Who are we?

The story of Murasagi begins way back before Murasagi existed. Around 2009, there was an established community that covered J-pop songs on the Youtube platform. While youtube was always the medium for posting the final product, the community was set in a forum called Yo! Project, a play off of the Hello! Project franchise (Morning Musume, Berryz Koubou, C-ute). There were many members back then and even to this day, a handful are still active in the youtube community. The very first J-pop group cover that Renna mixed was in 2009 and has continued to include Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and multi-language groups since then.

In 2010, Renna had released a cover of Morning Musume's Do It! Now. It was the first time she worked with k and Zoey and unbeknownst to everyone, these connections would carry on for the next decade and eventually become what Murasagi/Torangi/Cafe Kuma is today. Also during this time, a second community had emerged under the leadership of Kappa/Sayuri called HanaProject. She ran this group up until around 2015 and many more members had joined over time. It was in 2012 that k and Renna started working together after covering a duet at HanaProject.

The Murasagi channel was born shortly afterwards in 2013. Cafe Kuma, the Chinese subgroup has also been present since 2014 when a Cantonese lyricist was willing to write lyrics for the group on a casual basis. As the years progressed, the channel focused on Vocaloid and Love Live releases. As 2017 began, we began to cover more K-pop releases under the name of Torangi/TorangiPop as it became more popular and Vocaloid was starting to decline. In 2020, the Torangi channel was officially established as a separate channel to include English translyrics and singer videos.

Murasagi is a combination of the words murasaki (purple) and usagi (rabbit). The channel is purple and rabbit themed for this reason. Torangi is a combination of the words tora (tiger in Japanese) and horangi (tiger in Korean). This channel is co-founded by ikon and Sam and the focus of tigers is based on ikon's zodiac animal. Café Kuma is the English name for 紅貓茶餐廳 and is co-founded by Zoey and Renna. The 紅貓 translates to "red cat" where 紅 has a double meaning as "popular" but is read the same way as 熊貓 (panda). This pays homage to pandas in China as well as the iconic cafe-style restaurants called 茶餐廳 found in Hong Kong.