Domo-Kun is the name of an undeniably strange japanese children's show which has attained some degree of cult worship overseas. It seems to be live-action puppet/body suit work, and should frighten any sane child out of his or her mind, if simply because of its sheer oddity.

The title character is a refrigerator-shaped brown monster with a huge rectangular mouth that never closes. As best the english-speaker may infer from observing an episode of the program, Domo-Kun hatched from an egg, and fell into the underground home of Usajii, a rabbit of some sort.

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(courtesy of the hilariously translated domomode.com:)
DOMO is a strange creature born from an egg. One day he fell into Usajii's house,the old rabbit likes TV. After that he began to love watching TV. He is gentle and strong. When he is in a bad mood,he breaks wind.

Favorite food: Seasoned beef with potatoes
Disliked food: Apple(There seems a deep mystery in his DNA)
Favorite talent: MAX and The guitar wolf

Usajii has been living in a cave for 70 years. He loves TV and astringent tea. When he was young, he often traveled with his sweet heart,but now he is completely retired.

Favorite food: Kinds of carrot
Disliked food: A trivial thing
Favorite talent: Hijiri Kojima
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Hopefully the world is better off not knowing the true meanings of the above statements... because I'm rather sure the english-speaking world never will.

Domo-kun has recently taken part in an extremely popular, yet thankfully transient internet meme.

As everyone has no doubt already seen, a pair of Domo-kuns are lumbering after a sprinting kitten on a sun-soaked grass lawn, in a widely distributed picture. The caption at the bottom reads "Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten. Please, think of the kittens." Most likely, this was forwarded to you by a cow-orker that doesn't realize that 99.9% of email forwards are a complete waste of time, and that didn't bother to remove the previous 25 generations of forwarding headers from the email before sending it to you.

Despite this tarnishment of Domo-kun's reputation, he remains relatively obscure in most areas outside of Japan because nobody has a clue that the fuzzy, mouthed brick in the "kittens" picture is, in fact, a character on a strange children's television show.


asterphage says the "Domo chasing kitty" image was made for http://oralse.cx, a site devoted to that kitten, and was stolen for the masturbation image.

anotherone says re domo-kun: The small black rectangle part is by a guy named PsychoticPenguin. The other part, with the domo-kun was originally posted by "Cyberblood" in a Something Awful photoshop thread.

Domo-kun is a piece of crap.

No, I mean literally. He's made of poo. Seeing the videos with this knowledge puts them into a whole new light.

What's not told in many places is that Domo-kun didn't just fall into Usajii's cave; he was born there. The egg fell in and then hatched. This makes Domo-kun a baby of sorts (the ultimate dirty diaper, perhaps? Although considering that he doesn't wear clothes anyway, I don't want to think about that any further). His exploits could perhaps be best described as Rugrats on some kind of horrific cocktail of crack, methamphetamine, and a dash of rancid shrooms.

It should also be noted that the meme illustrated in the above writeups has been reversed recently. A second picture is making the rounds, with the positions of Domo-kun and the kitten (now two kittens) reversed. The caption now reads "Every time you send that fucking picture, God kills a Domo-kun. Please, think of the Domo-kuns."

どーもくん

Domo-kun was created in 1999 for a series of eighteen stop motion animated shorts commemorating the 10th anniversary of NHK's BS (broadcast satellite) service. As of this writing, all of the episodes are available on YouTube through a search for "domo-kun."

He is a big brown furry box with arms, legs and a gaping red mouth. In episode 1, he hatched from an egg which fell into the underground home of Usajii, an elderly-looking rabbit who likes to drink hot tea and watch TV all day. Domo-kun's first sight after popping out of the egg was to watch the famous NHK announcer Shizuo Yamakawa say "domo," and so he continued to mimic the word throughout the series—hence the name "Domo-kun."

The first few episodes consisted of Domo-kun and Usajii watching various types of programs, to which Domo-kun would often react in some hilarious way (jumping around to rock music, for instance) while Usajii would try to calm him down. Two bats hanging from the roof, Shinobu and Morio, provided color commentary. A fifth character was added later: Taachan, a female weasel who became friends with Domo-kun and Usajii.

Although the shorts stopped airing in 2000, Domo-kun remained very popular. He stayed on as a BS mascot until 2004, when he was replaced by a lame dog-like character named Nanami-chan. NHK would often bring a person in a Domo-kun costume to public events, and the big Domo-kun also made cameo appearances in the annual Red and White Song Battle. (Big Domo-kun speaks with a voice provided by Tessho Genda, a well-known voice actor who is often called in to dub Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.) Stuffed Domo-kuns also became popular among Japanese kids.

Then came Fark, whose readers picked up on Domo-kun early on and began using him in their popular Photoshop contests. In 2002, Farkers created an image of two Domo-kuns chasing a kitten, with the caption "Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten." The (bizarre) popularity of this image helped spread Domo-kun awareness among bored young people across the English-speaking world. b3ta, Something Awful and other sites jumped on the bandwagon as well.

The story is not over, though. In 2006, Nickelodeon announced that it was co-producing a new Domo-kun series, which will be shown on Nick before being shown on NHK in Japan. The new series will consist of 26 shorts, each 2 minutes long, and will mark the first time Nick has used a Japanese animation property since... those weird Saban shows they used to air in the late 80's. Domo-kun lovers will have much to look forward to in the near future.

Sources

  • Japanese and English Wikipedia articles
  • http://www.icv2.com/articles/home/8608.html

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