Yamcha's Death Pose

About

Yamcha's Death Pose is an image exploitable series based on a stillshot of DragonBall Z character Yamcha fallen on the ground after suffering a fatal injury in the battle against Saibaman, a relatively weak villain character. The images depict Yamcha or other anime character lying inside the crater and they are typically used to indicate failure or weakness.

Origin

In the Saiyan saga of the classic anime series Dragonball Z^[7], the villain character Nappa makes use of an alien species called "Saibamen" to attack the main characters, including Yamcha. After one of the Saibamen attacks Yamcha using a self-destruction technqiue called the "Saibamen Bomb" which ends up killing both of them, Yamcha's corpse is left lying in the familiar pose.

Yamcha's death pose and the tag "ヤムチャしやがって…" ("you were Yamcha") first emerged in early 2009 as a derivative of the colloquial expression "無茶しやがって…" ("you were reckless") which has been used on Nico Nico Douga^[1] when referring to someone who's made an attempt at something absurd or impossible. Such association of Yamcha and FAIL was established most likely due to the character's feeble strength in comparison to other Saiyan-blooded characters including his friends Goku and his son Gohan.

Spread

The exploitable image quickly spawned a large volume of parody fanart and illustrations on the Japanese illustrators' community Pixiv^[2], which were soon picked up by a number of Yahoo Blogs. The drawing meme eventually made its way into the English web in 2010, as seen on imageboard hubsites and anime-related forums like Danbooru^[3]. The meme was also documented by TVTropes Wiki^[4] in the "Ascended Meme" article.

Various Examples

Yamcha's death pose was further reiterated in Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi^[5], wherein Saibaiman's attack makes its enemy fall to the ground in the identical pose, and in Dragon Ball Z: Attack of the Saiyans^[6] where Yamcha falls defeated in the same pose.

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