Moskau (もすかう, Mosukau), or Moskow, is the 1979 Eurodisco song by Dschinghis Khan. This article is mostly focused on the 2channel trend around 2005 that spawned a massive wave of Flash animations, relying on Japanese-language 'mishearings' called soramimi.

The song's popularity can be traced back to Tamori Club, a late-night variety program which notably had a weekly Soramimi Hour segment where they'd play foreign music and come up with a mishearing. For the April 30, 2004 broadcast, they played Moskau, so “Deine Seele ist so groß. Nachts, da ist der Teufel los.”¹⁾ had become “daiji na issunbōshi, nakushi tari shitara taihen yo” (大事な一寸法師 なくしたりしたら大変よ).²⁾

Later that year, the song would be reused in the August 24, 2004 broadcast, so its “Natascha, hah, hah, hah, du bist schön”³⁾ became “watasha ha-ha-'haru' desu” (わたしゃ は は「はる」です).⁴⁾ By April 2005, the users on 2channel's /news4vip/ board became fascinated with the song, thus the phenomenon, and the aforementioned soramimi from Tamori Club made its way into most of their renditions of Moskau.⁵⁾

Moskau (もすかう, Mosukau) is a collaborative Flash animation, credited to “AQUA” and “O-ten”, which was uploaded around August 3, 2005.⁶⁾⁷⁾ It is one of the more popular soramimi versions of Moskau.

• The song's Japanese name is 'Mesaze Mosukuwa' (めざせモスクワ, lit. “Aiming for Moscow”).⁸⁾
  • It has been dubbed into Japanese by Dark Ducks with a relatively faithful translation,⁹⁾ but there's also the dub by Baobao Singers which focuses more on the 1980 Summer Olympics.¹⁰⁾
• During the 2000s, the song had a different revival in the west for different reasons.
  • There's a notable FC/NES-style rendition of Moskau which was uploaded to YTMND by “tumult” on May 21, 2005,¹¹⁾ more popularly associated with the Star Fox 64 meme of Peppy Hare saying 'Do a Barrel Roll' that was later uploaded on February 18, 2006.¹²⁾
  • YouTube was just invented in 2005, but one of the earliest uploads of Moskau was first uploaded on September 15, 2006,¹³⁾ which later became an internet meme and a brief YTPMV fad.

• Moskau (AQUA) [Archive] + Moskau (O-ten) [Archive] - The popular version of Moskau.
  • Moskau on YouTube - Unofficial reupload.
    • Moskau on YouTube - Unofficial reupload, but extended with higher audio quality.
  • Moskau on Niconico Douga - Unofficial reupload.
• Moskau on Pixiv Encyclopedia
• Moskau on Niconico Encyclopedia