Hadokening

About

Hadokening is a photo fad that involves two or more people staging a “Ki attack” knockout sequence and photographing themselves in mid-action, as seen in the popular Japanese fighting arcade game Street Fighter and manga series Dragon Ball.

Origin

Parody re-enactments of harnessing and blasting Qi in the form of energy balls have been circulating on the South Korean web under the generic name “Qi attack play”^[6][7][8] (장풍놀이) as early as since 2009.

However, the photo fad didn’t reach the English-speaking and western audiences until March 25th, 2013, when Japanese Twitter user ちゃんまん^[9] (@mkpiiii9) posted an image of herself and her classmates staging a dramatic shot.

マカンコウサッポウ！！！！！ twitter.com/mkpiiii9/statu…

— ちゃんまん (@mkpiiii9) March 25, 2013

Spread

The tweet instantly spawned a series of copycat photos from other Japanese Twitter users, many of whom appear to be high school girls judging from their school uniform attires. The Japanese photo fad was soon picked up by Oregon-based DJ and blogger KentBalls^[1] on March 27th in a compilation post with the following description:

One of the latest twitter trends coming out of Japan is for young school girls to take photos with their friends doing poses and power moves from anime series like Dragon Ball Z. Here’s hoping this is the next trend in North America.

On the following day, Redditor Auyx^[3] linked to an Imgur gallery version of the KentBalls post in a post titled “HADOKEN-ing. The latest craze in Japan,” which introduced the name “HADOKEN-ing” for the first time, derived from the well-known special attack Hadouken (literally “wave motion fist” or “surge fist” in Japanese) used by several characters featured in the game. The post reached the front page with more than 42,000 up votes and 1,990 comments within the first 24 hours. That same day, Japan’s “Hadokening” photo fad was covered by BuzzFeed^[2], Vice Magazine^[10] and ABC News.^[4]

Notable Examples

External References