Sei Shounagon's Double V

About

Sei Shounagon's Double V refers to fan art featuring the gesture made by Sei Shounagon in the role-playing mobile game Fate/Grand Order. After the character was officially released, fans of the mobile game quickly began to create fan art of other characters from the game and other franchises in the same pose and style. Not to be confused with the Ahegao Double Peace, which features holding both hands vertically next to the face combined with an Ahegao expression, this V-gesture features both hands horizontally by the eyes and is in general accompanied by a joyous expression.

Origin

On February 12th, 2020, the official Twitter account for the Japanese version of Fate/Grand Order^[1] posted a video showing the in-game performance of Sei Shounagon as part of their Valentine 2020 event (shown below). That same date, Sei Shounagon was also officially released in the game as part of the Valentine's Day event. The character, which was already revealed earlier that month on the 1st,^[3] is based on the historical author and poet of similar name^[2] who has been recreated in the game as a genki girl, a nickname for schoolgirls in anime & manga that are known to be overly energetic, wearing brightly colored clothes. The video displayed the character's Noble Phantasm, the term used for the ultimate attack of in-game characters, which ends with Sei Shounagon making the distinctive V gesture. As of February 24th, the tweet managed to gather over 37,100 likes.

Spread

As soon as the character was revealed, fan art of the character quickly began to appear on Twitter and Pixiv. Many of these works displayed the character making V-gestures in varying forms. It wasn't until the character was officially released in the game on the 12th and the iconic V-gesture was revealed that the character and gesture became more prominent in fan art.

The first pieces of fan art featuring other characters from the game making the distinctive V-gesture in a similar style as Sei Shounagon's Noble Phantasm weren't created until a couple of days later. The earliest notable traced examples date back to February 15th by Twitter user @nada_kanitabeta^[4] and February 16th by Twitter user @isagiyo,^[6] showing the characters Circe and Ibaraki Dōji. As of February 23rd, these pieces managed to gather respectively over 33,000 and 26,000 likes.

Fan art featuring the pose didn't begin to be picked up until a few days later. The most notable examples from known artists these dates were created on February 18th by ReDrop,^[5] featuring the character Kama; and on February 19th by hews^[7] and Raita,^[8] featuring the characters Nero Claudius and Murasaki Shikibu. As of February 24th, these pieces managed to gather respectively over 88,400, 39,100 and 89,200 likes on Twitter (shown below, left to right). Following these, many more began to appear during those and the following dates.

Various Examples

External References