Awaken, My Masters

About

"Awaken, My Masters" is a quote from the Japanese manga JoJo's Bizarre Adventure uttered by the character Wamuu during his and his masters' awakening. The quote was used as a catchphrase early on in memes, but after the scene's appearance in the 2013 anime adaptation, the "Pillar Men Theme" became associated with it and was frequently used in various remixes and videos on YouTube in the following years. Additionally, both the anime and manga versions of the scene were recreated in fan art depictions with other pop culture references.

Origin

The original scene comes from chapter 64 of the JoJo's manga, released on March 28th, 1988, which takes place during the events of Part 2, Battle Tendency.^[1] In the scene, the Nazis are guarding the site of the sleeping Pillar Men, the Part 2's antagonists, and are trying to subdue them. One of them, named Wamuu, awakens from his slumber, kills the Nazis and after uttering the quote, awakens the rest of Pillar Men, Esidisi and Kars (seen below).^[2]

The scene was popular within the J_oJo's Bizarre Adventure_ community for years, with the earliest known archived mentions of it dating back to February 21, 2008.^[3]

On January 11th, 2013, the scene gained even more popularity due to the release of episode 14 of Part 2's anime adaptation.^[4] Here, it was featured alongside a song during the awakening scene, named "Awake" or "The Pillar Men Theme,"^[5] and became associated with the Pillar Men and quote since (shown below).

Spread

On May 15th, 2014, Tumblr user BotanicSage posted a remix titled "Pillar Men Hype Theme", which mixed "The Pillar Men Theme" with songs of Lil Jon, like "Turn Down For What," "Snap Your Fingers" and "Throw It Up." As of August 2015, the Tumblr^[6] post managed to get over 5,600 notes with its YouTube^[7] upload (shown below, left) receiving over 567,000 views in roughly one year. On June 5th, 2015, YouTuber^[8] kanashiipanda uploaded an animation to their channel based on My Little Pony: Equestria Girls combined with the awakening scene, receiving nearly 2.5 million views in the following two months (shown below, right).

The scene is also commonly parodied with other pop culture references in fan art. One such example was posted on February 17th, 2015, by DeviantArt^[9] user DragonKion, who replaced the Pillar Men with characters from Five Nights At Freddy's, accumulating over 7,000 views and 137 favorites in six years (seen below, left). On August 8th, 2017, Tumblr^[10] user Jasinator posted another fan art replacing the characters with Ed, Edd n Eddy, accumulating over 183 notes in roughly three and a half years (seen below, right).

Various Examples

Images

Videos

Search Interest

External References