Fanlore:Featured Article Archives/2024: Week 5

Animation Meme is short animation of a character – usually Original Character (OC) – dancing or sometimes singing along to music, created to be easily adopted by other animators with their own characters. The original animation is made for the express purposes of being mimicked and spread, as a regular meme would. One might participate in the Animation Meme by creating their own animation using their OC, or another character of choice, with the same song clip as the original, and giving the animation a similar theme.

Several people would agree that Animation Meme first originated from Japanese fannish space circa 2000s, with its popularity gradually spreaded amongst fandom circles, especially after fans reposted their memes from Nico Nico Douga to YouTube. Other animation memes- particularly memes before 2009- were also shared through gif format on image sharing websites such as DeviantArt and Sheezyart. After more than a decades since it first started, Animation Meme has gone through various stages of transition, particularly due to development of technology and software used for creating animations over time, as well as the established demographics of creators and audiences.