"A Certain Light Novel's Related Topic (Sub Meme)"

About

Toaru Logo Parodies refer to a series of parody illustrations based on the title logo of TV animes for a Japanese light novel A Certain Magical Index and its spin-off title A Certain Scientific Railgun. Since around the end of 2009, a vast amount of parodies has been circulating on the Japanese web due to the great help of the generators.

Origin

The characteristics of logo for this light novel series are its circuitous wording beginning from "A Certain…" (とある, Toaru) and a gimmick that reads a Kanji word "禁書目録" (Kinsho Mokuroku; lit. "Index of Forbidden Books") as a character's name "Index" by putting English subtitles written in Katakana (インデックス, Indekkusu) under/beside the word. In a similar vein, its spin-off titles, A Certain Scientific Railgun and A Certain Scientific Accelerator, also read "超電磁砲" (Chou Denji Hou; lit. "Super Electromagnetic Gun") as "Railgun" and "一方通行" (Ippou Tsuukou; lit. "One Way") as "Accelerator", both of which are a name/alias of the main character.

This unique wording style became to be widely known among Japanese Otakus after the original TV anime for A Certain Magical Index started in October 2008.

Original Logo for The TV anime series

Spread

A small amount of hand-drawn parodies for the anime's title logo had been already uploaded on a Japanese illustrators community pixiv in early 2009.^[1] However, it couldn't become to a popular activity like Oreimo Cover Art Parodies among amateur illustrators in those days.

An explosive increase in the popularity of the Toaru logo parody began after a TV anime for A Certain Scientific Railgun started in October 2009, and it was led by the 2 image generators launched on November & December in that year: "A Certain Image Automatic Generation (Generator)" (とある画像の自動生成<ジェネレータ>)^[2] and "A Certain Sakura's Image Generation (Generator)" (とある櫻花の画像生成（ジェネレーター）).^[3] Both of them can generate the Index's horizontal-writing style and the Railgun's vertical-writing style.

In particular, the latter generator developed by Kunihiro Tanaka, the president of the Japanese major web hosting service Sakura Internet, succeeded to get a much popularity. It had generated more than 1 million of parodies within its first year, and its amount had reached to 5 millions in January 2014. Thus, most of illustrations posted on the illustrators community are merely generated by this service.^[1]

Besides, Toaru logo generators are much more popular than many other anime title logo generators such as Puella Magi Madoka Magica^[4], Luck Star^[5], Haganai^[6], Minami-ke^[7] etc…. It's all because Toaru's unique wording inspires people's playful mind.

Notable Examples

The format of this parody is "A Certain X's Y (Z)" (Toaru X no Y (Z [ pronunciation ]). Its spice is the gap between Y and Z. So, Y is usually stilted Kanji words/idioms and Z is informal Katakana words, catchphrases, or English translations.

A Certain AC's Magical Greeting (POPOPOPO-N) Greetings Are Magic	A Certain Baby's Perverse remark (Photo Collages) Aka-san	A Certain Homestead's IKZO (Yoshi Ikuzo) I'll Go to Tokyo
A Certain Kusanagi's Ippon Manzoku (I'm satisfied!) Ippon Manzoku Bar	A Certain Touhou Fairy on Ice (Cirno) Touhou Project	A Certain Sakura High's Band Club (After-School Tea Time) K-ON!

Search Interest

External References

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