About
“Is This Attack on Titan?” is a flippant question often posted in response to screen captured images and animated GIFs that contain subjects or themes bearing vague similarities to those found in the anime television series Attack on Titan.
Origin
The earliest known use of the question “Is this Attack on Titan?” on Tumblr was posted by user minty-bee on July 7th, 2013. In the post is a close-up of girl whose face is partially covered by a blanket, somewhat reminiscent of one of the titan characters in the show. Despite the later popularity of the phrase, minty-bee’s post went largely ignored with only one note [1].
Spread
On August 15th, 2013, Tumblr[5] user karokekarkat posted a screenshot from the film Shrek 2 with the caption “is this Attack on Titan” (shown below, left). In the first nine months, the post gained over 67,900 notes. On September 8th, Tumblr user nyoomies [3] posted a photoshopped picture of actor David Hasselhoff holding the characters Patrick and Spongebob from the animated television series “Spongebob Squarepants”: accompanied by the question “is this Attack on Titan?” (shown below, right).
On October 23rd, the question “Is this Attack on Titan?” was added to the Attack on Titan memes page on TV Tropes.[4] On May 25th, 2014, Tumblr user verailis[6] posted a screenshot from the animated television series Jimmy Neutron captioned with a sarcastic comment intentionally confusing the show with the anime Kill la Kill (shown below). In the first two weeks, the post gathered upwards of 13,600 notes.
Notable Examples
Search Interest
External References
[1]minty-bee – Is This Attack on Titan? / Posted on 7/7/2013
[2]Tumblr – Posts Tagged ‘Is This Attack on Titan?’
[3]nyoomies – Is This Attack on Titan? / Posted 9/8/2013
[4]TV Tropes – Memes Attack on Titan
[5]Tumblr – karaokekarkat