Aigis Toaster

About

Aigis Toaster refers to a series of fan art and memes imagining Persona 3 character Aigis as a toaster. The meme received viral spread within the Persona fanbase in 2017 following series of fan art.

Origin

On July 13th, 2006, role-playing video game Persona 3 was released for PlayStation 2 in Japan.^[1] In the game, character Aigis,^[2] a robot high school student, was introduced (image shown below).

While the exact origin of the jokes about Aigis being a toaster is unknown, the joke has circulated online at least since 2014.^[3] The joke stems from a combinations of two factors, including Aigis being a robot character, and the lyric in the song Burn My Dread from the Persona 3 soundtrack being jokingly misinterpreted as "burn my bread."

On December 30th, 2014, Know Your Meme^[3] user Salvador Lukyanov cataloged one of the earliest memes that referred to Aigis as a toaster (shown below).

Spread

In the following years, the joke has maintained moderate popularity within the Persona community. In October 2017, the meme saw a surge of popularity among Persona fans; for example, on October 10th, 2017, Twitter^[4] user @SuperButterBuns tweeted "Aigis is best toaster," with the tweet gaining over 60 retweets and 290 likes in three years.

On November 7th, 2017, Tumblr^[5] user lesserdrawbro posted the earliest viral fan art depicting Aigis as a toaster, with the post gaining over 580 likes and reblogs in three years (shown below, left). On January 9th, 2018, Tumblr^[6] user gasp-theenemy posted a 3D render of the drawing (shown below, center and right), with the post gaining over 800 likes and reblogs in three years, with multiple reposts appearing online in the following months.

On August 8th, 2019, gasp-theenemy uploaded a video in which they demonstrated a Half-Life 2 based on the meme. The video received over 174,000 views on YouTube^[7] and over 115,000 views on Twitter^[8] in two years (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References