Ran Ran Ru

Origin

‘Ranranru’ (ランランルー) is a nonsense catchphrase shouted by McDonald’s mascot Donald McDonald in a Japanese television commercial. It appears in an instalment of the ‘Donald’s Rumours’ series that aired around 2006–2007.

According to McDonald’s own answer video on its official site, the line runs: ‘Ranranru! When Donald gets happy, he just ends up doing it. Let’s all do it together. Ready? Ranranru!’ — accompanied by raising both arms. In other words, even the advert declines to say the phrase means anything. What ‘ranranru’ means was never established, and that meaninglessness is precisely the condition on which the meme works.

Spread

It became a meme not on television but on Niconico. The unidentifiable shout and the exaggerated gesture made ideal editing material, and countless parody videos followed; the format then crossed into the Flipnote Studio culture on the Nintendo DSi, which spread it widely among Japanese primary-school children. Niconico Pedia shows the topic coming up frequently around 2011, which indicates how large the craze among children was at the time.

From there YouTube carried it outside Japan, and in Korea it settled under the transliteration ‘ranranru’. Since the shout and the arm movement carry the joke without the advert, it is commonly used by people who have no idea where it came from.

Usage

• A shout expressing cheerfulness with no meaning attached
• Parodies that copy the raised-arms gesture along with it
• Background audio for the many edits built on the Donald McDonald image

Because the words mean nothing, they fit any context — which is what has kept the meme alive. As it came from a Japanese advert, though, Korean users split into those who know the source and those who only know the sound.

Sources

• Pixiv Encyclopedia, ‘Ranranru’ — its use in the ‘Donald’s Rumours’ commercials of around 2006–2007, the full line from the official answer video, and the fact that the meaning is unknown
• Japanese Wikipedia, ‘Donald McDonald’ — the character and the Japanese advertising campaigns
• Niconico, the ‘McDonald’s ranranru’ tag — the accumulated parody videos