"Create a Phenomenon" Justification
First, I decided to do a meme because 1) I do not have good video editing skills and thus a viral video was out and 2) the Nabari fandom isn’t very present on Twitter so trying to get a hastag trending there would be near impossible. Which left the meme option and thus “Nabari Fan” was created.
A meme is simply anything that can be packaged with some meaning and then passed from person to person; a meme can begin intentionally or intentionally (Gunders and Brown). In this case, the Nabari fan meme was very much made intentionally. The image was done in the same style as what are most commonly known as memes nowadays-the top and bottom captioned images such as First World Problems or Socially Awkward Penguin.
The format of the Nabari Fan meme is basically this: a top caption stating some ordinary thing or action and a bottom caption saying “CRIES.” (Yes, this is a vague parody of the “DIES” variant of the College Freshman meme.) The image used for the background is that of one of the female characters in the series crying in a sincere, but also humorous manner. This was pretty much exactly the tone I wanted to hit.
The idea behind Nabari fan originated from a Tumblr post in which a fan admits that she started crying when her friend made a joke about Yoite knitting after they spotted a Knitting for Dummies book in a store. Knitting probably seems like a pretty silly thing to cry over, but people familiar with the Nabari no Ou anime understand- Yoite takes up knitting as a hobby during his last days and is working on a scarf when he dies. This story became the first ever Nabari fan meme.
Nabari fans are constantly talking about crying over the series, and that post left me thinking that there are probably plenty of other innocuous-seeming things that might leave a Nabari fan in tears- like drinking lemonade or seeing a cute black cat. To anyone who has not read or watch the series, it makes no sense that those things would merit a reaction such as CRIES but to people within the fandom it makes perfect sense and no explanation is necessary beyond the meme image itself. “No more explanation necessary” is more of less how memes function and become funny, so I thought that my meme idea was a pretty sound one.
I was somewhat worried about the joke being perceived as a negative jab directed at the fandom, but not too worried; the community is pretty aware of how much crying goes on in their ranks and some people have even poked fun at this tendency before me.
The only place I distributed the meme was on Tumblr. The only other site I am situated on that also has a Nabari fandom is Livejournal, but memes are not very popular there. I could have also tried the imageboard zerochan, which I know had an active Nabari community in the past, but I wasn’t sure if it was still active or if memes would be acceptable. Another avenue I could’ve tried is the /a/ board on 4chan, but I didn’t go there because, frankly, 4chan scares me. Anyway, I just left a few examples of the meme on the #nabari no ou tag on Tumblr with a hyperlink showing where people could make their own. I used troll.me for the meme generator and image hosting site because it seemed to me the easiest generator to use.
This seemed to work well enough- since Nabari no Ou doesn’t have a very big or active fandom, my only hope was that someone else might find it clever enough to make a Nabari Fan meme of their own. And that happened! As of right now, there are fifteen Nabari Fan memes on troll.me, only four of which were made by me. (This one is my favorite of the not-made-by-me memes.)
Admittedly some of these not-me memes do not follow the proper CRIES format, but since it takes a couple dozen versions of a meme to be made before the “rules” are formed, I don’t mind. This could also possibly been seen a spawning of a new variation on the Nabari Fan meme, which would indicate even further success on my part (Stryker), but I won’t get too far ahead of myself.
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Gunders, John, and Damon Brown. "Memes: What They Are and How They Work." The Complete Idiot's Guides. Web. 17 Apr. 2012. .
"BreakingCharity." BreakingCharity. Web. 17 Apr. 2012. .
"Nabari Fan." Troll Meme Generator. Web. 17 Apr. 2012. .
"Nabari Fan." Troll Meme Generator. Web. 17 Apr. 2012. .
"Nabari Fan." Troll Meme Generator. Web. 17 Apr. 2012. .
"I Love How There's Always Someone in the Nabari... | Itgoessomethinglikethis:." Itgoessomethinglikethis: : 1 of 138. Web. 17 Apr. 2012. .
Stryker, Cole. "How Memes Work (A Review of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Memes)." Urlesque. Web. 17 Apr. 2012. .