Surreal scene as dancers in Taipei club go wild for remix of Japanese Hamtaro anime theme song.

While people’s musical preferences may differ, there aren’t many people out there who don’t at least find themselves tapping their feet when a song they like comes on. In a nightclub, the right song at the right time can send everyone crazy. It’s not often though that the song that has that effect is an anime song, particularly an anime song about a anthropomorphic hamster.

Japanese Twitter user @DJamecomi recorded the instant when the remixed theme song of Hamtaro, originally a manga and now also an anime series about the eponymous hamster, his owner, and his hamster friends, came on at an event in Taiwan earlier this month.

To be fair, this spontaneous hamster song-based frenzy didn’t take place at any old nightclub, the event was part of the AkibaTokyo Project, an anime song DJ event that was thought up in Japan but started in Hong Kong in 2016 and is now making its way across East Asia, with the latest event being held in Taipei on November 18. The details of the next event have yet to be announced, but you can keep up with the project through the AkibaTokyo website. It might be some time before it makes it to Japan though, a pity now that we’re actually allowed to dance after midnight.

Since being serialised in publisher Shogakukan’s magazine Ciao, Tottoko Hamutaro has gone on to feature in manga, five anime series, four anime movies, computer games and in merchandise, and has been translated into English as Hamtaro.

▼ Hamtaro, an unlikely dance club hero

Originally aimed at the shojo young girls market, Hamtaro’s creator Ritsuko Kawai probably didn’t expect that her character would one day illicit this kind of reaction, a video that has made it into our list of favourite Taiwanese dance videos, which is a fiercely competitive list indeed.

Source, featured image: Twitter/@DJamecomi
Insert image: AkibaTokyo