WikipediaOrigin
[edit] Animated gif
The original animation was made by Chris Torres, AKA prguitarman, and posted to his website, LOL-Comics, on April 2, 2011.[2] Torres said in an interview: "I was doing a donation drive for the Red Cross and in-between drawings in my Livestream video chat, two different people mentioned I should draw a “Pop Tart” and a “cat”." In response, he created a hybrid image of a Pop-Tart and a cat, which was developed a few days later into the animated GIF. Torres said: "Originally, its name was Pop Tart Cat, and I will continue to call it so, but the Internet has reached a decision to name it Nyan Cat, and I’m happy with that choice, too."[3]
[edit] YouTube video
Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya! by daniwellP
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listen to an extract from the song.
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YouTube user "saraj00n" combined the cat animation with the version of the song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!"—uploaded by Nico Nico Douga user "もももも" (Momo Momo)[3]—and uploaded it to YouTube on April 5, 2011.[1]
[edit] Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya! the song
Nico Nico Douga user Momo Momo uploaded his/her version of the song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!" to Nico Nico Douga on January 31, 2011.[4]
Momo Momo previously made their version of the song with the UTAU "Momone Momo" 桃音モモ whose name comes from the kanji "momo" 桃, meaning "peach", and "ne" 音, meaning "sound".[5] The voice source used to create Momone Momo was Fujimoto Momoko (藤本萌々子?)[6] and Momone Momo was created in February 2009.[7] The original song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!", made with the Vocaloid Hatsune Miku (初音ミク?), was uploaded by user daniwellP to Nico Nico Douga July 25, 2010.[8][9] The song's lyrics refer to the Japanese word for the sound cats make, "nyā" (にゃあ?),[10]
[edit] Popularity
The Nyan Cat music video reached ninth place in Business Insider's top ten viral videos of April 2011, with 7.2 million total views.[11] as of October 28, 2011, the YouTube video has had over 44 million views. Due to its popularity, many new remixes and cover versions have been made, some hours long, and applications, ringtones and wallpapers were created for Windows 7,[12] Nokia,[13] iPhone, iPad,[14] Android,[15] HP webOS.[16] and Windows Phone 7.[17]
On June 27, 2011, the video was removed due to a fraudulent copyright claim from someone claiming to be Prguitarman, who created the Nyan Cat gif. Soon after, it was found that Prguitarman did not actually make the claim and as soon as the takedown notice came to his attention, he filed a counter-complaint with YouTube. However, in order to file a counter DMCA, he had to get into contact with both Saraj00n and Daniwell, who hold the copyright for the video and the song, respectively. On June 28, 2011, the video was restored to YouTube. During the interim period, however, Prguitarman received both hate mail and death threats because of the fraudulent DMCA notice.[1]
