Leekspin

2006viral videoclassic

Published September 5, 2026

Leekspin, also known as Loituma Girl, is a mid-2000s flash loop of Bleach character Orihime Inoue twirling a spring onion to the Finnish folk song 'Ievan Polkka'1. Born on Russian LiveJournal in April 2006 and blasted worldwide by a single-serving site that May, it became one of the defining early web animations and helped seed the Vocaloid boom around Hatsune Miku2.

flash animation memessingle serving site memesanime mangaearworm memeslate 2000s memes

Overview

Leekspin, also known as Loituma Girl, pairs a five-second cel of anime schoolgirl Orihime Inoue rotating a green onion in her hand with an a cappella clip of the Finnish quartet Loituma performing 'Ievan Polkka'3. The magic is entirely in the mismatch: a Japanese anime frame, a 1930s Karelian polka rewritten by Eino Kettunen, and a hypnotic browser loop that refuses to end.

The format usually appears as a bare autoplay page, a 10-minute video, or a redraw swapping Orihime for another character holding another object. Fans call the vegetable a leek, though it is actually a negi (long spring onion), which is why the later Hachune Miku chibi shakes one too1. The tone is pure early-2000s absurd loop bait, closer to Hampsterdance than to a punchline meme.

Origin & Background

Platform
Russian LiveJournal (source) / leekspin.com (viral spread)
Creator
g_r_e_e_n
Date
2006

The three-second loop is lifted from episode 2 of the 2004 anime Bleach, 'A Shinigami's Work,' in which Orihime shows Ichigo her grocery haul2. On April 23, 2006, Russian LiveJournal user g_r_e_e_n synced that clip to Loituma's a cappella cover of 'Ievan Polkka' and posted the flash to the Russian blogosphere3.

The loop stayed inside Russian LiveJournal circles for about two weeks. On May 6, 2006, the single-serving site leekspin.com launched with nothing on it but the autoplaying animation, and that page is what pushed the meme onto the English-speaking web3.

How It Spread

Anime forums, Myspace and GeoCities pages passed the link around within days, and 4chan users started dropping leekspin.com as a bait-and-switch redirect3. YouTube reuploads followed almost immediately: user Mireillechan posted a crude redraw on May 26, 2006, and on July 27 user missilx uploaded a techno remix that eventually crossed 11 million views4. By that summer, Finnish press was reporting that Loituma themselves were getting fan mail from foreigners who had found 'Ievan Polkka' through the leek loop3.

In Japan the flash was reworked into Futaba Channel and 2channel image edits and ASCII art, then referenced in IOSYS's Touhou arrangement 'Lunatic Udongein' in December 20063. When Nico Nico Douga launched in March 2007, a 10-minute Leekspin loop was one of the first uploads, and 'Ievan Polkka' MADs became a house genre on the site, catalogued under the tag 'ロイツマ歌わせてみたシリーズ' (roughly, 'X Tried to Sing Loituma')5.

The biggest downstream hit came on September 3, 2007, when producer Otomedia posted a Hatsune Miku cover of 'Ievan Polkka' to Niconico with a chibi 'Hachune Miku' shaking a leek in tribute to the original animation3. Alongside 'Melt' and 'Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru,' that video is credited as one of the songs that turned Miku into a mascot for the Vocaloid scene.

How to Use This Meme

The classic use is just to link somebody to a looping page or a long video and let the song do the work. Redraws typically keep the same three-frame arm motion but swap the character (Hatsune Miku, Lucky Star's Konata, Touhou characters) and the object being twirled, then keep 'Ievan Polkka' as the audio bed. Modern references are almost always sound-first: dropping the Loituma clip or a Hachune Miku leek image is enough to signal the joke.

Frequently Asked Questions

Leekspin

2006viral videoclassic

Published September 5, 2026

Leekspin, also known as Loituma Girl, is a mid-2000s flash loop of Bleach character Orihime Inoue twirling a spring onion to the Finnish folk song 'Ievan Polkka'1. Born on Russian LiveJournal in April 2006 and blasted worldwide by a single-serving site that May, it became one of the defining early web animations and helped seed the Vocaloid boom around Hatsune Miku2.

flash animation memes single serving site memes anime manga earworm memes late 2000s memes

Overview

Leekspin, also known as Loituma Girl, pairs a five-second cel of anime schoolgirl Orihime Inoue rotating a green onion in her hand with an a cappella clip of the Finnish quartet Loituma performing 'Ievan Polkka'3. The magic is entirely in the mismatch: a Japanese anime frame, a 1930s Karelian polka rewritten by Eino Kettunen, and a hypnotic browser loop that refuses to end.

The format usually appears as a bare autoplay page, a 10-minute video, or a redraw swapping Orihime for another character holding another object. Fans call the vegetable a leek, though it is actually a negi (long spring onion), which is why the later Hachune Miku chibi shakes one too1. The tone is pure early-2000s absurd loop bait, closer to Hampsterdance than to a punchline meme.

Origin & Background

Platform
Russian LiveJournal (source) / leekspin.com (viral spread)
Creator
g_r_e_e_n
Date
2006

The three-second loop is lifted from episode 2 of the 2004 anime Bleach, 'A Shinigami's Work,' in which Orihime shows Ichigo her grocery haul2. On April 23, 2006, Russian LiveJournal user g_r_e_e_n synced that clip to Loituma's a cappella cover of 'Ievan Polkka' and posted the flash to the Russian blogosphere3.

The loop stayed inside Russian LiveJournal circles for about two weeks. On May 6, 2006, the single-serving site leekspin.com launched with nothing on it but the autoplaying animation, and that page is what pushed the meme onto the English-speaking web3.

How It Spread

Anime forums, Myspace and GeoCities pages passed the link around within days, and 4chan users started dropping leekspin.com as a bait-and-switch redirect3. YouTube reuploads followed almost immediately: user Mireillechan posted a crude redraw on May 26, 2006, and on July 27 user missilx uploaded a techno remix that eventually crossed 11 million views4. By that summer, Finnish press was reporting that Loituma themselves were getting fan mail from foreigners who had found 'Ievan Polkka' through the leek loop3.

In Japan the flash was reworked into Futaba Channel and 2channel image edits and ASCII art, then referenced in IOSYS's Touhou arrangement 'Lunatic Udongein' in December 20063. When Nico Nico Douga launched in March 2007, a 10-minute Leekspin loop was one of the first uploads, and 'Ievan Polkka' MADs became a house genre on the site, catalogued under the tag 'ロイツマ歌わせてみたシリーズ' (roughly, 'X Tried to Sing Loituma')5.

The biggest downstream hit came on September 3, 2007, when producer Otomedia posted a Hatsune Miku cover of 'Ievan Polkka' to Niconico with a chibi 'Hachune Miku' shaking a leek in tribute to the original animation3. Alongside 'Melt' and 'Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru,' that video is credited as one of the songs that turned Miku into a mascot for the Vocaloid scene.

How to Use This Meme

The classic use is just to link somebody to a looping page or a long video and let the song do the work. Redraws typically keep the same three-frame arm motion but swap the character (Hatsune Miku, Lucky Star's Konata, Touhou characters) and the object being twirled, then keep 'Ievan Polkka' as the audio bed. Modern references are almost always sound-first: dropping the Loituma clip or a Hachune Miku leek image is enough to signal the joke.

Frequently Asked Questions