Makima Is Listening / Kishise Notepad

About

Makima Is Listening, also known as Kishise Holding Notepad, refers to an exploitable meme that uses a panel from the Chainsaw Man manga series. The original panel premiered in March 2020 in chapter 61 of the manga, which shows the character Kishibe writing, "Makima Is listening" in a notepad to Quanxi. Online, the image was popularized as a redraw template and recaptioned with catchphrases as it became an exploitable meme format in 2023 and 2024.

Origin

On March 9th, 2020, chapter 61 of Chainsaw Man^[1] manga series, created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, was published in Weekly Shōnen Jump. In the chapter, Kishibe is using a notepad to negotiate with Quanxi and explain his plans, which he starts by saying, "Makima Is listening" on the pad (panel shown below).

Spread

Memetic content using the "Makima is listening" panel was popularized on Reddit and X in October 2023, which often recaptioned the original phrase shown on the notepad with other people's names in the "X is listening" format.

For example, on October 24th, 2023, an unknown Redditor^[2] posted a version of the panel replacing Makima for Gege, the Jujutsu Kaisen manga author, to the /r/Jujutsufolk subreddit. The post (seen below, left) amassed roughly 10 upvotes and two comments in a year. On May 14th, 2024, X^[3] user @ChainsawShots posted fan art based on the manga panel (seen below, right), which amassed more than 2,700 likes and 250 reposts in a month.

Template

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References