Majin Buu Looking at Hourglass

About

Majin Buu Looking at an Hourglass is an exploitable image of the Dragon Ball Z character Majin Buu starting at a large hourglass filled with green crystals. Online, the image has been used as a reaction to indicate impatient waiting and has also been used as an object-labeling meme format.

Origin

On February 22nd, 1995, episode 257 of the Dragon Ball Z anime series (titled "Time Struggle") premiered in Japan.^[1] In the episode, the character Piccolo convinces Super Buu (one of the forms of the character Majin Buu and the main antagonist of the Fusion Saga) to wait for one hour before he can fight Earth's champion, putting a large hourglass in front of him. Less than half an hour later, Super Buu loses his patience, smashing the hourglass (scene shown below).

On December 26th, 2014, non-suspended Twitter^[2] user @ItsSonGoku posted a still image of Buu staring at the hourglass with a frown on his face, captioning it "When She Say She'll Send Nudes In An Hour" (shown below).

Spread

Screenshots of the post saw viral spread online in the following years. For example, on January 8th, 2015, Redditor BeatboxDaily posted it in the /r/BlackPeopleTwitter subreddit,^[3] where it garnered over 700 upvotes in eight years.

The image did not see further use until 2018 when it gained virality on Reddit. For example, on July 2nd, 2018, Redditor paolonoci posted an image caption meme that received over 5,700 upvotes in the /r/dankmemes^[4] subreddit in five years. On December 27th, Redditor xsnoopycakesx posted a meme based on the image to the /r/MemeEconomy^[5] and /r/memes^[6] subreddits, where it gained over 150 upvotes and 1,300 upvotes, respectively, in roughly four years (shown below, right).

Starting in 2021, the image achieved popularity as an object-labeling format. For example, on January 15th, 2021, Twitter user @Renaldo_Saiyan posted a meme about the upcoming addition of Gogeta to Dragon Ball FighterZ, with the meme gaining over 850 retweets and 5,900 likes in two years (shown below, left). On May 8th, Twitter^[7] user @ScrawtV posted a meme about the upcoming release of Melty Blood: Type Lumina that gained over 110 retweets and 420 likes in two years (shown below, right).

Various Examples

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Search Interest

External References