Ryan Higa (born June 6, 1990), also known as nigahiga, is an American comedian, YouTuber, musician, and actor. He
is known for his comedy videos on YouTube. His YouTube channel, nigahiga, was the most subscribed channel on YouTube for 677 consecutive days from 2009–2011.
Higa was nominated for "Best Video Blogger" at the 6th Shorty Awards.
Early life[]
Ryan Higa was born in Hilo, Hawaii on June 6, 1990. He is of Okinawan descent, and has an older brother named Kyle. In his youth, Higa competed in judo and holds a black belt rank. He wrestled at Waiakea High School, where he graduated in 2008.
Higa studied nuclear medicine at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas but later dropped out to create online videos.
Youtube[]
Higa and Sean Fujiyoshi began posting YouTube videos of themselves lip syncing to songs in mid-2006 while attending Waiakea High School. They quickly expanded beyond songs, with a variety of other comedic pieces. Occasional guest appearances were made by Tim Enos, Ryan Villaruel, Kyle Chun, and Tarynn Nago.
On Christmas Eve of 2008, Higa and Fujiyoshi's two most popular videos, How To Be Gangster and How To Be Emo, were removed due to copyright violations. On January 21, 2009, the nigahiga account was temporarily suspended and was required to remove more copyrighted videos. Because of this, nigahiga's lip syncing videos were all removed (with the exception of You're Beautiful, which was audio swapped), along with most of his other videos that included copyrighted music. Since then, Higa started composing the music himself. How to be Gangster and How to be Emo were put back on nigahiga's channel in late August 2009, only to be removed a few days later, along with How to be Ninja and How to be Nerd. In Spring 2010, How to be Ninja, How to be Gangster and How to be Emo were made public once more.
Ninja Melk, a 26-minute short film about ninjas, was released in August 2009. The plot revolves around a ninja master named Master Ching Ching sending his student Lapchung (played by Bryson Murata) to find a replacement, finding Higa and Fujiyoshi to catch the evil Bokchoy (Tim Enos) and his henchwoman, Gina (Tarynn Nago).
An independent 35-minute film he created with Wong Fu Productions called Agents of Secret Stuff was uploaded on the nigahiga channel on November 24, 2010. It features some other popular YouTube users as well as actors such as Aki Aleong. The film follows a teenage A.S.S. (Agent of Secret Stuff) (Higa) who goes undercover as a high school student to protect Taylor (Arden Cho) from the S.I.N.S. (Society Involving Not-So-Good Stuff). It included guest appearances from Ian and Anthony of Smosh, D-Trix, KassemG and Hiimrawn.
When Higa moved to Las Vegas to attend college, most of the nigahiga videos were solo efforts, usually featuring collaborations with other YouTube users. Since 2012, Higa has put together a production company, Ryan Higa Production Company (RHPC), which included Sean Fujiyoshi, that works together to make content for the nigahiga channel. In 2015, Higa's production company was based in a studio in Henderson, Nevada.
In 2016, Higa and other YouTubers and friends created the parody K-pop group Boys Generally Asian. In mid-2018, Fujiyoshi left the group as he was moving out of the area, specifically to Sacramento, California to live with his current girlfriend and to pursue his degree in Engineering.