Elfilin

About

Elfilin is a character and animal companion from the Kirby game Kirby and The Forgotten Land, released on March 3rd, 2022. The character follows the series formula of giving Kirby a cute animal companion to tail him throughout the adventure, similar to Marx and Ribbon from previous games. Memes and fan art were made of the character shortly after their introduction, with the majority of Kirby players convinced that the character was secretly evil.

Origin

On January 12th, 2022, the official Nintendo YouTube^[1] channel uploaded a video about the co-op potential and abilities in the upcoming Kirby and The Forgotten Land video game, revealing the character following Kirby while doing so. The video obtained 1.7 million views in three months and helped spawn the initial speculation of Elfilin before the character's name was revealed (shown below).

Almost immediately, fans began making memes of the character on January 12th. That same day, the YouTube^[2] channel Ultima uploaded a video that described the feeling Kirby fans had upon seeing the character and earned 2.4 million views (700,000 more than the character's own introduction video) in three months (shown below).

Spread

With the character's name being revealed shortly after the trailer, more memes about Elfilin being untrustworthy began to spread online. For example, on January 18th, 2022, Redditor Entire-Astronaut8602 uploaded a Those Chickens Are Up To Something meme^[3] using Elfilin as the thing that is up to something, earning 700 upvotes in three months (shown below).

In the following months, memes were also made in defense of Elfilin and started to appear in Kirby centric social media spaces as a counter to those who theorized that the character was evil. A post by Redditor timbo64DS^[4] on March 22nd, 2022, shows Elfilin being compared to the previously good cutesy characters such as Ribbon from Kirby and the Crystal Shards, who stayed good throughout the game, earning over 340 upvotes in two weeks (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References