Subscribe
Mon 14 Dec 2009
On the First Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave to Me: Mio Saying Moe Moe Kyun
Posted by kevo' under 12 Days of Christmas, Anime
[5] Comments
On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me,
Mio saying ‘moe moe kyun’
As you can see by now, hopefully, I am partaking in the “Twelve Moments in Anime” project of 2009, where several of my fellow bloggers all join hands and dance in a circle around a bonfire and count down our twelve personal favorite anime related moments of they year 2009. This is CCY’s idea, so he is our ringleader. Last year when he did this, Desu ex Machina wasn’t even around! Wow, pretty crazy. So without further ado, let’s embark on kevo’s take on his personal twelve favorite moments of 2009. Let the commenting, trolling, and holiday cheer spread all over the anime blogosphere!
Twelve Moments in Anime 2009 #12: K-ON!
Few anime arrived with as much clout and anticipation as Kyoto Animation’s K-ON! in April of 2009. Bloggers and other denizens of the anime watching world looked on as more and more information was released. Kyoto Animation, the Kyoto Animation was making an anime about 4 cute girls making music! What could go wrong? Well, it turned out that K-ON! did not become the revolution in anime that people were expecting it to be, but it was fun while it lasted for a few episodes. One very specific instance is ingrained into our memories and has ascended into anime lore, and that is the moe moe kyun.
In that fateful moment near the end of episode four, millions worldwide were unable to breathe as Mio instantly became their waifu. Her popularity as a character surged as quickly as the number of images of her on Danbooru. I remember looking her up everyday and finding around five to ten more pages. In that one moment, Kyoto Animation has created a monster.
But the significance of “moe moe kyun” goes beyond the anime K-ON itself. It’s transcended into almost a meme of sorts. It was not merely a throwaway gag to appeal to fans and make Mio’s character more distinctive, it has become a symbol of the over-cute, embarrassed, moe aesthetic that so many seek more of.
It’s really something that, no matter how little you care about K-ON!, how little you liked the show, or how much you are the Grinch of Christmas, you have to love somewhere deep in your cold abyssal heart. It was one moment. It was one cut. And if for nothing else, not for Fuwa Fuwa Time, not for Don’t Say Lazy, not for Yui or Ritsu or any of the other memorable things about K-ON!, moe moe kyun lives on.
There is also a video on Niconico of my beloved Tanaka Rie working in a maid cafe doing the moe moe kyun and blessing the food (kirakirakirakirakirakirakira). Go find it for yourself as it is quite worth the effort.
Related posts:
- On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Starry Nights
- On the Second Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave to Me: Two Mahjong Tiles
- On the Fifth Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave to Me: Five Ending Themes
- On the Third Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave to Me: Three Liquid Kisses
5 Responses to “ On the First Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave to Me: Mio Saying Moe Moe Kyun ”
Trackbacks & Pingbacks:
-
[...] and squishy inside. Be sure to check out animemiz’s scribbling’s and Eternal’s and Desu ex Machina’s blogs for more 12 Days posts! Oh and there might be spoilers about so read at your own risk. For [...]
-
[...] made me feel all warm and squishy inside. Be sure to check out animemiz’s scribbling’s and Desu ex Machina’s and Eternal’s blogs for more 12 Days posts and there are plenty of other ones out there as [...]
-
[...] as well. What about Akiyama Mio, the legendary bass player of K-On who singlehandedly spawned a moe moe kyun~ meme capable of rivaling Ranka Lee’s ni hao nyan itself? And let’s not exclude [...]
People should crown KyoAni as the king of the otakusphere; their influence can practically be seen anywhere!
That being said though, I’ll be honest and admit that moe moe kyun~ is actually one of the few memes that irk me a bit, most of it due to bad memories of Mio fanboys. It’s also a forever painful reminder of how much KyoAni had overplayed this Mio moe machine of theirs, and how I’d genuinely liked her in the first episode when the world was without tricks and fancy dressups….
Yep. For me I seriously though KyoAni tried to capitalize too hard on Mio. Let her develop naturally as a character. With Mio, I just felt that Mio acting moe wasn’t that special by episode 7 or 8.
For example, if an anime tells jokes or breaks the fourth wall or something when usually it is serious, you don’t expect it and it feels special and interesting. If an anime constantly does it, each instance just becomes diluted and begins to be annoying.