Special Feeling / 特別な気分

About

Special Feeling (Japanese: 特別な気分, Tokubetsu na kibun), also referred to as “Special Mood”, is a series of illustrations parodying a Japanese couple who were interviewed on TV during snowstorm in Tokyo in early January 2013. Upon its upload via Twitter in early February 2014, the couple’s interview quickly became a subject of online mockeries on the Japanese web, particularly about the man who was quoted as saying “being in the snow with my lover like this immerses me in a special feeling. I like it.”

Origin

On February 8th, 2014, Japan was hit by one of the heaviest snowfalls in decades, with Tokyo receiving 8.7 inches and the city of Matsumoto seeing up to 19 inches of snow. Shortly after its arrival, Japanese TV stations repeatedly aired emergency news programs about the blizzard in the Kantou and Touhoku regions. Amidst all the disruptions and media commotions, a Japanese TV crew interviewed a young couple in front of Tokyo’s Shibuya station. Upon being asked how they feel, the young man responded with an overly saccharine statement, which can be translated as “being in the snow with my lover like this immerses me in a special feeling. I like it” (“恋人といる時の雪って特別な気分に浸れて僕は好きです”). His response, which was seen by some viewers as laughably mawkish or sentimental, soon prompted an outpour of reactions on Twitter, especially after @HOMOMANKO^[1] tweeted a screenshot of the interview clip (shown below).

黙れクソメガネ pic.twitter.com/KXJ1kP8zNF
— そらまる兵長(´へωへ`*) (@HOMOMANKO) February 8, 2014

“Being in the snow with my lover like this immerses me in a special feeling. I like it.”

SHUT UP, F**KING FOUR-EYES.

In the first few days, the tweet managed to gain more than 36,000 retweets and 15,000 favorites. In the tweet, @HOMOMANKO also added an insulting commentary calling the man “(Fucking) Four-Eyes,” referencing a quote attributed to the character Levi from the Japanese manga / anime series Attack on Titan. Though the screenshot of the couple’s interview was initially thought have been taken during the news coverage of the blizzard in 2014, it was eventually identified as a dated interview from another weather news report^[2] in January 2013.

Spread

@HOMOMANKO’s tweet, along with its timely pop culture reference to Attack on Titan, instantly went viral as it struck a chord with other users on Twitter, many of whom thought his romanticizing of a natural disaster was inappropriate, combined with a sentiment of intense jealousy often displayed by Internet users who remain single. Meanwhile, some began to scrutinize as to why the woman in the interview was seen with a ring and had her face covered the whole time, leading to the unfounded rumors that the couple’s relationship may be an extramarital affair.

But more significantly, the screenshot spawned hundreds of image parodies of the couple on the Japanese illustrators communities pixiv^[5] and Nico Nico Seiga,^[6] as well as on Twitter and Tumblr^[7], under the tag “Special Feeling” (特別な気分), excerpted from the subtitle displayed in the screenshot of the interview. The explosion of parody illustrations was subsequently logged by Nico Nico Seiga and pixiv’s respective encyclopedic companions^[10]^[11] and it was also reported on by several Japanese news portal sites, including Togetter^[3] and Naver Matome^[4], and online gossip blogs.^[12]^[13]

On the English-speaking web, this fad on the Japanese Twitter was immediately covered by threads in 4chan’s /u/^[14] (Yuri) and /a/^[15] (anime & manga) boards and a news article by Crunchyroll published on February 9th, 2014.^[16]

Notable Examples

Reflecting the popular trend in Japanese fan fiction with shipping in the years prior to the event, many illustrations in the series portray Yaoi^[8] or Yuri^[9] couples.

Left: Touhou Project | Right: Kantai Collection