Creeparka

About

Creeparka (Japanese: クリーパーカー; Kurīpākā) refers to a hooded sweatshirt featuring the pixel-patterned skin of Creeper, the iconic mob character from the sandbox indie game Minecraft. On the Japanese web, Creepyparka has gained the status of a cult item among the fans of the game, inspiring a series of moe and gijinka illustrations depicting a sexy female character known as "Creeparka-san" dressed in the concept apparel.

Origin

Creepyparka, a portmanteau of borrowed English words "Creeper" (クリーパー; Kurīpā) and "parka," (パーカー; Pākā), was first visualized as a concept design and uploaded by Japanese illustrator 221 to Pixiv^[1] on April 9th, 2011 and Nico Nico Seiga^[2] on April 18th.

Spread

However, the illustration fad didn't take off until several months later when Ctomix, a well-known Minecraft "LP" vlogger on Nico Nico Douga, submitted an illustration titled "Reeper-chan" (リーパーちゃん) to Nico Nico Seiga^[4] on July 15th, 2011.

Owing much to Ctomix' sizable fan following on Nico Nico Douga, the Creepyparka instantly became a popular drawing fad among Japanese Minecraft players on illustrators communities Nico Nico Seiga^[5] and pixiv.^[6] Soon, the meme became closely associated with moe fan art, leading to the birth of a character named "Creeparka-san" or "Crepaka-san/chan"

Throughout those fan works and parodies, Creeparka-san has established her Yandere or "Love or Explode" personality. Besides, she is sometimes dubbed "Meister" (匠; Takumi) by linking his/her exploder nature to a specialist of house remodeling.

Creeper Girl / Cupa

Before the year was over, Creeparka had become known as the "Creeper Girl" in the English-speaking communities. The amount of Creeper Girl illustrations on the English illustrators community deviantART is more than 1200^[8], and those have continued to be posted since the late of 2009. In particular, this sexy hand-drawn animation titled "If Creeper were a girl"^[9] was made several translated versions on YouTube and has earned hundreds of thousands of page views.

"Mob Talker" Dating Sim

Besides, this moe gijinka idea led the launch of "Mob Talker"^[10] in the summer of 2012, that is a Japanese AVG style dating sim MOD featuring moe gijinka characters for mobs. And since the default name of Creeper is "Cupa", Creeper Girl is also known by the name.

The Official Creeparka

The official Creeper zip-up hoodie was released by Jinx in July 2012 (shown below, left).^[11] And Creeper hoodie avatar items for X360 were released in September^[12] and December^[13] of 2012 (shown below, center & right). However, it seems that there are no relationships between these official goods and the Creeparka meme on the web.

Notable Examples

Illustrations

Videos

Creeparka-san has been featured in dozens of parody videos on NND.^[7]

Search Interest

External References

Editor’s Note: Registration is needed to browse the original videos listed in this section.