Honobono Shrine Remixes

About

Honobono Shrine Remixes (Japanese: ほのぼの神社アレンジ) refers to a series of musical remixes featuring a famous song in Cookie☆, the infamous fan-made animated drama for Touhou Project. In spite of the situation where most of the elements in the drama are mercilessly mocked and parodied by the fans of the Japanese gay porn phenomena A Midsummer Night’s Lewd Dream, only this song has been keeping humorous and creative momentum on niconico Douga (niconico) since 2011.

Origin

The song “Honobono Shrine” (ほのぼの神社, Honobono Jinja; lit. “A Delightful Shrine”) was created by an amateur composer Saichousei-no-Hito (再調整の人) for a doujin animated drama “Alice and Marisa’s Cookie Kiss”, better known as the dishonorable nickname “Cookie☆”, which was published on niconico on February 15th, 2010 (shown below, left).^[1] This song itslef is a remixed version of “Dichromatic Lotus Butterfly ~ Ancients” (shown below, left)^[2] in Shuusou Gyoku^[3], the first installment in doujin shoot em’ up game series Seihou Project.^[4] It was composed by the Touhou creator ZUN in 2000 for a theme song for Reimu Hakurei which made a guest appearance in that title developed by a doujin circle formed by his juniors in college.

Spread

Throughout the heavy online storm of Cookie☆, “Honobono Shrine” became famous as a sort of its theme song since it is the background music for the first scene in the drama and has been reused in numerous MAD videos ridiculing the voice actresses’ poor acting. However, the composer received it favorably and uploaded the audio track to niconico in the following year for the gay porn fans.

Niconico 【クッキー☆】ほのぼの神社【東方アレンジ】

Many niconico composers got addicted to this just 16-bar song by his lenient attitude, and a creative and non harmful musical remix movement featuring this song immediately started on the video sharing service. The amount of remixes increased rapidly and had reached to almost 1000 in its first 4 years.^[5] Those are listed in both a wiki page dedicated to the movement^[6] and the niconico playlists made by the original creator.^[7]

Various Examples

Niconico ラスボス神社.mp4Niconico ロシア民謡神社.мп4
Left: J-RPG Battle Music Style | Right: Russian Folk Music Style
Niconico ネオクラシカルメタル神社.mp4Niconico アートコア神社
Left: Neoclassical Metal | Right: Artcore (Drum’n’Bass)
Niconico ダブステップ神社.ZomboAu5Niconico UC神社
Left: Dubstep | Right: Slow Loris’ Victory Pose with UC

Search Interest

External References

Editor’s Note: Registration is needed to browse the original videos/illustrations listed in this section.