Commercial success could not mask the decline of the otaku culture itself.
The dance area of Station B is being occupied by the Blue V Enterprises, which is nothing new.
Under the leadership of China Unicom, the official number of many companies' B stations has tried to narrow the distance between themselves and a new generation of users through the home dance video. "House Dance" has become a traffic password that enterprise operators have accidentally discovered, and no partition can be occupied by Blue V like here.
You'll never guess who posted the next house dance video you see
But why is the dance district a breakthrough?
Most people do not know that the house dance, which has always been regarded as one of the representatives of the original content of station B, is becoming one of the most unpopular types of creation of station B.
Other types of user-made content are submitted to 999+ every morning, leaving the dance area and the bottom ghost animal area
It is precisely for this reason that the official numbers are given the opportunity to "take advantage of the void".
In the past decade, "House Dance" has experienced the development from scratch, from niche to brilliant, and even changed the lives of many people. But unconsciously, it has come to the end of life.
1
"Otaku dance" originated in Japan, which is both correct and inaccurate.
Around 2008, some UP owners who uploaded videos of themselves dancing began to appear on NicoNico, a Japanese bullet screen website that was still in its nascent stage. They would label their videos as "ってみた" to the effect of "try jumping." The performances they recorded are also like this label, not so much dance, but rather swinging their bodies to the music at home, not to mention square dance, maybe even radio gymnastics.
A precious image of early human beings tamed by dance via ニコ麻呂
For example, performers usually wear sunglasses masks or hoods, most of the accompaniments chosen are theme music of anime games, and the costumes usually have a strong ACG style... On the contrary, it unconsciously formed a performance style, in later words, that is, these performances are very "two-dimensional".
In fact, most of the content that these uploaders jumped also came from the dance sections in the animation works. Due to the production restrictions of animation, the dance sections of the characters in the animation are usually simple and repetitive, and the movements are exaggerated, although they are somewhat awkward, but they are self-contained and easy to imitate.
The classic awkward dance in Conan's early theme song "Love is an Adventure" is one of the representatives
The group dance "Sunny Day Good Mood" in "The Melancholy of Spring in Lianggong" has pushed this type of dance to a new height, and even become a cultural phenomenon.
The well-known Akihabara group danced a flash mob in 2007, and finally everyone scattered due to the appearance of the police
The group dance makes everyone realize that although these dances in the animation are not exquisite, they can be taken to the real world to dance. The number of submissions for "Try Dancing" gradually increased, and after that, there were also some fan works choreographed by netizens themselves, such as "(9) Dance" and "Yarana Card", but the choreography was still slightly jerky.
Thanks to the vigorous vitality of the ACG culture itself, this barbaric era did not last long.
Readers who know a little about the video site Niconico must know that Nico's early developments were closely related to vocaloid, the arranger behind Hatsune Mirai. Thanks to Vocaloid's open copyright policy, a large number of private producers are actively involved in Vocaloid music creation, and most of them will choose Nico to publish their own works, and Vocaloid-related derivative works have become an important part of Nico's community content.
Yonezu Genshi is a musician who came from Nico to make V-songs
With a wild programmer Higuchi Yu developed a software called black technology MMD (MikumikuDance), this program allows users to easily and conveniently use ready-made models to choreograph Hatsune Mirai, but also allows netizens who know nothing about music to participate in the creation of Hatsune Future fan works.
MMD's early unanimously recognized excellent work "Interstellar Flight"
MMD creation and "try to jump" complement each other and develop rapidly together. Excellent performers such as Aikawa began to stand out, and her submission of "Luka Luka Night Fever", known as "Nico's Treasure" with its excellent original choreography, has repeatedly topped the single-day hit list, taking the popularity of the "Try Dancing" label to a new level.
This dance was later seen as the origin of the house dance
Then the pro "Hatsune Mirai - Katsuhime Project" appeared.
Originally logged into the PSP platform, the game "Hatsune ミク-Project DIVA", hereinafter referred to as "Katsuhime Project"
It's a rhythm game of music that seems unremarkable today, with players following the beat and entering the corresponding commands, and the virtual singer on the screen dances with it. But at the time, it was the first game featuring Hatsune Mirai, and the first time fans saw Hatsune Mirai record a lot of dance performances for songs he sang like a real idol.
Of course, the MV in the game is not made with MMD, but uses motion capture and fine tuning, which is not something that ordinary enthusiasts can simply complete. However, a large number of choreographers in this set of games establish this type of style routine, and provide many simple and studious but smart and cute basic action combinations, which brings examples and inspiration to subsequent creators.
Kokura, who later became a voice actress, is the motion capture model of Hatsune Mirai in "The Katsuhime Project"
Deeply influenced by the "Goji Project", under the label of "Try Dancing", a large number of UP masters who jumped and adapted the dance in the game began to appear, no longer just randomly jumping, and gradually really had the appearance of "dance area".
2
Nico has thrived, and naturally has accumulated users from China. In order to break down language barriers and let more people see their favorite videos, some of them spontaneously downloaded these videos and uploaded them to video websites such as "Tudou" and "Youku" in China, and then spread them through channels such as renren network and the emerging A station, which were still in the limelight at that time, becoming the first batch of "porters".
But at that time, the most moved of course was the video related to animation variety shows and film and television dramas, and "try to jump" still belonged to the section that did not pay much attention.
In 2008, a UP owner nicknamed "Ma Qin" submitted her first dance video at Nico, which was "Star Flight" by Ranka Lee, the heroine of "Chrono Fortress F".
Ma Qin has a certain jazz dance foundation and reproduces the cuteness of this dance. But what attracts her more attention than the level of dance is the exaggerated horse head cover she wears.
Cute costumes are paired with a head cover that creates a huge contrast
No one in the audience at the time could have predicted that this spoofy girl would have a profound impact on the otaku culture from Japan to China.
At the beginning of the submission, Ma Qin, like other UP masters, mainly flipped some animations and dances in "The Goji Project". Until the anime "The Story of Transformation" aired.
Even if the new generation of animation audiences do not know much about how popular this work was, they must have heard one of the theme songs, "Love Cycle" sung by Kaori Hanazawa, a song that has become popular several times today.
Among the animations produced in the 21st century, the sales of discs of "The Story of Transformation" have been ranked first for more than a decade
On the day of her 20th birthday, Ma Qin submitted a dance video of the original choreographer "Love Loop".
A video that opened an era
This dance was simply an impactful work in Nico at the time. On the one hand, most of the other contributors were still flipping "The Katsuhime Project", adapting the popular anime tracks enough to make people shine; in addition, this was also a rare original dance on Nico at that time, choreographed by the head of Ma Qin's dance troupe, and its completion was no less than that of the works in the "Katsuhime Project".
Ma Qin's "Love Loop" soon exceeded one million plays, which could be called "legend" at that time. Other dancers also began to flip the dance, occupying most of the Nico homepage.
The success of the dance even feeds back into the animation work itself. A few years later, the follow-up work "Pseudo Story" of "The Story of The Monogatari" was broadcast, and the production team took the initiative to choreograph a similar style of dance for the theme song "Platinum Disco", which successfully set off a trend again.
"Platinum Disco" has also become a classic song in the otaku dance circle, which is a later story
Unfortunately, due to the music copyright issues involved, Ma Qin's original video and a large number of flips were deleted overnight. But at this time, this "Love Cycle" has already crossed the ocean and lit up the flame of China's "house dance" culture on the other side.
Compared with the dance music of the earlier electronic singer, the vocal "Love Cycle" naturally has a wider spread, successfully breaking through the original small circle and becoming the enlightenment of domestic house dance culture. In addition to Ma Qin, the small popular performers such as Nosebleed Hime, Foot Tai, and Ai chuan on Nico have gradually gained fans in Japan.
At that time, the video clip of ma Qin, Nosebleed Hime, Ai chuan, and Shen Long Ji was the most widely disseminated
The term and concept of "otaku" has never been formed in Japan, but in order to achieve better communication, porters began to try to name this style of video. In fact, before the popularization of the name "house dance", "meng dance" is a more commonly used term, and the reason is very simple: because it is a dance danced by a cute girl, it is referred to as a cute dance.
The House Dance Bar was not established until 2011
However, with the gradual increase in the number of related videos that have been moved to China, everyone has gradually found that there are not many male dancers, and female performers are not all selling cute styles. However, most of the works are filmed indoors, and the works are also full of strong ACG cultural atmosphere, and the pun of "house dance" has gradually gained consensus.
In this way, a niche activity that is still relatively loose in Japan and does not even have a fixed statement has developed rapidly into a unique community in The country. People who dance "Love Cycle" begin to appear from time to time at various comic exhibitions, and there are also domestic home dance contributors such as tuberose, CHIRORO, and biting cats on video websites. The audience spontaneously formed a set of criteria for judging "house dance", and will discuss what kind of house dance is considered and what kind of performance is excellent house dance.
Although it started late, due to the low threshold for getting started and the good effect of the program, the house dance soon occupied an important position in the domestic ACG cultural activities like COSPLAY and anime song cover songs.
Later, the jumping boom brought about by the popularity of "Love Live!" further promoted the development of the domestic otaku dance circle
3
In the years after the popularity of "Love Cycle", both Japanese and domestic otaku dance circles can be said to have entered a golden age of development.
In 2010, when Nico held an offline event, it held a separate special event "D@NCE M@STER" for "Try To Jump", with an audience of 110,000 people, which became a reserved program every year after that.
"D@NCE M@STER" once represented the highest stage of this circle
The exchange and interaction between the UP masters has also increased, and the arrangement and combination have formed various societies, and many popular choreography works have also emerged.
A group of UP owners have successfully signed a debut and stepped onto a broader stage.
Nosebleed Ji, Ai Chuan, Minjia Li and others formed the dance group DANCEROID, which was a set of classic singing costumes in the house dance circle of that year
On the one hand, up masters are going offline, and on the other hand, artists are trying to embrace the Internet.
It was also in this year that idol-turned-out Mizuhashi had just experienced the dissolution of her first group, and she began to use her new stage name Maria to submit her cover video on Nico, and thus met another composer, and the two formed the music group GARNideLiA.
The relatively solid level of the water bridge dance has accumulated a certain popularity in Nico's singing section, and it is active as a "music UP master". But two years later, on a whim, she went back to her old business, choreographing her song "Girls" and submitting it to "Try Dancing."
Mizuhashi Dance co-authored "Girls" with two other UP main silver-haired women and 217
This has clearly become another "pro-player competition".
Even aside from off-site factors such as costume photography and the typhoon expressiveness of performers, the choreography and positioning of this dance have been far higher than the average amateur level, and there is no suspense that it has become the treasure of Nico's new generation of town stations.
Mizuhashi became a benchmark in Nico's dance field, and she later released dances with a frequency close to the annual change, which almost always caused a craze in the station. In 2016, she submitted her new video, "Pure Land of Bliss", as scheduled.
From costume styling to dance choreography, "Pure Land of Bliss" combines Japanese elements such as Yoshihara Hanaku, which is more distinctive than the previous works that simply take the sexy and feminine route, and the response is far more than ever.
The "Butterfly Step" is the most iconic movement of this dance
At this time, the domestic otaku dance circle has also become a climate, accompanied by a large number of flippers to follow up, "Pure Land of Bliss" caused by the heat is no less than the Japanese mainland, known as a generation of "poisonous songs", cover songs and flips of the video in an endless stream, attacking the home page of the AB station.
"Pure Land of Bliss" has been raised to new heights in both China and Japan, "Try Dancing" and "House Dance", making it more widely known and accepted, but also allowing long-accumulated contradictions to surface
4
It is not difficult for everyone to find that the style of these dances that are popular at this time is very different from the "house dance" recognized earlier, but it is getting closer and closer to the Japanese and Korean pop girl group dance.
For domestic fans who were in contact with house dance earlier, such a development is obviously not what they expected, and the users of ab stations at first will even reject the release or porting of korean girl groups' dances to the dance area. In their view, these performances that deviate from the ACG culture and take the sexy route do not belong to the "house" dance.
But in the end, the positioning of "simple and studious" house dance threshold is low, the upper limit is also very low, not only the audience is prone to aesthetic fatigue, as long as the performers have a little pursuit of their own growth, it will naturally develop in a more popular and more professional direction.
The concept of "otaku dance" has never been formed in Japan, but there is no similar baggage. However, with the continuous improvement of the overall level of the plate, the choreography is becoming more and more complex and changeable, and the performers' makeup and costumes and photography are also becoming more and more exquisite in the later stage, and they have long been not wearing masks on their balconies to "try to dance" on the computer camera.
Don't say that newcomers have to retreat after watching such a battle, even if they are veterans who have followed all the way, non-professional performers have already touched their own ceilings.
What's more, the cost of these Japanese UP masters is rising, but they don't get a corresponding return.
On the one hand, Nico itself has encountered a bottleneck in development and has never been able to find a good way to generate income. Community recession user loss, assisting UP owners to seek monetization is of course impossible to talk about, UP owners have switched to YouTube, at the cost of losing the community atmosphere accumulated by Nico. Dancers who go offline have no advantage in the face of Japan's developed physical idol industry, and can only survive in the cracks, and even the most successful DANCEROID disbanded after five years of ups and downs.
The group "FNSD" formed by Ma Qin appeared on the variety show not because of the house dance, but flipped the "GEE" of Girls' Generation
Such fatigue was revealed as early as 2015 when the D@nce M@ster activities were suspended, but it is better to say that the emergence of the Waterbridge Dance has given the entire ecology a shot in the arm. But even if she herself, although she signed Sony to become a debut singer again, her subsequent works were obviously subject to "Pure Land of Bliss", the style was solidified, but it failed to reproduce the same success.
When we look back in 2021, the glory of "trying to jump" is no longer what it was then, and there are only about twenty or thirty new submissions on Nico every day. Most of the UP owners who participated in the dance performances of this year's Nico super conference had even only 4-figure fans.
Some of the dancers who became famous at that time still adhered to the path of dance and acting, such as Foot Tai and Nosebleed Hime, and there were also dancers like Ma Qin, who were still active on the Internet but had long turned to other careers.
During the recent Golden Week in Japan, Foota participated in a performance at the Nico Super Conference, and Ma Qin, who transformed into a self-driving tour podcast, posted her new video
Compared with these well-known dancers, the experience of the little UP masters is even more lamentable.
A UP owner who was discovered as an idol because of the release of dance videos published a blog post when he retired last year, confessing that he actually did not want to become an idol at all, originally just liked to dance, but was encouraged to become an idol by mistake, and the result was that he was not good at what he did not like.
のらくら: "I hate idols, I don't like idols as a profession"
The tide recedes, and perhaps the majority of people who return to a peaceful life after experiencing the hustle and bustle like this have become a sweet or bitter interlude in their lives, and they themselves have become a shooting star in the lives of fans.
5
At the same time, house dance has shown a booming scene in China. The dance area of domestic bullet screen websites has accounted for an absolute majority of carrying videos from the beginning, and gradually divided into autumn colors, and now it is difficult to find traces of overseas videos.
With the growth of Station B, the otaku dance area, as one of the representatives of the original content of the community, has naturally become more and more lively.
Compared with the Japanese dancers on Nico, the popular UP masters of the B station house dance area have business cooperation opportunities online, and offline benefit from the squeeze of the traditional idol industry, there are all kinds of large and small comic exhibitions to earn appearance fees, and even if they accumulate a certain popularity, they can also transform the anchor in situ after accumulating a certain amount of popularity to earn some tips, and the monetization channels brought by the traffic economy can be described as rich and diverse. Not only the head UP owners who eat meat have become professional, the small UP masters have also eaten soup to drink as a part-time job, and some old predecessors have long been transformed into brokers to operate their own teams.
It's just that commercial success can't mask the decline of otaku culture itself.
The lack of excellent original choreography has always been the shortcoming of the domestic otaku dance circle, although there are also local works such as "Rainbow Beat" and "Mangzhong" that have become popular under the official push, but the Nico dance has always occupied the mainstream. When the "try to dance" gradually declined, the domestic otaku dance circle also lost the supply of new choreography.
Today's B station house dance area is like Nico in 2008, everyone relies on the ready-made dance materials provided by animation works such as "Spell Return" ending song and "Secretary Dance", or devotes to the "New Treasure Island Macho Dance" and "Two Tigers Love to Dance" such as the pure "sand sculpture dance". The only difference is that everyone has exquisite makeup, gorgeous sets, high-end photography equipment and post-production, but this also discourages fans who generally just want to try to jump.
When everyone's content is the same, and the standard is not high or low, it is naturally only left to see whose cover is more sexy, and who has more gimmicks and will be more whole. Thus there was a scene of operators occupying the dance area.
Today's B station dance area is difficult to know what the contributor is dancing just by looking at the title
So will the domestic otaku dance circle usher in its own creative boom like Nico did in that year? No one knows the answer.
6
For a long time, there have been many people who have scorned otaku dance.
In the eyes of the public, house dance represents a pseudo-performance of selling meat, kitsch, no beauty and professionalism to speak of, and there is no dance at all.
In the eyes of anime fans, these otaku dances have long since departed from otaku culture and have become another invasion and appropriation of niche hobbies by "cash-fillers".
It is not only the house dance that faces such a dilemma. V House Music, MAD, MMD... As the Internet becomes more and more lively, these vibrant fandoms of a decade ago are weakening, and the otaku dance, which at least retains basic popularity, is considered the lucky one.
Of course, we can also look at this matter optimistically. "House dance" itself may only be a stage of development of the network ecology, is the specialty of the vanilla era, with the development and popularization of information technology, it will inevitably move from "grassroots" to professional, from the niche to the mainstream, in China and Japan. Nowadays, in addition to the house dance, the dance area of station B also has more and more professional performances, from popular to ethnic, from classical to modern, after all, so that more dance lovers have a platform to show exchange and learn. For those who truly love the activity of "house dance", the accumulation of more than ten years has left a rich legacy.
The "house dance" that has fulfilled its historical mission may one day be the same as the "cute dance", and even the name is gradually forgotten. Or on the contrary, only a title of "house dance" is left, but its performance content can no longer find the original trace.
The times have always moved forward, and no one will really want to go back to the era of intermittently watching low-definition videos by small water pipes, and everyone is nostalgic for the first time on the Internet thousands of miles apart but meet with the same friend.
Eleven years later, Aikawa danced the song "Luka Luka Night Fever" in the same room, which is regarded as the origin of otaku dance.