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| Alibaba and Mor from Magi. |
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| From Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! |
Lately, there has been an spam influx of (fan)artworks on the net of similar nature to the pictures displayed above. The style of the pictures consists of a person trapped in the corner of two walls by another who pushes against the walls using all their limbs.
Cicada Block, known as “Semi-Don” (Japanese: 蝉ドン, lit. Cicada Bam) in Japan, is the physical act of trapping someone in a corner by pressing one’s hands and feet against the adjacent walls to form a one-man barricade, mimicking a perched cicada insect.
The block was first introduced on Twitter and later spread to the Japanese artist community pixiv and Tumblr, where it spawned a series of crossover fanart featuring other well-known video game and anime characters.
Origin
“Semi-Don” is originally a mere joke for a typical moe situation like these images below, which are mostly shown in Japanese comics for girls. And around September 2012, this situation became to be called as “Kabe-Don” (壁ドン, lit. Wall Bam) on the Japanese web, which is a connected word of Kabe, a wall, and Don (Bam), the sound of wildly putting hands or feet on it.
The first appearance of the phrase “Semi-don” was a 4 paned picture in a tweet posted by a Japanese user named Naruse, Hatoh (成瀬ハトゥ) in October 13th, 2012.
Transcript:
1. Standard Kabe-Don
2. Kinda Wild Kabe-Don
3. Tender Kabe-Don
4. Semi-Don
A friend of mine said he/she liked 4.
This funny maneuver wasn’t her original invention because the same pose was appeared in an other online gag comic in 2008.
[2] However, this tweet had scored 24000+ retweets and 8500+ favorites within its first week due to her very catchy naming to this pose “Semi-Don”.
A quick Google search will give you many results of this style of meme for your favourite anime/manga characters. Alternatively, feel free to explore picture gallery sites such as
Pixiv or
Zerochan for more pictures.
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