A small brown open-mouthed monster

October 11, 2003 2:25 AM

Domo-kun! Domokun is "a small brown open-mouthed monster hatched from an egg who lives with a wise old rabbit underground." In Japan, he's the mascot of the NHK BS2 channel and is the star of a series of stop-motion shorts (100MB .mov), the fun and warmth of which aren't lost in translation. In the western world, Domokun is better known as the monster chasing that cute little kitty.
posted by adrianhon (13 comments total)

Domokun has been featured in non-starring roles in previous Mefi posts but this is the first one actually about him - so, no, it's not a double post :) I would advise people to watch the movies without the translation first, because that's what I did and it was probably more fun and mind-boggling that way. Props to Jimbob for pointing me to the Freecache service that will hopefully help handle the bandwidth for the movie.
posted by adrianhon at 2:28 AM on October 11, 2003

he's made of poop.
posted by jimmy at 4:47 AM on October 11, 2003

When he is in a bad mood, he breaks wind.

Don't we all.
posted by MrBaliHai at 5:11 AM on October 11, 2003

I hear he is a bit of adrinker.
posted by sperare at 5:49 AM on October 11, 2003

By the way, "domo" in Japanese is a short form of thank you, so that is where he is getting it, when he sees the newscaster saying it on TV.

By the way again, the translation has the dates wrong. This year (2003) is Heisei 15. Heisei is the name given to this particular Emperor's reign, so this is the 15th year of Akihito's reign.

Last by the way, the translation is as funny as the movie itself, even if you know Japanese, so don't miss it.
posted by donkeymon at 7:39 AM on October 11, 2003

When he is in a bad mood, he breaks wind.

Don't we all.

Not here. Here we do it out of love, which is why I save all mine for after the wife gets home from work.
posted by billsaysthis at 9:50 AM on October 11, 2003

I quit going to FARK over a year ago. I simply deleted the thing from my favorites. I had burned out on the boobies, photoshops, and the "France surrenders" (this was going on years prior to the current war with Iraq) tag on every other post... To me the whole entire site had become it's own self parody.

However, I happened to meet Drew Curtis (Fark's creator) at a very low-key Fark party in Greenville, SC a few weeks back and I must say all in all he is a run of the mill nice guy. Someone earlier in the evening had given him a plush Domokun toy (about the size of a small pillow.)

The party fizzled out by midnight and my friend and I found ourselves hanging out with just Drew. It gave me an opportunity to talk to him at length about the website, his politics and the user base at Fark (I'm a freelance reporter for a local alt-weekly... so I was very much in 'interview' mode.)

All in all Drew confirmed my earlier suspicions that there is this strange air of frat-boy conservatism ingrained at Fark. Think more Man Show and less Daily Show.

As the chief moderator of the website Drew is responsible for approving the posts or passing on them he was very frank in admitting that his on right-leaning politics trickle into the mix. He defended this leaning by saying that other prominent sites like MeFi or Plastic so often lean left and that he felt that there is room on the web for playful conservatism. [interestingly enough - Drew swore off voting for Bush in 2004 saying that he's been disappointment.]

Anyway, I don't mean to "politicize" a MeFi thread on Domokun... but that little poo monster was introduced years ago to western internet users primarily through Fark and it's photoshop areas.

And besides, I felt like rambling.
posted by wfrgms at 10:07 AM on October 11, 2003

What a Turdmonster.
posted by keli at 10:14 AM on October 11, 2003

Cute little gallery of Domokun googdies
posted by echolalia67 at 12:31 PM on October 11, 2003

Domo-kun vs. the Powerpuff Girls
posted by bl1nk at 12:51 PM on October 11, 2003

Don't forget the awesome music video featuring Domokun clips and samples of Steve Ballmer's famous "Developers, developers" incident: Domopers.
posted by Tubes at 1:00 PM on October 11, 2003

I met domo-kun. (self link)
posted by quibx at 5:17 AM on October 12, 2003

Heh! I've been perusing J-List too much lately, coveting these (too expensive) Domo-kun stamps. I guess they sound best in Toshiro Mifune's growling voice with a stereotypical Japanese pronunciation:

UHHHHHGENTu!!!!!!!!
posted by Shane at 5:28 PM on October 12, 2003