Unsheathing the Sword

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About

Unsheathing the Sword or Kamina's Sword refers to a scene from Gurren Lagann anime series in which character Kamina unsheaths his katana. Online, a close-up image of Kamina drawing his sword has been used as an exploitable, usually for purposely misleading memes.

Origin

On April 8th, 2007, episode three of Gurren Lagann anime series premiered in Japan.^[1] In one scene of the episode, character Kamina unsheathes his katana in preparation for a fight with character Viral.

Spread

On January 31st, 2019, Redditor MDaenmke posted an edgy meme based on a close-up image of Kamina unsheathing his sword to /r/dankmemes subreddit.^[2] The post gained over 5,200 upvotes in five months.

Before June 2019, the meme was reposted a number of times on Reddit and Instagram,^[3] sometimes being reused with minimal changes.^[4]^[5] On June 14th, 2019, Redditor Mikzing posted a variation of the meme which "baited" the reader into thinking that a racial slur is going to be used, only to dispel this assumption in the second panel.^[6]

In the following days, more two-panel variations were posted in a number of subreddits, including notable posts in /r/dndmemes, ^[7] /r/pewdiepiesubmissions ^[8] and other communities.