About

The Anime "Wow" sound effect is a short soundclip of a Japanese woman exclaiming "wow" in a high-pitched way. In a manner similar to Eddy Wally's Wow and Owen Wilson's Wow, it has been widely used in montage parodies in order to portray either cuteness or, sometimes, lewdness.

Origin

On Ferbruary 1st, 2014, Reddit user NegimaSonic launched a thread in the r/anime subreddit, asking for the origin of the Wow sound effect,^[1] a sound clip they heard in many anime. Among the handful of responses, user mokugyo linked to a YouTube video of a person playing the 1990 arcade game Parodius Da! – Shinwa kara Owaraihe. One of the bosses is called Honey Mikayo, appearing as a blond woman under a bedsheet who moans when she is hurt and exclaims "Wow!" when she is defeated (shown below).

Spread

In that thread, Reddit user shigofumi argued that the use of stock sound clip is common practice by companies for their variety shows and anime. The whole soundtrack has been released as early as July 21st, 1990,^[2] and, on the Japanese web, this peculiar "wow" sound has been discussed online as early as May 13th, 2001^[3] because of its heavy use on adult themed segments in Japanese TV shows.

On the western web, however, though the sound has been used in different anime through the 90s up until today, many first encountered it in the third OVA from the Fairy Tail animated series, titled Memory Days, which was released on February 17th, 2012. In it, the character of Ezra forced another character, Lucy, to wear a bunny suit which she obliged, exclaiming "Ah! Ah! Ah! Wow!" with an echoed high-pitched voice (shown below).

Consequently, it was heavily shared on YouTube under the name of either "Anime Wow" (shown below, left) or "Fairy Tail Wow" (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References