Chloé Lemaire's Japanese Speech

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About

Chloé Lemaire (Japanese: クロエ・ルメール) is a fictional French girl in a Japanese online dating sim card game Girl Friend BETA (ガールフレンド(仮), Girl Friend Kakko Kari)^[1] provided by Ameba.^[2] In the beginning of 2014, she got a much attention among many Japanese internet users due to her a little bit strange self-introduction in a TV advert, and unfortunately became to the subject for mockery or parody on the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND).

Origin

This 17-year-old exchange student acted by a Japanese famous female voice actor Sakura Tange^[3] has been appearing on the game since its first launch in October 2012, and one of the popular characters in over 70 girls from the very beginning of the service. However, many Japanese people except for the game players didn't know about her characteristic, speaking Japanese with strong French-like accent, till Ameba threw out a huge amount of TV adverts for the game's campaign during the year-end and New Year holidays in 2013-2014 (shown below).

Transcript:

Shinshun Campaign Jisshi chu! (The New-Years Campaign, Now in Session!)
Shiina Kokomi desu
Akane!
Nao
Ichigo desu
Tokitani Koruri!
Fumiyo desu
Chloé Lemaire desuyo
Anata wa? (And you?)
Girl Friend Kakko Kari!
Ameba de Kensaku! Kensaku! (Try searching by "Ameba" right now!)

Spread

Indeed, her self-introduction with French-like accent and liaison, "Chloé Lemaire desuyo" (lit. "I'm Chloé Lemaire"), was a little bit indistinct in this advert which switches many girls rapidly in its quite short footage. But it wasn't really ridiculous enough to be mocked at. However, what dictated her destiny was a copy of the TV advert on NND which was indiscreet enough to associate her polite self-introduction with "(^q^)", a Shift-JIS art meaning of mental retarded people's smile. This video posted on January 4th, 2014^[4] had been watched over 1 million times just in its first 4 days, and its popularity was soon reported by online gossip or game news media.^[5]^[6] Because of this, her utterance was forced to overwrite its meaning to a strange noise "Kuoueeeerueuooo!!!" ((^q^)くおえうえーーーるえうおおおｗｗｗ). Then as usual, many parody videos for both her utterance and the TV advert immediately started to be created by childish NND users in the New Year holidays. Its amount had increased to 4 hundreds in that month only.^[7]

Aftermath

Due to the help of this online craze, that promotional campaign during holiday season made a great success. At the end of January 2014, CyberAgent, the parent company of Ameba, announced the number of registered Girl Friend BETA users had increased in the fastest pace, and reached to 4 millions from 3 millions at the last September.^[8] Additionally, the developer changed the icon image for the Android app from Kokomi Shiina to Chloé Lemaire in a reflection of the popularity, and became to give much more spotlight to her in subsequent advert campaigns.