ 初動はなんと6.6万枚！05-30-2007 (Japanese)
[15]B茄子屋 – 花映☆塚OP「撃ってけ！妖精編隊」11-11-2007
[16]niconico Video – らき☆すた＋涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱（完成版） / Posted on 06-10-2008
[17]niconico Video – 『らき☆すた』の世界にドナルド達が遊びにきました【完全版】 / Posted on 02-10-2008
[18]niconico Video – 【汚部屋☆４７】もってけ！セーラー服を踊ってみた。 / Posted on 12-25-2007