Awoo~ / WAN

About

Awoo~ and, to a lesser extent, WAN, are phrases associated with the character Momiji Inubarashiri from the Touhou Project series of video games. Unlike many other Touhou Project memes, it is most popular in Western circles as a form of shitposting.

Origin

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Momiji first appeared as a boss in the tenth main series Touhou game, Mountain of Faith. ^[1] She is what is a white wolf tengu, a kind of Japanese mythological creature. Despite appearing in few other official Touhou media, Momiji proved to be a very popular character, ranking #21 most favorite Touhou Project character out of 159 in a 2014 popularity contest. ^[2]

WAN

The first known use of associating Momiji with “WAN” comes from a 2010 Flash animation with various canine-based Touhou characters singing “Someone Else”, the opening theme to the anime Working!!. The joke comes from “one” being a homophone for “wan”, the Japanese onomatopoeia for a dog barking. Several years later in 2014, another Flash was created by a (currently unknown) animator, featuring a Gyate Gyate version of Momiji and the song “Wop” by American rapper J. Dash.

The image of Momiji used in the second Flash became a form of shitposting, although not to the extent that awoo~ did.

Awoo~

Although the exact origins are unclear, according to a post in an archived /s4s/ (Shit 4chan Says) thread, Momiji began to be associated with “awoo~” after a poster refered to her as “the awoo one”, in reference to a thread which asked which Touhou characters one would like to play Mario Kart with. ^[3] An image of Momiji howling became associated with the phrase soon after.

Spread

In July of 2014, a subreddit devoted to images of Momiji, /r/awoo, was created. “Awoo~” and its accompanying image feature prominently in the design of the subreddit. ^[4]

Notable Examples

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Search Interest

References