Shinji, Crank That Soulja Boy

Submission 7,770

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About

Shinji, Crank That Soulja Boy refers to a viral dub of a Neon Genesis Evangelion scene in which the character Asuka commands the character Shinji to "crank that soulja boy," with the hit song by Soulja Boy playing as Shinji is turning an actual crank. Inspired by a viral tweet, the video spawned a meme format as users reanimated it, filmed parodies and edited it in various ways.

Origin

The meme combines a scene from episode 11 titled "The Day Tokyo-3 Stood Still" of Neon Genesis Evangelion in which the main characters Shinji, Asuka and Rei are trying to reach Nerv Headquarters and Shinji has to manually open a door by turning a crank, with the song "Crank That Soulja Boy" by rapper Soulja Boy playing in the background, which has notably been a meme since the late 2000s.

On July 20th, 2022, X^[1] / Twitter user @KratosClaire posted a GIF of the scene combined with the caption, "shinji crank that soulja boy," as if it's Asuka's line in the scene. The post (shown below) received over 8,600 reposts and 40,000 likes in one year.

On July 23rd, 2022, voice actor @CarlitoLopezVO posted a video version of the meme, with himself voicing Shinji and voice actress @MothballsVA voicing Asuka. On July 25th, MothballsVA uploaded the meme to her YouTube channel. The video received over 860 reposts and 3,300 likes on X^[2] and over 494,000 views on YouTube^[3] in two years (shown below).

- Shinji, crank that Soulja Boy!
- Okay, Asuka!

Spread

On August 28th, 2022, YouTube^[4] user kertigwastaken posted the earliest edit based on the video, a manga version of the meme. The upload (shown below, left) received over 653,000 views in two years. On September 25th, 2023, YouTube^[5] user IsopodGaming posted a humorous video referencing the meme that received over 551,000 views in two years (shown below, right).

On September 29th, 2022, an X^[6] user reposted the original meme, with the reupload gaining over 22,000 reposts and 117,000 likes in two years and boosting the popularity of the video.

On October 5th, 2022, YouTuber^[7] Max0r used the format in his review of ULTRAKILL that received over 5.8 million views in two years (clip^[8] shown below, left).

Starting in mid-October 2022, the scene saw continuous use as a meme format and as source material for memes and references on YouTube and TikTok. For example, on November 12th, 2022, YouTube^[9] user HmmYesVery posted a meme that received over 567,000 views in one year (shown below, right).