Space Hamster Quartet

Submission 5,061

About

Space Hamster Quartet refers to a web cartoon series about four teal hamster musicians created by Japanese artist Arimura Taishi. The series mainly consists of videos in which the hamsters perform various popular songs by combining their efforts to play musical instruments.

History

On May 5th, 2019, Japanese artist Arimura Taishi (有村泰志) posted^[1] a video of four teal hamsters wearing headphones operating a DJ set to play I'm Already Tracer on TikTok. The video (shown below) received over 645,000 views and 51,000 likes in one year. A May 19th, 2019, Twitter^[7] repost of the video received over 913,400 views in the same period.

In the following months, Arimura Taishi developed the cartoon series further with more videos in which the hamsters joined their efforts to play musical instruments. For example, on July 6th, the artists tweeted^[8] a video of the hamsters playing "Booyah" by Showtek on a melodica that received over 2.7 million views and 210,000 likes in one year. On August 19th, 2019, the artist posted a TikTok^[2] of the hamsters performing "Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran on xylophone that received over 733,900 views and 73,900 likes in one year. A November 11th cartoon^[3] of the hamsters performing "Bad Guy" by Billie Eilish on drum gained over 2.3 million views and 217,100 likes in ten months (shown below, center). A same-day video^[4] of the quartet playing "Stand by Me" by Ben E. King with a maraca garnered over 1.1 million views and 109,800 likes in the same period.

On December 23rd, 2019, Arimura Taishi created Twitter^[5] account @THEBLUEHAMHAM specifically for the purpose of Space Hamster Quarted-related content, posting humorous GIFs featuring the characters in addition to the videos. On March 10th, 2020, the artist launched a YouTube^[6] account.

Fandom

As of August 19th, Arimura Taishi had over 1.4 million followers on TikTok, over 500,000 followers on Twitter across two accounts and over 125,000 followers on YouTube. The videos posted by the account received multiple reposts on Instagram, YouTube and other platforms; for example, an April 4th compilation video "Best of The Space Hamster Quartet" received over 2.7 million views.^[10]