Laughing Sailor Moon

About

Laughing Sailor Moon is the name given to a still frame from the anime series Sailor Moon, in which the characters Usagi Tsukino and Makoto Kino are shown laughing nervously. Online, the image has been used as exploitable and reaction picture, and often as smug anime face.

Origin

The image of Sailor Moon laughing with Sailor Jupiter comes from episode 27 of Sailor Moon season one entitled "Mercury's Mental Match,^[1] which premiered on October 10th, 1992 in Japan and October 11th, 1995 in the United States. During the episode, Usagi and Makoto join the other students in looking at their grades, which have been posted outside their classroom. After Usagi bemoans that she should have worked harder, Makoto suggests that next time she tries studying, causing her and Usagi to laugh nervously.

Spread

The earliest archived example of the picture use comes from a 4chan's anime and manga board /a/ post from February 20th, 2009.^[6] While the trend remaint dormant for several months, its use as reaction image started picking up from September 2009 onwards.^[5] On July 18th, 2013 an anonymous user from 4chan's cosplay and lolita board /cgl/ posted the image (shown below) with the comment, "you're an idiot. they're talking about the figures. >tldr how does it feel to be that idiotic? honestly."^[3]

About one month later, on August 17th, 2013, a Desuchan user Desu reacted to an article about an infamous furry allegedly engaging in sexual activity with a cat with the image of Moon and Jupiter. Over the image (shown below, left) were the words "Get a load of this guy" written in Impact font.

Since then, the image has appeared on numerous image boards (shown below, right).

The moment has also been a popular source of fan art on Tumblr. On August 2nd, 2014, Tumbr user magicmione^[4] traced a tribute to the moment, stating that it was their first attempt. The image (shown below) has received more than 17,200 notes, as of July 2017.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References