Ratatouille Is a Mecha Anime

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Part of a series on Ratatouille. [View Related Entries]

About

Ratatouille Is a Mecha Anime refers to a running joke categorizing the 2007 animated Pixar film Ratatouille as a mecha film. The joke stems from the core element of the film, the rat character Remy controlling the human Alfredo Linguini by pulling his hair, resembling the core element of the mecha genre in which a pilot controls a giant humanoid robot from inside of it. First gaining virality in 2018, the joke spawned memes and humorous fan art over the following years.

Origin

Prior to the meme's popularization in 2018, the joke that the 2007 Pixar film Ratatouille could be categorized as a mecha anime has been made by multiple users on X^[1]^[2]^[3] / Twitter but failed to get significant traction (examples shown below).

On March 2nd, 2018, X^[4] / Twitter user @380kmh posted a Steven Crowder 'Change My Mind' meme in which the sign read "Ratatouille is a mecha. Change my mind." The meme garnered over 4,500 reposts and 10,000 likes in six years (shown below).

Spread

On March 6th, 2018, Redditor HocusPinkus posted "Ratatouille is a mecha anime" in the /r/showerthoughts^[5] subreddit, where it gained over 60 upvotes in six years. On June 20th, X user @RevolverUnit made another post categorizing Ratatoille as a mecha anime, which received over 2,100 reposts and 4,900 likes in six years (shown below). On August 28th, Tumblr^[6] user made a similar post that garnered over 13,500 reblogs and 14,000 likes in six years.

The joke was followed by various memes based on it. For example, on November 3rd, 2018, Redditor Sanchezator posted a Galaxy Brain meme that received over 450 upvotes in the /r/animemes subreddit^[7] in six years (shown below, left). On January 1st, 2020, Redditor Keye_Necktire posted a meme that garnered over 12,000 upvotes in the subreddit^[8] in four years (shown below, right).

In addition to memes on Reddit and X, the joke also inspired various fan art. On April 9th, 2018, Imgur^[9] user Gary24 posted the earliest artwork inspired by the joke, posting^[10] a colored version of it on April 12th (shown below, left).

On January 29th, 2022, X^[11] user @mixxavii posted the earliest viral artwork based on the joke, with the post gaining over 24,400 reposts and 179,000 likes prior to being made private (shown below, right).