Anime’s Latest Meme Has The Perfect Cosplay
The nerd community has proved that almost anything can become a cosplay – fan-favorite characters, cross-fandom mashups, and even delightful Internet memes.
Instagram user PantasticCosplay recently debuted an awesome new cosplay, inspired by the “Is This a Pigeon” meme, at Toronto’s Anime North convention. You can check it out below.
A post shared by Pan on May 26, 2018 at 3:33pm PDT
In the days since the convention, photos of the cosplay have gone viral, with . And it’s pretty easy to see why, considering how accurate Pan’s cosplay is to the original screencap.
If you’re unfamiliar with the “Is this a pigeon” meme, which has been popping up around Twitter a lot in recent months, here’s what you need to know. The screencap came from the 1990s anime The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, which follows Yutaro Katori, an android that is possessed by a space lifeform. In the series’ third episode, Yutaro is attempting to display what he is learning about Earth’s ecosystem, and accidentally identifies a butterfly as a pigeon in the process.
The English screencap of that scene earned a bit of notoriety in the decades since, largely after being accidentally mistaken for a transcription fail. In 2011, the line began to be shared on Tumblr, with a few different Photoshopped versions coming about.
What do you think about this “Is this a pigeon” cosplay? Does it make you want to check out The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
What Is The Brave Fighter Of Sun Fighbird
The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird comes from the Brave series animation franchise.
The series was the second in the franchise and ran for 48 episodes between 1991 and 1992.
The show follows Space Cop Yutaro Katori, who possesses an android body that can transform into a super robot, and is sent to protect the Earth from destruction.
Is This A Pigeon A 2011 Meme Reincarnated In 2018
2018 is becoming the year old memes come back to life.
When a 2011 meme called American Chopper re-emerged on Twitter in 2018, the BBC explored how a meme about two men arguing had lived a second life long after its first.
Now the feat has been repeated, as a 2011 image macro asking if a butterfly is a pigeon has surged in popularity seven years later.
In the widely shared image, a character from a Japanese anime gestures towards a butterfly and asks: “Is this a pigeon?”
I found the HD version
ë°ì£¼í May 10, 2018
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You Can Thank Tumblr For Bringing You This Meme As Usual
If youve contributed to the recent meme-ing of Is this a pigeon? then congratulations: Youve helped fuel the ongoing trend of underground memes that originally appeared years ago on Tumblr but have only recently found their way into the mainstream, mainly through a resurgence on Twitter.
Other recent examples of this phenomenon include the If you cant handle me at X / you dont deserve me at Y meme, which originated on Tumblr around 2009 before recently blowing up on Twitter. Then there was last years viral idea for a Lupita Nyongo/Rihanna heist movie that actually became a reality. That meme started on Tumblr three years earlier.
Tumblr has also had a crucial but less direct hand in bringing you this latestmeme. Is this a pigeon? is the most recent in a long line of recent text- or image-based replacement memes also called object labeling. The most well-known of these is the Distracted Boyfriend meme, though Trumpet Boy has been a noisy recent contender. Another recently popular one is the Things that are expensive meme, which popped up last year. Like Is this a pigeon? it, too, started its life on Tumblr, and it, too, started out initially being used as a straightforward form of reaction before rapidly evolving into use as a text-replace meme.
Funniest Is This A Pigeon Memes That Make Us Laugh
The viral “Is this a pigeon?” meme never fails to make us laugh.
The Is this a pigeon? meme has been around for almost a decade, though its only gained widespread popular use in the last couple of years. The image comes from the 1990s mecha anime, The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, in which a human character not familiar with Earth incorrectly identifies a butterfly as a pigeon.
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The meme has popped off as a way to express confusion about a situation or to mock others who dont understand a situation. Its also used to reference popular moments in media and character behaviors. Its safe to say there are a lot of interpretations of this meme, all of them hilarious.
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Nobody Really Seems To Understand Where The ‘is This A Pigeon’ Meme Actually Comes From
This meme stems from a classic mecha anime called ‘The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird’.
Back in 2011, the meme of is this a pigeon? surfaced and originated from the super robot anime The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird but in recent weeks it has seen a big resurgence. The problem is that no-one in the media seems to understand its context and its time to set the record straight.
The meme itself is from a scene in The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, as the android protagonist Yutaro Katori tries to understand the world around him as well as what it is like to be a human being. This is because Yutaro’s consciousness is actually an alien energy-based lifeform known as Fighbird from the Space Police Force, and as such has no real understanding of the world we live in.
This is something that pops up again in the overarching series that Fighbird is part of and its this that people seem to be getting badly wrong.
For instance, The Guardian states that The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird was created to be the Japanese version of Transformers, which is all kinds of wrong. From the fact that Transformers is already Japanese, as both Diaclone and Microman form the backbone of that franchise, to the obvious part that the Brave series has very little to do with Transformers.
So what is the Brave series and why does knowing about it help to understand this meme?
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Read my Forbes blog here.
Is This A Pigeon Meme: What Is It And Where Did It Come From
- The Internet has become rife with the meme of a 90s Japanese anime show still
- The ‘Is this a pigeon?’ meme started in the early 2010s, but resurfaced in 2018
- It has become incredibly popular again, being used by the likes of Netflix
13:59 EST, 15 May 2018 | Updated:
First, the 2011 American Chopper meme of two men arguing got a new lease on life in 2018, and now Is this a pigeon?, another 2011 throwback meme, is making an incredibly strong the comeback.
Over the last few weeks and the internet in general has become rife with altered variations of a still from a 1990s Japanese anime The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, depicting a character looking in awe at a butterfly and asking Is this a pigeon?.
Here is all you need to know about the Is this a pigeon? Meme including how it started and why it had a resurgence in 2018.
The ‘Is this a pigeon?’ meme is based on a Japanese anime TV series still that started in 2011
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How Did We Get Here
Confused anime dude is actually supposed to be confused because hes an android whose programming isnt quite right. His name is Katori Yutaro, and hes the hero of the 1991 anime Taiyou no Yuusha Fighbird . In the scene that spawned the meme, as a newly emerged android, hes making comically incorrect statements and misidentifying various things around him.
This scene began to surface as a meme in 2011, specifically the moment when he misidentifies the butterfly, though the moment when he misidentifies some tulips is also used. Originally, it was just used in the form of the original screencap of the anime itself, complete with Is this a pigeon? caption. It was a straightforward reaction image without any alteration a way of calling attention to moments of strangeness or confusion on the internet.
In March 2018, however, this viral tweet repurposed the meme by replacing its elements.
has this been done yet?
chava aybby
This tweet brought back the meme in a major way and launched its current form, in which it no longer functions as a simple reaction but carries a host of layered new meanings.
Is This An Old Meme
The image can be traced back to , who posted it as an example of amusing subtitles in anime.
It was used in 2011 as a reaction image – posted to show confusion or suggest another person’s opinion did not make sense.
Seven years after its original appearance online, the pigeon meme reappeared with text added to ask if “literally anything” was a “big mood” on Twitter.
A “big mood” is a Twitter term used to express approval or the fact a user agrees with or can identify with an item of tweeted content.
The image has since been liked over 100,000 times.
has this been done yet?
chava aybby
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What Was The First Description Of A Passenger Pigeon
Taxonomy. One of these was Mark Catesby s description of the passenger pigeon, which was published in his 1731 to 1743 work Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, which referred to this bird as Palumbus migratorius, and was accompanied by the earliest published illustration of the species.
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When Did Is This A Pigeon Meme Start
According to Know Your Meme, the first use of the anime still was on December 6, 2011, when it was uploaded to Tumblr.
Over the next few years, the image made the rounds on lists about amusing screencaps and mistranslation fails.
However, Kara Dennison, who worked on the fan translationalso known as fansubtold the BBC that it is precisely what the character asks in the original Japanese.
That is 100% what the character is saying, she says. He is an alien who is trying to get a hang of what Earth is.
When “is this a pigeon” comes from a fansub you worked on and you’ve just gotta sit back and watch.
Kara Dennison May 9, 2018
So he’s just going outside, he sees something flying and assumes it’s a pigeon. He’s trying to catch on as quickly as possible.
The meme was obscured by the fog of time, but came back stronger than ever at the end of April 2018 when a Twitter user posted the still with the butterfly being labelled any makeup look without red lipstick and the text changed to Is this a bare face?.
Since then it has gone from strength to strength, being used to reference everything from Black Panther to everyday emotions.
Here are some of the funniest Is this a pigeon? memes
Is This Free Real Estate
There is so much going on in this meme that its almost hard to figure out where to start with it. This is another meme that references another meme, particularly the Its free real estate! sketch from Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
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Here its inverted to ask Is this free real estate? as a question a snake is asking about a plastic cowboy boot in the style of Woody from Toy Story, a reference to the character famously shouting, Theres a snake in my boot!
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Where Did The Saying Is This A Pigeon Come From
Added 6 years ago by Miluk. Updated 7 days ago by shevyrolet. Is this a pigeon? is a memorable quote said by the protagonist character from the 1990s Japanese anime TV series The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird in a scene wherein the humanoid character erroneously identifies a butterfly as a pigeon.
Butterfly Meme: Is This A Pigeon
The Brief: This popular meme stemmed from an anime screenshot, and is typically used to depict dissonance between someone’s perception and reality.
DEEP DIVE
This meme comes from a scene in the 1990s Japanese anime series, The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, in which a humanoid robot looks at a butterfly and asks is this a pigeon? Of course, its not a pigeon, its a butterfly. In 2011, a screenshot of the image was uploaded to and inspired many memes, usually ones that replaced the image of a butterfly with another animal or image.
In 2018, the meme resurfaced, this time with text added to the image of the butterfly. This meme is often used to comically portray misunderstandings and misperceptions.
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Anime Butterfly Meme: Female Edition
In summer 2018 on Twitter appeared an image of an anime woman carrying pigeons, but somehow also mistakes the birds with a butterfly. And you know what? Of course, they ended up as a couple made by Internet shippers . Users have been calling them soulmates and making fan illustrations.
The scene with birds is a screencap from the anime Youre Under Arrest and the quote actually is false. But this fact didnt bother fans, because they seem to be a really cute couple. Arent they?
There is also a theory that completely changes the way of connection between man and woman. The idea is that two characters arent soulmates, but different versions of one person. It is the meme guy who transitioned into a woman. They look really similar, so those words sound like something reasonable.
Why Do People Like This Meme So Much
Likeother recent text-replace memes, this one is both durable and easy to recreate. That means its given rise to a lot of slightly varied functions.
For example, here it is being used as a crossover and an iteration of another meme, the Is this your king? line famously uttered by Black Panthers popular villain Killmonger.
josh pappenheim May 6, 2018
And here it is being used more metaphorically:
Brandy Jensen May 1, 2018
Now we stray into social satire:
Rep. Pramila Jayapal May 9, 2018
Finally, we arrive at the point where the memes original meaning is completely altered. In this next version, everything has been replaced, including the original idea of the subject accidentally mistaking one thing for something else. By satirizing the idea of image-based captchas being used as a way to ward off bots, the meme-maker is pointing out that the way we create meaning from images can sometimes veer into absurdism. Now, the whole meaning of the meme itself is being commented on.
Like other memes, this one works because its relatively simple and easy to understand but its also pliable and able to function on many levels. Thats fitting as a reflection of the cultural moment, in which reality itself often seems to be operating on multiple levels of irony.
The meme also builds on a long line of similar memes in ways you may not immediately recognize.
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Is This Friendship
Himiko Toga is a villainous character from My Hero Academia. But she doesnt really act like a traditional villain most of the time. Shes very perky and friendly, and she seems to think that shes actually friends with a lot of the heroes and UA students that shes usually attacking. In fact, she kind of seems to think attacking them makes them even closer friends, and she likes people best when fighting them, as shown in this meme.
Is This A Therapy
One of the most popular topics used for is this bird meme was mental health issues. Vice broached this subject with a psychologist. The doctor assumed that memes became viral because they helped people talk about their feelings. It is much easier for them to make a fun picture about their experience than say it out loud. And moreover, this phenomenon not only lets people communicate without embarrassment but also makes others know they are not alone in struggles.
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Is This A Butterfly Meme Girl
But unlike the male version, which is from Japanese TV series The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, the subtitles on this screencap arent real. The woman is from the anime Youre Under Arrest, and shes not actually asking if the pigeons settled on her hand and head are butterflies. Thats a fake caption, unfortunately.
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