The cover of the Yatta! CD single.

Yatta is a song by a group called Green Leaves (Happa-Tai in Japanese) which became extremely popular on the Internet through the distribution of its music video and also a Flash animation called Irrational Exuberance which used the song (this was a so-called Animutation). The song was first performed on a Japanese sketch comedy show called Silly Go Lucky.

The video features its members singing in a mixture of Japanese and English, and dancing exuberantly while wearing only underwear with a large green leaf on the front. Yatta literally means "We did it," but an equivalent exclamation in English might be "All right!" The song is meant to be motivational and uplifting, and the leaves and nudity are meant to be comedic, as part of the sketch.

The song went triple-platinum in Japan within a number of weeks. While the song was intended to be humorous, the Internet audience in the United States generally assumed it to be earnest, probably due to the obvious work that went into the special effects in the video. The incomprehensibility of such an elaborate video enhanced its popularity among Western audiences who could not understand the words.

The song and video have since been used as a web culture in-joke on many different websites, akin to All Your Base, and the amount of independent video of various kinds that has referenced or used it is quite prolific.

Irrational Exuberance

Screen shot from Irrational Exuberance. English words similar to the way the Japanese lyrics sound (but not at all similar to their meaning) are displayed on the bottom of the screen

Irrational Exuberance is a Flash Cartoon by the Internet artist Veloso in which many pop culture images are subverted to a sound track provided by the Japanese song Yatta by Green Leaves (Happa-Tai in Japanese). The cartoon is possibly one of the most famous and popular examples of animutation, an intentionally primitive but frequently humorous style of flash animation.

As with most animutaions several products are Photoshopped so that their names are replaced with the word "Yatta". This is done so that the brand styling of the product is maintained throughout, creating an odd effect. This was first done for the All your Base phenomenon to create the illusion of a worldwide conspiracy that didn't make sense. Also, as in many animutations, English words similar to the way the Japanese lyrics sound (but not at all similar to their meaning) are displayed on the bottom of the screen or used in the animation itself. This is done purely for the sake of humor.

Irrational Exuberance is also an example of an Internet phenonemon in that it gained popularity via a link shared amongst friends and posted on various blogs.

External links

• yatta! (http://www.mit.edu/people/patil/yatta.html): Information and variants based on the Yatta videos, including the original video.
• A short history of Yatta (http://www.syberpunk.com/cgi-bin/index.pl?page=yatta)
• Irrational Exuberance (http://www.verylowsodium.com/fanimutation/exuberance.php), an animutation by Veloso using Yatta as the music.