Meme - Attack on Titan
Meme is a neologism that appeared for the first time in a work of a scientific dissemination written by the renowned scientist in the field of evolutionary biology Richard Dawkins in 1976. At that time, it was used to describe in writings and theories about cultural diffusion the unity theoretical cultural information that is transmitted from one individual to another and from generation to generation
However, nowadays the word meme is also used in cyberculture to call a special type of cultural manifestation that is spread through the network, and that can have several connotations: from the simply humorous or political parody to the protest. These memes can be in the form of video, image, hashtags or a simple text.
In summary, a meme is a cultural act that is taken by netizens and replicated in all kinds of media, including blogs, websites, social media or email, among others, and can be transmitted as is or modified from according to the circumstances.
Attack on Titan Memes
Due to the immense success that the Attack on Titan manga and its anime adaptation had both nationally and internationally, the number of memes is rather impressive. Attack on Titan memes could be divided into those that focus on the well-known opening of the first season (Guren no Yumiya, by Linked Horizon), those that point out some reference to the story of the series or the personality of any of its characters, those that parody the Titans, and memes are a mix of any or all of the previously mentioned types.
Guren no Yumiya
The opening song of the first season of the Attack on Titan anime series became very popular due to its intense music and unique blend of Japanese and German lyrics. As such, it has been used in several memes to make crossovers (mix of characters or settings of different movies, series or artists in one story) and parody videos. Memes that use Guren no Yumiya combine not only other animation series like Hunter x Hunter, Hellsing, Berserk, Pokémon, and Neon Genesis Evangelion, but also international productions like The Avengers, Spider-Man, and Teletubbies. These memes can also feature video games like Kingdom Hearts, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Halo or Animal Crossing. Even movies like High School Musical and Titanic are not immune from becoming a Guren no Yumiya meme.
Memes Involving Specific Characters
In the case of these memes, they often refer to specific Attack on Titan characters, especially Eren, Levi and Mikasa, though memes can come from other characters like Annie, Hange, Bertolt, Zeke, Armin or even Eren’s father.
Memes surrounding Eren often focus primarily on his tragic life or his expressive facial expressions and temperamental personality, which characterizes him very much. Several examples noting the similarities between his last name (Jaeger) and the song “Moves Like Jagger” have also been made. On the part of Levi, these memes refer to his extraordinary strength and ability to kill Titans and, above all, his great obsession with cleanliness. Concerning Mikasa, memes focused on her also refer to her incredible strength, as well as her potential love toward Eren and the endless desire to protect him that she feels
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Titan memes
Memes about the Titans are just about as varied as the Titans themselves. While more memes seem to be generated by the Nine Titans because of their more prominent role, an incredible amount of memes from “background” Titans have also made their way to the internet. Their unnatural body proportions and unusual way of walking or running only help meme creators spin the Titans into something funny.
A video of someone dancing in a Colossal Titan went viral, leading to some clipping the dance and adding it to various scenes to create new GIFs. Other Titan memes sometimes revolve around fans noting similarities between the Titans in the series and other real-world people like Queen’s Freddie Mercury and Nicolas Cage.
Miscellaneous
There are also some memes that just don’t fit well into any of the categories mentioned above. In this case, memes focus on jokes that are more related to the story of Attack on Titan. They may make references to some of its arcs or to some noteworthy scene that occurs in any of the volumes or seasons of the series. Memes can also include quotes from the series that fans have come to instantly recognize, like the phrase “Sorry, that was a strange thing to ask”, which Erwin says after asking Eren something that catches him off-guard. Numerous edits of this scene were created that change the original question to something a bit more humorous.
Attack on Titan Meme Generator
There are several free “meme generators” like IMGFLIP that help people create their own memes. In it, the user can personalize and add custom resizable text captions to images to create memes. It is commonly used as a meme “captioner”, making it a fairly limited meme maker. The user can also upload their own images as templates.
On the website, there is a page called the “Attack on Titan Meme Generator”. Here, the user can create a meme based on predetermined Attack on Titan themed images by simply adding some text, drawings, or edits to the image.