Monā (モナー)

About
                         _________
     /\__/\           /
（　´∀｀）＜　オマエモナー
（ ） ＼＿＿＿＿＿
  ｜ ｜　|
（＿_)＿）

Monā (モナー) is a popular cat-like character that is often summoned in the form of Shift JIS art, a superset of ASCII character intended for Japanese usage, most notably on the text board community 2channel. Some of its most distinct features include his smiley face, consisting of the universal quantifier symbol (upside-down capital "A") for a mouth, flanked by an apostrophe and grave accent for eyes, and his pointed years.

Origin

The name of the character comes from his favorite phrase, "omae mo nā!", which can be translated in English as "You too!" or "So do you!" Monā is believed to have been conceived from a troll thread posted on 2channel sometime in the late 1990s to early 2000s, with the earliest archived instance depicting Monâ dating back to January 3rd, 2000. In the thread titled "Test," some user constructed the Monā character with his keyboard and had him say a standard complaint about Internet forums: "You people have too much free time". The first post following up to this simply copied and pasted the artwork and said, "You too!"

Others have claimed that the phrase "omae mo nā!" had been previously used on other BBS communities like Ayasii, the birthplace of Giko Neko, and Amezou, though these claims remain unconfirmed.

Spread

Beginning in 2000, the character quickly gained momentum on 2channel and elsewhere on the Japanese web as a staple retort with a meaning similar to that of NO U and also went onto inspire a series of flash animations and flash games centered around the character. most notably the two titles called Mr. Monar and The 2chan Battle game. As a result of his frequent appearance in videos, Mona has been also listed as a recurring character and spawned its own article on Nico Nico Douga. In addition, the Mona Font for displaying Shift JIS art compatibly on Linux was named after this character.

Character Evolution

Like Giko Neko, and all 2channel's characters so far, Monā appeared in Nightmare City and its followup Nightmare City Catastrophe, flash animations which where first issued for the annual Flash Bomb festival that took place in Tokyo respectively in December 2004 for the first animation and then September 2005 for its followup:

Here, the anime style led Monā to keep his white initial color, though more human-like, but Morarā, the round-eyed variation one, got some kind of a blue color. In the following flashes and fan arts, he would get a yellowish color.

Here can be found a website called "Mac de Monar!", entirely dedicated to 2channel characters' drawings.

Morarā

A variant with dots (in Shift_JIS art, the katakana middle dot) for eyes, rather than the apostrophe and backtick, has been named Morarā (モララー, sometimes spelled "Moraler" or "Moralar")* or Matāri (マターリ, also spelled "Matterly" or "Mattarly") and is considered a separate character. He sometimes characterized as being more sensible than the whimsical Monā, but in many cases they are interchangeable.

Hattoushin

Hattoushin Monā, more often known as simply Hattoushin (８頭身 meaning "eight heads tall") and also frequently spelled "8toushin", is an evolution from the initial Monã. He is frequently depicted in mock-homoerotic poses, or pursuing 1-san, another 2channel fictionnal character used for basic depiction of a newbie user, originally with murderous but more recently lustful intent.

One of his first appearance is from a 2ch thread from the 9th of November 2001. It's also from this peculiar thread that the main features of this character have emerged because, in it, >>1(1-san, ichi-san) insisted that Hattoushin is creepy and he hated Hattoushin.

Then, other anonymous users began to tease him jokingly with Hattousin’s Shift-JIS Art filling full of love for him.
Quickly, Hattousin was characterized as the man expressing his love for ichi-san dynamically and enthusiastically. And ichi-san was also characterized as a guy who is always running away from Hattoushin’s crazy homosexual loving.

Hattoushin soon became an entire character, the only one being drawn with human-like shapes, to be represented in many Flash animations, starting in 2001. These animations, and many more, can be found on Nico Nico Douga as well. Because of his human-like body, with long legs and arms, Hattoushin was able to reproduce basic human moves, such as dancing. As a result, in addition to be a passionate character, the two combined gave birth to dancing animations.

That way, Hattoushin has been used in many Japanese dancing memes as well, including Geddan/ゲッダン, Fukkireta/吹-っ-切-れ-た, PoPiPo, among many others.

Mona-Themed Cryptocurrency

In July 2014, following the success of other meme-based cryptocurrencies like DogeCoin, a Mona-themed altcoin was launched by a group under the name of Monacoin Project. Notable for its exceptionally high geographic concentration of users in Japan, the value of the currency began rising in early July and reached a peak of JP¥ 80 on August 1st, though it has since fallen back to JP¥ 44.6 as of August 5th. According to Coindesk, there are at least five online and physical stores, as well as an auction site, that began accepting Monacoin as a form of payment.

Search Interest

External References