About

Shuba Duck / Dancing Duck Oozora Subaru, also known as Subaru Duck, refers to an animation of a duck in a backward baseball cap dancing alongside virtual Hololive influencer Oozora Subaru. The duck is a representation of Subaru, who is often likened to a duck for her raspy ASMR voice, among other reasons. The duck took on the nickname "Shuba Duck" or "Shubaduck" based on Subaru's habit of regularly saying "shuba" when excited and became the subject of a number of memes, mostly image macros, on Reddit in May 2021.

Origin

On September 16th, 2018, Holoive debuted virtual influencer Oozora Subaru, described as a tomboyish extrovert on her Fandom^[5] page. When Subaru is excited or content she often repeats the word "shuba." She always wears a backward baseball cap and is often compared to a duck by both viewers and herself on-stream, with "duck" becoming one of her nicknames. This is due largely to both her tomboyish demeanor and her rough ASMR voice, often compared to a duck (example shown below).

On March 21st, 2020, the official Hololive YouTube^[13] channel uploaded an official animation in which Subaru does ASMR and viewers tell her she sounds like Donald Duck, garnering over 2.7 million views in a year (shown below).

Memes about Subaru often depict her as a duck or use ducks in some way, such as a series of videos by YouTuber^[11][12] Pok pok ch. started on March 2nd, 2021, putting audio of Subaru over footage of ducks (examples shown below, left and right).

On March 13th, 2021, Twitter^[1] user @KS_wktk uploaded an original animation of Oozora Subaru dancing next to a duck wearing the same backward baseball cap, garnering over 100,000 likes and 24,000 retweets in two months (shown below).

Spread

On April 2nd, YouTuber^[2] Rul3r of Wind posted a video setting the animation to "Hey Ya" by Outkast, garnering over a million views in a month (shown below). On April 14th, YouTuber^[3] KaasToast posted a video consisting of only the duck dancing to the song, garnering over 77,000 views in a comparable span of time.

On May 6th, 2021, Redditor u/PrimaryResearcher870 posted an image macro to /r/dankmemes^[4] consisting of the dancing duck under top text reading, "Song: *Talks about sex, drugs, depression suicide and murder* Me listening to the song:" garnering over 82,300 upvotes in four days (shown below).

This post inspired numerous posts using the dancing duck animation to Reddit over the course of the next week, many completely detached from the context of Hololive. For example, on May 7th, Redditor u/CrypticMadness posted a new version of the meme to /r/memes,^[6] garnering over 40,000 upvotes in three days (shown below).

On May 8th, Redditor u/Mushrx posted a meme to /r/memes^[7] implying they want the influx of dancing duck memes to end, garnering over 43,900 upvotes in two days (shown below).

On the same day, Redditor u/FL1XZ posted a meme to /r/memes following the Dad and the Dog format but using the joke of the "mom and her duck," garnering over 15,900 upvotes in two days (shown below).

On May 9th, Redditor u/ Nopir389 posted a similar meme to /r/memes^[8] telling users to lay off Shuba Duck, garnering over 35,000 upvotes in a day (shown below, left). On May 10th Facebook^[9] page Hololive ホロライブ – VTuber Group reposted a Soyjaks vs. Chads meme by Redditor u/TurbulentSock420 originally posted to /r/Hololive^[10] referencing Shuba Duck, garnering over 320 shares and 900 reactions in three hours (shown below, right).

Along with /r/memes and /r/dankmemes, the meme also became popular on /r/wholesomememes and /r/hololive, being used in general memes across many subreddits.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References