Young Utena Watching TV

Submission 6,339

Part of a series on Gushing Over Magical Girls. [View Related Entries]

About

Young Utena Watching TV is a series of memes using an image of Utena from Gushing Over Magical Girls as a toddler watching TV with a smile on her face. As a meme, an image or video is displayed overtop of the screenshot on a television, representing what Utena is watching. The scene comes from episode 7 of the series and premiered in February 2024, also becoming the subject of memes that month.

Origin

On February 14th, 2024, Gushing Over Magical Girls episode seven aired.^[1] At the start of the episode, Utena is shown as a toddler watching the TV. That day, u/Satokibi posted a meme template to /r/AnimeTemplates^[2] in whcih a blank TV is attached to the top of the screenshot. On February 15th, Facebook^[3] page ChaosGiant Memes posted the first known meme using the template, garnering over 560 likes and 2,000 reactions in a week (shown below).

Spread

The template continued to spread throughout February 2024. On February 19th, 2024, X^[4] user @ViCoSempai193 posted a version of the meme that gained over 680 likes in three days. On February 21st, X^[5]^[6] user @GarbageDumpM81 posted two versions of the meme attaching a video to the TV, garnering over 670 likes and 900 likes respectively in a day. Later that day, X^[7] user @ShitpostGate posted a similar version of the meme that gained over 1,600 likes in a day.

That same day, X^[8] user @ShitpostGate posted a version of the meme attaching the intro to Call of Duty: Black Ops to the TV, garnering over 21,000 likes in a day (shown below).