Emoting Mokou

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Part of a series on Touhou Project (東方Project). [View Related Entries]

About

Emoting Mokou refers to a series of images featuring Fujiwara no Mokou from the Touhou Project, created by Chinese artist 上官绯樱 (also known as MiLk on their Twitter @jokanihyou), in several situations alongside with Chinese and English captions. Several images from the collection have been used as reaction images on some online communities like 4chan.

Origin

The series was started by artist 上官绯樱 on April 29th, 2015, when she uploaded a picture to the Japanese online artist community Pixiv of Mokou hugging a pillow with chinese captions and the translation "I want baobao" (shown below, left).^[2] Since then, 上官绯樱 has been uploading hundreds of fan art pictures in similar vein of that one on her Pixiv,^[1] Weibo^[6] and Twitter^[7] accounts, with Mokou and other characters doing some actions and having both Chinese and English captions complementing the drawing.^[23]

Spread

On April 22nd, 2016, several of 上官绯樱's images were used on a thread on 4chan's japanese board /jp/, being the first one an image showing Mokou crying with the caption "My sadness is very big" (shown below, left).^[3] Four days latter, on April 26th, another image featuring Mokou with a smile and the caption "Comical" was used on 4chan's international board /int (shown below, right).^[4] On May 25th, 2016, the picture featuring Mokou crying was posted on r/anime_irl by Reddit user Punchingblagh, gaining nearly 1,900 upvotes and 75 comments prior to being archived.^[8]

On December 16th, 2016, Reddit user rutterkin uploaded to r/animemes an Imgur album featuring nearly two hundred Mokou images, gaining over 160 upvotes and 18 comments on Reddit before being archived,^[9] and over 2,700 views on Imgur in the following year.^[11] On April 11th, 2017, Reddit user CHArt4 uploaded to r/animemes a You have been visited picture of Mokou as a money cat, which gained over 25,000 upvotes and 150 comments prior to being archived.^[5] On October 26th, 2017, Reddit user MokouMemes uploaded to r/anime_irl a picture featuring four Mokou illustrations, gaining over 2,200 points and 30 comments in the following months.^[10]

On October 9th, 2017, 上官绯樱 posted on her Twitter account @jokanhiyou that she had drawn over 300 images of Mokou since starting the series in 2015.^[12]

Deus Vult Meme Controversy

In January of 2020, @jokanhiyou posted an image of Mokou in a crusader's outfit, saying Deus Vult (shown below, left). On January 22nd, the artist deleted the image, writing, "I am sorry for the hurt and offense my meme has caused.I didn't know what that meant and I thought it was from a video game. I will be more careful when creating memes next times" (shown below, right).^[13]

This led to a discussion about whether jokanhiyou was right to take down the meme. User @snugunim^[14] tweeted, "Do not apologize to people who are perpetually offended at nothing," gaining over 280 retweets and 1,900 likes (shown below, left). User @MaestroFenix1^[15] tweeted their thanks for the removal, writing, "Seems a normal inoffensive meme at outside, but it is used for hatred and xenophobia. Acts like these are what actually defines an artist, the hability to amend mistakes and promote love, not hate" (shown below, right).

The drama was covered in a thread started by Redditor KanchiHanuhara in /r/hobbydrama.^[16] In the thread, the user mentions that much of the backlash has come from people who believed jokanhiyou was bullied by various liberal groups into taking the post down, but notes there is no evidence that such bullying happened, and jokanhiyou has not said anything to that effect. However in a Twitter conversation on January 23rd, Twitter user @RespectElves^[17] stated they spoke with jokanhiyou through direct messages where the artist claimed people called her a nazi while also providing a screenshot where she stated someone added her to a list of nazi apologists (shown below, top image). While the latter tweet only gathered over 100 likes, the tweet to which it was replied managed to gather over 9,600 likes in 24 hours.

On January 24th, jokanhiyou tweeted a reply towards the controversy as well,^[18] stating that she "voluntarily deleted the tweet" and wants "people to stop fighting now and be wholesome again to each other." The tweet managed to gather over 500 retweets and 3,000 likes in the next 6 hours (shown below, bottom image).