Start the Rapture / Anime Jesus on The Phone

About

Start The Rapture, sometimes called Anime Jesus On The Phone, is a reaction image from the Japanese anime Chouetsu Sekai. The anime series was developed by the Japanese death cult Aum Shinrikyo, which made the series for self-promotion purposes. A screencap and image macro of the anime version of the cult leader with a text overlay that reads, "Start The Rapture" began to be used as a Twitter reaction image in 2021.

Origin

In 1984, Shoko Asahara started the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyou, the group responsible for the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack of 1995.^[1] As part of the cult's recruitment practice, the cult's studio created a 10-episode anime called Chouetsu Sekai, which focuses on cult leader Asahara being portrayed as Jesus Christ.^[2]

The screengrab from Chouetsu Sekai depicting Asahara looking like Jesus and speaking on the phone can be accessed in the YouTube^[3] video shown below at the 14:30 timestamp (seen below).

The screenshot's first appearance as a meme was the Moshi Moshi Jesus Desu meme of the early 2010s (seen below, left). The earliest known use of the Start The Rapture meme was a March 27th, 2021, post by Twitter^[4] user @SwiftOnSecurity, gathering over 700 likes in two years (seen below, right).

Spread

On April 4th, 2021, Twitter^[5] user @Oh_my_josh69 posted a tweet that was reposted to the subreeddit /r/BlackPeopleTwitter, where it gathered over 3,000 upvotes in two years (seen below, left). On April 7th, the image was then posted to Tumblr,^[6] where it gathered over 45,000 notes in a similar timeframe (seen below, right).

On September 11th, 2021, Tumblr^[7] user @o-kurwa posted an image using the meme, gathering nearly 200 notes in two years (seen below, left). On October 26th, 2022, Twitter^[8] user @_HitchSlap_ then posted the image and gathered over 19,000 likes in five months (seen below, right).

Templates

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References