Karameru
(からめる, born August 1, 1998) is a Japanese animator known for short animations featuring anthropomorphic animals, many explosions and plot twists.
Although he started in 2016 by posting his animations on Twitter, he would move to Youtube in 2018; most of his activity has been moved there, though his Twitter account is still updated and animations are often posted to that account first before being posted on Youtube.
Aside from the animation shorts, Karameru has also made a few series:
- Demon Core-Kun (デーモンコアくん, 2019): A series featuring an anthropormorphic, talking Demon Core. In each episode, Demon Core-Kun interacts with his friends rabbit and dog, then he ends up causing a deadly beam due to his closing mouth, killing his friends and destroying the surroundings.
- Matatabi Movie Labo (マタタビムービーラボ, 2020): This series mainly consists a group of short animations he usually posts, a skit performed by Karameru and his friend Gurun, and a two-choice quiz at the end of the episode. It has an opening song and ending song, both sung by Karameru himself. He introduces a fanart in the end of each episodes. A second season was announced in 2021, with the first episode airing in January 2023.
Tropes applying to him and his work:
- Amusing Injuries: The characters often go through comical amounts of abuse, but it's always Played for Laughs.
- Art Evolution: As the series went on, the cats he drew went from having defined proportions and noodle-like limbs to a more blob-like appearance. Compare their appearance in Energy Synergy Matrix to how they're drawn in 2021.
- Author Avatar: He's represented by a cat with Eyes Always Shut in his animations. See the difference here.
- Black Bead Eyes: The cat and the axolotl. The penguin has Sphere Eyes instead.
- Black Comedy: Tons of them.
- Butt-Monkey:
- The penguin often suffers some kind of abuse at the hands of the others, frequently with him screaming in pain.
- Rabbit and Dog die in every episode of Demon Core-kun as a result of the titular character's destructive nuclear explosions.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Karameru's old works feature mostly humanoid characters before settling for the cat, penguin, and axolotl trio. The humanoid characters are yet to be seen again.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Karameru's old works have humanoid characters and frequently used background music from anime or Rhythm Games. Now the humanoid characters are never seen and there is no background music.
- Furry Confusion: Are the cats in his animations actual cats, anthropomorphic cats or humans represented using cat-like blobs? The inclusion of an actual quadruped cat in this short, which has an actual nose compared to the noseless bipedal cats, implies the latter two options are more likely.
- Line-of-Sight Name: Karameru's name comes from the caramel pudding he was eating when he uploaded his first animation.
- Medium Blending: Some shorts, such as this one, feature animated characters interacting with a live-action background.
- No-Dialogue Episode: Most of his shorts are these. Averted with Demon Core-Kun and Matatabi Movie Labo, which have dialogue in all episodes.
- Perpetual Smiler: The cats and the axolotls are always depicted smiling, even when breaking stuff or committing acts of violence.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: His characters mostly fall under this, being blob-like cats, penguins and axolotols doing bizarre, amusing things.
- Shout-Out: This short references a trick from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island where shooting an egg at Naval Piranha before she grows giant allows the player to skip the boss battle.
- Stuff Blowing Up: A common element of his shorts is that everything is Made of Explodium.
- Suddenly Voiced: While the Author Avatar cat always speaks, it's unclear if the other cats can speak; in some shorts, the cats can speak Japanese, while in other shorts, they only communicate in meows or don't make vocalisations at all.
- Surreal Humor: His animations run on this trope.
- Undercrank: His characters often move in a frantic way that resembles this trope, with this short being an example. It's always accompanied by a distinct rattling sound effect whenever this happens.
- Unexplained Recovery: Rabbit and Dog die in every episode of Demon Core-kun, but the following episode have them turn out perfectly fine, though they still remember being killed by Demon Core-kun's explosion.
- Uniformity Exception: His Author Avatar cat has Eyes Always Shut instead of the Black Bead Eyes all of his other cats have.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Occasionally, these show up as a substitute for the usual explosions, and always as a Mundane Utility such as being used to light a birthday cake's candles or cook popcorn.
