Gyate Gyate

About

Gyate Gyate (Japanese: ぎゃてコラ, Gyate-Kora), occasionally called as “Ohayou” in English-speaking web, refers to a series of parody illustrations for a grin by Kyouko Kasodani^[1] from Touhou Project. In a similar vein to Gununu and Moetron, her facial expression is one of the popular templates for drawing among Japanese amateur illustrators.

Origin

The original “Gyate” face is appeared on a 4-panel comic where Marisa Kirisame^[2] pokes a bit of fun at Kyouko’s Yamabiko^[3] or parrotry nature. This yonkoma^[4] manga was written by a Japanese illustrator/mangaka Nekomura Otako^[5], and posted to pixiv on April 30th, 2011.^[6]

Translation:

Marisa: Good Afternoon / Kyouko: Good Afternoon!!
Marisa: Woof Woof / Kyouko: Woof Woof!!
Marisa: Meow Meow / Kyouko: Meow Meo-…
Marisa: C’mon, What’s the matter? Not gonna say it? (snicker snicker) / Kyouko: (tremble tremble tremble)

Spread

The people who got inspiration from her grin in the first panel were anonymous users in the Japanese imageboard community Futaba Channel (2chan). They set that facial expression of her as a template of tracing, Futaba’s most famous drawing activity represented by Gununu and Moetron, and became to call it as “Gyate-Kora” (lit. “Gyate Collage”), which “Gyate” comes from Kyouko’s remark in the original game “Gyātē Gyātē” (ぎゃーてーぎゃーてー). Gyate-Kora started to be practiced on Futaba by the middle of 2011 at the lastest, and it’s said that all Touhou characters including minor characters appearing only in books had been drawn in this style by Futaba users. However, there are no archives for those early works on the web due to the characteristic of Futaba.

Then, this manner was inported to pixiv circa the middle of 2013, many Gyate-Kora illustrations became to be found on that Japanese illustrators community in that year.^[7] Nowadays, various kinds of characters not limited in Touhou are drawn in this “Gyate” style. Additionally, dozens of Gyate illustrations are also found on deviantART.^[8] And those illustrations are usually called “Ohayou” in the illustrators community in English-speaking web.