How does a simple Cheese Beef Bowl connect with pro-democracy Activism and Sega's Creative
Director's departure from the company?
That's the question I hope to answer for you today, as we take a deep-dive into the incredibly
popular Japanese net-slang: チー牛
This is it -- the picture that started it all.
The image itself is originally from 2008, but it wasn't until 2018 when it saw popularity
after being posted on 2channel in a thread illustrating stereotypes of unattractive
or uncool men.
With the image attached, the post described mentioned men with the following characteristics:
- glasses - black hair
- childish haircut - baby-face (bad-meaning)
- face that lacks ambition
- despite being an adult, has creepy middle-school-esque
vibe
So, what's he saying, in English?
Well, during my research for video, I actually found a Japanese person asking on Yahoo Answers
exactly that!
I wonder if they were trying to explain the meme to their foreign friend or something.
So this is it, this is exactly what they want.
It's an extra large beef bowl, add triple cheese, add soft-boiled egg.
This exact dish, pictured here.
The meme is that apparently men who look like this, order cheese on their beef bowl -- they
order Cheese Gyuudon.
Originally the term was only used on 2channel, but spread to Twitter and blew up.
People seemed to find the correlation to be true, and tons of memes were made.
There's even a music video that just came out about it.
We've established the meaning, usage, and popularity of the term.
Here comes the drama.
This is Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow.
They are internationally famous pro-democracy protestors from Hong Kong.
I'm not an expert on them, but from what I can tell from the research I did for this
video, Agnes speaks Japanese, and is well-known in
Japan.
However, at the time, Joshua was not as well-known in Japan.
Apparently, some Japanese people online started referring to Joshua as "the chi-gyuu beside
Agnes"
He initially only flirted with the meme, posting a picture of massive lines outside a Sukiya
in Hong Kong -- Sukiya most likely being the restaurant referred to in the meme, with their
3-cheese Gyuudon.
But a month later he fully embraced the meme, with a long thread on Twitter announcing a
collaboration with a restaurant in Hong Kong to sell a Joshua Wong Don, with cheese on
top of course.
Finally, and most interestingly, the SEGA fiasco.
Toshihiro Nagoshi started working for SEGA in 1989.
He created Super Monkey Ball, F-Zero GX, and headed the entire Yakuza franchise.
He became Chief Creative Officer of the entire company in 2012.
But everything changed in July 2020 during an Official Sega Broadcast showcasing Professional
Puyo-Puyo.
That was all it took.
They quickly edited this moment out of the VOD, but it was too late.
A month later, he and the lady beside him in the clip publically apologized
After 32 years at the company, in October 2021, he left Sega.
It's unclear whether this was due to the events from the stream, however.
He has since moved to Chinese Publisher NetEase.
Another thing I looked into was the Sales data of the Gyuudon chain Sukiya, which I
mentioned is the one that sells the 3-cheese Gyuudon.
On August 3, 2020, their earnings report was released.
Despite the massive global events in early 2020, their revenue was up 2.7% year-over-year.
Interestingly, their number of customers was DOWN 0.8 percent.
The revenue increase was caused by the average spending per customer going up 3.5%.
Could this be because people added Cheese to
their gyuu-don?
Interestingly, while researching for this video, I was trying to find if it was pronounced
頭高 or 平板 because I heard people saying both.
I found a thread on 5ch discussing it, and in the end, the first reply was kinda true.
"The only people who care about this are チー牛"
Thank you so much for watching.
My channel has gotten quite a few views recently, and I'd like to thank all of you.
I put a lot of effort into these videos, especially into the research.
Please subscribe if you haven't, comment if you have anything to say, and remember to
like the video.
It all helps.
Thank you again, and have a great new year.