About

I Can Assure You Dear Viewer, This Scene Was Crucial to the Plot or I Assure You, Dear Viewer, This Scene Was Absolutely Essential to the Plot is a catchphrase and exploitable image macro meme series in which an image of Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno, or another anime or manga creator, is shown next to an image of an arguably unnecessary, adult-oriented scene from their series alongside a version of the phrasal template, "I can assure you dear viewer, this shot of X is crucial to the plot." The meme, which comes in many variations of the phrase, was first used on Reddit as early as February 2021 as an ironic Doge format and spread over the following years, evolving past the use of Doge.

Origin

On February 10th, 2021, Redditor red_salsa posted a now-deleted Doge meme to the /r/dogelore^[1] subreddit about Neon Genesis Evangelion. The meme is captioned, "Yes, I assure you this masturbation scene between two 14 year old kids is crucial to the introduction of the movie," and garnered around 160 upvotes before it was removed.

Spread

The meme spread over the following years on sites like Reddit, Instagram, X / Twitter and Facebook, starting as a Doge format and eventually moving past the character.

On March 29th, 2021, a now-deleted Redditor posted a meme to the /r/evangelionmemes^[2] subreddit captioned, "I assure you, dear viewer. This shot of Asuka is crucial to the plot." The meme shows an image of Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno next to an image of Asuka crawling, the angle showing under her shirt. The post gained over 8,100 upvotes in five years.

On May 6th, Redditor _user980 posted a meme to the /r/ShitPostCrusaders^[3] subreddit using an image of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure creator Hirohiko Araki alongside the caption, "I assure you fellow JoJo reader that the Lisa Lisa bath scene where you can see her bare ass is absolutely necessary and critical to the plot," garnering over 36,000 upvotes in five years.

On July 2nd, 2023, Redditor Your-YoriK-Know posted a version of the meme referencing a scene from the anime series Chainsaw Man to the /r/Animemes^[4] subreddit, garnering over 8,500 upvotes in three years.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References