Ranka Lee's Kira Pose

About

Kira! (Japanese: キラッ☆) is a trademark hand gesture used by Ranka Lee, a fictional pop idol from the popular TV anime series Macross Frontier^[1]. In one of her songs called "Interstellar Flight" (星間飛行, Seikan Hikou), Ranka juts the \m/ sign ("I love you" in sign language) next to her face and yells "Kira!" which means "glittery" or "shiny". Both the Kira! pose and the dance in its entirety have been reiterated through various kind of videos/illustrations on the web.

Origin

In Episode 12 of the series, Ranka Lee swoops into a live battlefield in a mecha equipped with PA speakers and sings her debut song "Interstellar Flight" while in the mid-air. Watching her from below, everyone suddenly stops fighting because there's a live concert. Ranka does her Kira pose twice during the performance, overshadowing all the serious biz happening on the battlefield with her super-cuteness. It's a highly unrealistic situation, but who cares, it is cute.

Meanwhile, this song is originally sung by Megumi Nakajima, who also does the voice of Ranka Lee character.^[2]

Spread

As the TV series ran through the summer of 2008, this song with cute choreograph soon became to a trending subject for dance covers^[3], singing covers^[4] and playing covers^[5], each of which is one of the most popular genres on the Japanes video sharing site Nico Nico Douga (NND) called "I tried dancing (X)" (踊ってみた, Odotte mita), "I tried singing (X)" (歌ってみた, Utatte mita) and "I tried playing (X)" (演奏してみた, Ensou site mita). In most of over 3000 videos in this series, people features this signature pose in movies or thumbnail pictures.

Other users on NND and YouTube created MAD-type music videos set to the song, featuring popular icons from other manga/anime and internets. Drawing & posting fan illustrations of the Kira! pose also became a popular fad on deviantART^[6] and a Japanese illustrators community ,pixiv.^[7]

Notable Examples

Covers

MADs and Others

Illustrations

Compilation

History & Evolution of "Peace Sign"

On a related note, here's an introduction to the history and evolution of "peace signs" in Asian cultures:

Search Interest

External references