The well-known blue hamsters.
The Space Hamster Quartet (although their official band name is Blue HamHam) is an Asian Animation series by Japanese musician and animator Arimura Taishi. The animations, which got their start on the video-sharing site TikTok, are short films that are Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Hamsters from outer space who play music. Various music from pop culture are played over the animations while the titular four hamsters perform various feats in sync to the music.The last short at the time, titled "Rain Sound Quartet (雨音カルテット)"
, was uploaded on January 10th, 2023, and after a couple of merch collaborations and liking some tweets made by fans towards the end of 2023, the series seemed to have went on hiatus. However, it returned on March 21st, 2024, over a year after it stopped uploading shorts.
The quartet's Twitter page is here, and their YouTube page here.
The shorts contain examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: They are a group of blue hamsters.
- Art Evolution: Their eyes were a lot smaller and they looked more hamster-shaped back then. Then their eyes got bigger and more expressive while their bodies became more blobby and squishy.
- The Dividual: All four of them are exactly identical in appearance and disposition that differentiating them would be pointless. Except for the one with the Cool Shades.
- Gratuitous English: Not in the shorts themselves (unless you count the songs), but with the titles with part of said titles being rendered in Japanese but the other part is in English.
- Intelligible Unintelligible: The comics from the group's official Twitter show that the hamsters even speak in music, as their dialogue is rendered in musical notation. However, the other hamsters understand each other just fine.
- Made of Iron: Occasionally a hamster can get roughed up during their performances or even Squashed Flat, but they always bounce back and resume their roles no worse for wear.
- Never Bareheaded: The four hamsters always each have a set of headphones. It's implied the music they perform is played through them.
- The Noseless: The hamsters also appear to not have noses. But given they're from space, it's justified.
- Perpetual Expression: Their expressions don't convey much beyond a bit of surprise and some shock here and there. Even more so with the one with the shades.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: The hamsters themselves. Awww.
- Source Music: The premise of the animations: While the music playing is already established as a real song that's already famous in Real Life, the animations make it look like the hamsters are covering the songs themselves. Even the vocals, as it's implied the hamsters are all Voice Changelings.
- Sunglasses at Night: One of the hamsters has a set of Cool Shades they never take off.
