This video popped up on YouTube and there’s apparently been a lot of conversation about it on Twitter. Unfortunately, I can’t read Japanese and I don’t have a Twitter client that will translate so I have no idea what’s being said.
But what I hope is being said is that this is, to my knowledge, the first time this trick has been captured on video in spite of the fact that it’s been around since at least the 1940s, possibly earlier. I’ve seen illustrations for the trick, and I remember talking to Dale Oliver about it in 1997, but he couldn’t do it. I first saw it done by Jon Gates around 200o-ish, but it was one of those late night oddities and we all just kinda went “Oh hey, cool” and left it at that.
So this video is possibly the first time this trick has ever been filmed, and certainly the first time the trick has been seen by 99% of all yoyo players worldwide.
Which is really pretty awesome.
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UPDATE: Rafael Matsunaga pointed out that the Figure 8 Loop was mentioned as the “Dragon Loop”, an insanely difficult and largely unattainable trick from the old “Chousoku Spinner” Hyper YoYo comics published in the late 90s. He sent me this scan, which is friggin’ awesome.
That was also the infamous “Dragon Loop” on the Super Yo-yo comics series from 98(?).
Whoa, really? I never got English versions of the whole series so I missed out on a lot of the story. Do you have a scan of anything talking about the Dragon Loop? Thanks for the info, Red-chan!
The ultra-dramatic full-page Double Dragon Loop!
http://i.imgur.com/X5II7.jpg
Yoyo comics? One of my teachers in grad school got into japanese baseball manga before doing his own projects revolving around baseball. I’m going to have to get a hold of these…