Xianxingzhe (先行者): A classic Japanese internet joke (Videos)

Many of you may have seen this thing before, but it was recently brought to my attention so I thought I’d share it with you. It all started in the year 2000 with this video of Xianxingzhe(Senkousha):

Xianxingzhe (Chinese: 先行者; pinyin: Xiānxíngzhě; literally “forerunner”) is the first bipedal humanoid robot in China, created in 2000 by the Chinese National University of Defense Technology in Changsha, Hunan.[1] The robot, standing 140 cm tall and weighing 20 kg, walks at a pace of two steps per second. -wikipedia

As you can see from the video, the robot was very crude compared to the kind of robots Japan was producing back at that time. Japanese sites quickly discovered the fact that the Chinese were so proud about the Xianxingzhe and started to mock the robot mercilessly. The little things protruding from the robots crotch area were made into penis cannons for the sake of an online game based on battles between the Chinese robot & its rivals, and it quickly became an internet meme on a scale similar to the “all your base are belong to us” meme that was sweeping the English language portion of the internet in those days. The Senkousha(the Japanese reading of 先行者) craze even reached the point where theme songs and CG videos were created featuring crude Chinese robots dueling. Here are some of the best CG videos:

Senkousha “alternative” video with a different song:

A video splicing together a clip of the Senkousha computer game and the anime “Angelic Layer” (Senkousha fights with the Honda Asimo):

There is also a videos of Senkousha fighting the Korean robot Taekwon V and Senkousha in the Evangelion anime series. I’m not sure if the average Japanese person knows about Senkousha, but I’m betting most computer otaku do.

For more information on this fantastic meme, check out wikipedia’s entry on Xianxingzhe.