I know its been awhile since we did this, but with all the titles being released and craziness of Crunchyroll going on, we've become a bit distracted! So, by popular demand, we promise to continue on with the Best Meme's list until we hit that #1 Meme! So, jumping back on track, we’ve hit the midpoint of the countdown now, so it’s time that we take a look at what’s considered one of the older internet memes in anime.

Though it may not be as popular nowadays as it once was, it has left a significant impact on the fandom.
At #3, it’s Loituma Girl (aka the Leekspin):

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Circle back to April 2006, when YouTube was still a fairly young site and there were other ways of showing off videos on the net. One person thought to create a simple flash animation where they take a couple of frames from the Bleach anime of Orihime spinning a welsh onion (though most English speakers mistook it for a leek) and superimpose it with a stanza of an old Finnish polka sung by a quartet known as Loituma.

The result became a sensation. The reasons for its popularity are vast and varied, but the repetitive nature of the clip combined with an almost never-ending song caught the attention of thousands of fans who could simply leave the flash running for hours on end. As for what the lyrics of this stanza of the Ievan Polka actually meant, it turns out it was merely scatting with nonsense words that had never appeared in the original folk version. The simple nature of this meme also made it subject to many fanmade parodies that would replace Orihime with another anime character that would be spinning something else similar to the leek. Not surprisingly, the quartet Loituma actually got a resurgence in interest due to the popularity of the song. Another music video called the Holly Dolly Song featured a remix of the Ievan Polka with a cameo from the “Loituma Girl”, slightly altered due to copyright reasons.

However, the most significant of all contributions that Loituma Girl has left on the anime fandom can be found within the popular cast of the Vocaloid software. Before their mascot Hatsune Miku was released in September 2007, the Yamaha company decided to release a demo track to show what she was capable of. Because it was such a popular meme at the time, they decided to use the song clip from the Loituma craze and created a chibified image of Hatsune Miku holding a welsh onion to compliment the demo. Unwittingly, this image had permanently associated welsh onions as Miku’s signature item as well as turned into an independent character all in herself, Hachune Miku. It looks like Miku has Orihime to thank for this facet of her character!

Although this meme has faded into obscurity due to its relative age, its overall impact in the fan community cannot be ignored. What would have happened if this particular meme didn’t catch on? Perhaps Miku would be wielding something else aside from a green onion, or maybe it would be another character doing another repetitive thing that would catch the attention of millions. Regardless of why it was popular or what it could have been, the Leekspin has cemented its place as one of the most memorable anime internet memes to date.