Menacing / ゴゴゴゴ

Confirmed 1,033,306

Part of a series on JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. [View Related Entries]

About

Menacing / ゴゴゴゴ refers to the Japanese onomatopoeia, which translates to "menacing" or "rumble" in English or "gogogo" in Romaji. It is a word that indicates a tense situation. The word frequently appears in the anime/manga series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, inspiring many to create image edits of characters from other properties in the style of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure that use the "ゴゴゴゴ" and the subtitle "menacing."

Origin

In January 1987, the manga series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure debuted in Japan.^[1] The manga focused heavily on sound effects and featured the phrase in panels to help create a more immersive experience. This technique appeared in the manga's first issue, in which the artists depict sound through expressive typography within the illustration (shown below, left). Variations of the "ゴゴゴゴ" begin appearing as early as issue three, released on January 13th, 1987 (shown below, right).

Spread

The image of "ゴゴゴゴ" became an iconic part of the series. In 2015, for example, Twitter user @SimoZion tweeted an image of a pedestrian bridge in which shadows appeared to create the characters. The user mistook the shadows for street art (shown below).^[2]

On October 1st, 2018, the website japanesewithanime.com^[3] published an explainer on the phrase. They wrote, "The translation of gogogogo ゴゴゴゴ is usually menacing or something like that. Generally, it implies "things are getting tense." Nobody knows exactly what it's supposed to mean, but it's something along those lines. Technically, gogogogo ゴゴゴゴ is not an onomatopoeia but a non-onomatopoeic ideophone, gitaigo 擬態語 This is because the characters in JoJo don't actually hear a gogogogo sound. Instead, the word is supposed to evoke an idea: in this case, of something menacing." The article also notes that the onomatopoeia appears in other manga titles, such as One-Punch Man (shown below).

Memes that feature images from the manga and anime series that feature the sound have also grown in popularity in the 2010s. For example, on October 1st, 2019, Redditor MouthSpoon posted a version in the /r/ShitpostCrusaders^[4] with the caption, "School bathrooms be like." The post received more than 7,100 points (100% upvoted) in less than two years (shown below).