Is This a Pigeon?

The entry is researching and in progress.

About

“Is this a pigeon?” is a reaction image, used on Tumblr to express confusion. The shot features a young man, improperly specyfying a butterfly as a pigeon. It is being often incorrectly identified as a fail transcription.

Origin

The picture originates from a Japanese anime television show The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird (太陽の勇者ファイバード), or simply Fighbird ^[1], Season 1 Episode 3 All Members In! Space Police! (Seizoroi uchû keibitai)", originally 勢ぞろい宇宙警備隊, first aired in Japan on February 16, 1991. The concrete image is taken from the clip, when Yutaro Katori, a humanoidal android created by professor Hiroshi Amano, meets Inspector Satsuda and tells him that he’s “studying”. Afterwards, he confuses a Lepidoptera with a Columbidae and Rosaceae with Violaceae, setting Inspector embarassed.

Spread

It first leaked to the Internet on December 6, 2011 by Indizi dell’avvenuta catastrofe on Tumblr accompanied by a #anime subtitles are the new zen tag ^[2]. It gained 111 000 notes overall ^[3].

Later the same day, screenshot was uploaded to meme database – Know Your Meme, in the LOLfansubs/Failsubs entry ^[4], which has received 30+ upvotes, 4 favorites and 4 comments ^[5]. On December 11, picture was posted on animeultima.tv website, Funny Pics thread ^[6]. On Buzzfeed, a entertainment journalism website, image was submitted to 27 Subtitles That Have Gone Awesomely Wrong ranking as 11th position, being inappropriately credited as wrong. The article has got 40+ Facebook comments and 250+ contributions ^[7].
On November 23, 2012, the picture got included in Smosh’s 22 Hysterical Anime Screencaps as 2nd place ^[8]. On a wiki, TV Tropes, section Memes: Tumblr, “Is this a pigeon?” is noted as ‘Photo reply to any picture showing a butterfly’ ^[9]. The screencap is commonly exploided on Tumblr with #is this a pigeon hashtag ^[10].

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared 3

The popular musical film series directed by Becky Sloan & Joseph Pelling, Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared, episode 3 referenced “Is this a pigeon?” fad in form of The Yellow Guy mistaking a butterfly Shrignold for ‘A little baby pigeon’. It begun a new collection of editions and variantions on Tumblr ^[11].