About

Bigger Better Stronger refers to a series of anime-style videos that remix a quote from Donald Trump into an electronic song and show training montages, usually of anime characters getting buff. The series started on YouTube in 2018 and later spread to Bilibili, a Chinese video-sharing website that centers on anime.

Origin

On March 9th, 2017, YouTube channel TwinkieMan^[1] published a meme remix using samples from a speech of Donald Trump where he said:

The American dream is dead. But if I get elected president, I will bring it back. Bigger, better, stronger, than ever before.

On March 13th, 2017, YouTube channel Purple Unknown^[2] used a shortened version of the remix in an animation video (shown below, left). On February 8th, 2018, YouTube channel Starbeam^[3] uploaded an animation showing the character Natsuki from the dating-simulator game Doki Doki Literature Club. This video shows the character going through training and becoming Buffsuki, a muscular version of herself. This video defined the visual gag, especially the bodybuilder poses of displaying the muscles. The video appears to have been the template for subsequent variations.

Spread

Videos using this format started to appear on Bilibili as early as February 2018, shortly after the Buffsuki version posted by YouTuber Starbeam. That month, Bilibili user 水滴鲸子^[4] made an animation video for the character Sans from the RPG game Undertale (shown below).

The trend later spread into other fandoms for anime, games or VTubers. The name of the video is often translated into Chinese as “更大，更好，更强” (lit. Bigger, better, stronger), followed by some character's name. Searching the phrase on Bilibili reveals many additional instances of the meme.^[5]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References