About

Pledge to Protect alludes to images where the creator exclaim their will to protect a character by pairing an image of them with a modified screencap of the game Civilization V, putting emphasis on the phrase "Pledge to Protect."

Origin

On August 16th, 2016 Know Your Meme user NottaWotta^[1] uploaded a Motion Blur zoom of the City-state menu that appears in the game Civilization V_, putting emphasis on the phrase "Pledge to Protect" with the title of "When you absolutely want to protect that smile." (show below).

One of the earliest examples of the image used in a meme was uploaded to /r/Animemes by a deactivated user on June 24th, 2017. The image shows the character Sistine Fibel from the anime Akashic Records of Bastard Magic Instructor accompanying the Civ V screencap (shown below).

Spread

On September 12th, 2017, Reddit user Holofan4life^[3] uploaded a variant showing the character Taiga Aisaka from the anime Toradora with a happy smile. This image managed to get 2,000 upvotes (shown below left). On August 1st, 2018 another /r/Animemes royaltparty^[4] user uploaded an image showing the character Ochako Uraraka from My Hero Academia. This image scored 1,300 upvotes in the coming months (shown below center). Another image showing the Priestess from Goblin Slayer was uploaded to the same subreddit on October 9th by the user AbandonShip86.^[5] In a few days the image managed to get over 750 upvotes (shown below right)

Various Examples

Templates

Search Interest

External References