Interest
Urusei Yatsura, Hayate the Combat Butler Feature in Viral Video By Agricultural Equipment Company
posted on by Kim Morrissy
Agricultural equipment company Kubota has unexpectedly made a splash with anime and manga fans after making a viral music video featuring characters by five famous romantic comedy manga artists: Rumiko Takahashi (Urusei Yatsura, Maison Ikkoku), Masaharu Noritsuke (Afro Tanaka), Sōichirō Yamamoto (Karakai Jōzu no Takagi-san), Eisaku Kubonouchi (Tsurumoku Dokushin Ryō), and Kenjirō Hata (Hayate the Combat Butler). The title of the video is ※Kome ※Kome ※Kome ※Kome (rice rice rice rice), and the theme is "LOVE ※Kome", which is a play on words with rabukome (romantic comedy).
The video shows scenes of the manga characters eating cooked rice over magnified grains of raw rice. Punk rock band Kyūso Nekokami wrote and performed the accompanying song.
The video received over a million views in a day after it was posted on November 1, mostly from viewers expressing little interest in agriculture. Kubota's YouTube channel currently has just over 8,000 subscribers; their other videos, which mainly show tractors and other agricultural equipment operating on a field, averages a few hundred views each. As of the time of publication, ※Kome ※Kome ※Kome ※Kome has almost two million views.
Kubota also posted a making-of video, which shows the creators painstakingly cutting out panels from manga volumes and editing the images onto individual grains of rice. Parts of the video were also shown to be made using stop-motion animation, an infamously time-consuming form of animation.
To thank the viewers who helped make their video go viral, Kubota will give out one rice grain to 39 of their Twitter followers. Winners will be selected from November 15. The Twitter account has been posting rice-related trivia since launching in October.
Source: Comic Natalie, Otakuma Keizai Shinbun
