Japanese Slang Review – September 2023

And it’s time for the ninth Japanese slang review of 2023 (see all prior posts here)! In these posts I deep dive into the world of Japanese terms you probably won’t see in a textbook, looking at what they mean, how they are used, and where they came from. Sources and definitions for the terms I discuss here will come from a variety of places, but as always I draw heavily from the website numan.tokyo. As always, these are “new to me” rather than something I am able to trace the exact origin or date of… but many are actually new!

The 10 terms for this month are:

1. 友達推し活 (ともだちおしかつ)

If you already know that 推し活 are activities you do to support or connect with the media personality you are a fan of, then it’s not hard to guess what 友達推し活 are. That’s right! Activities to support your friends. Friends who you are big fans of, of course. So we’re starting off September on a positive note for sure.

Made national TV too

Unlike your traditional 推し活, when you 推し your friend you can easily see them every day and chat, take lots of pictures together (without paying for it!), and buy all kinds of things for them instead of paying them to buy their branded goods! Like you could just take your friend-推し out for a coffee or something…

Anyone who wants to can 推し活 me a coffee anytime

…make them handmade gifts…

がんばって

…or create a photo album of them?

They did this before 友達推し活 was a word but it’s still very much 友達推し活

As this next person notes, the whole point of 友達推し活 is just enjoying time with your friend, or “feeling the same as them”. Yes, perhaps this is all really just “hanging out”, and we didn’t need a new word for it. But it’s hard to be cynical about young kids supporting one another for the heck of it. Well done youth of Japan I suppose!

Nice day

When did 友達推し活 start? I mean, as a named thing, of course. People have been supporting their friends throughout history. Well, the earliest hits on Twitter are from April 2022, with not a single hit before that time. Use really picks up in 2023 though, so we are dealing with a fairly new term. Coverage by FujiTV, which you saw in the first screenshot above, really sparked the word’s popularity too, resulting in cases like people below: the first poster writes that they thought 友達推し活 was strange when they heard about it but then realized they had made their friend’s face their lock screen – a typical 友達推し活 act. The second poster instead recalls when they went to return a coworker’s phone only to see another sleeping coworker’s face as the lock screen. They wonder if the phone’s owner is gay, only to learn about 友達推し活 in the process.

Amusing anecdotes

That said, 友達推し活 can be one sided. I didn’t find any discussions of this on Twitter, but the FujiTV coverage mentioned that sometimes a 友達 can get a bit troubled by being 推し活ed. So always be sure to 推し活 your friends with their express consent.

2. トゥアトゥン

Our second word トゥアトゥン is a word from Thai. Literally, the term means something like “tense body”, and is written as you see below:

Sounds like “toe-toong”

In a general sense though, the term has long been used in Thai to refer to a frontrunner. In the Thai BL scene, which gave us Yガール and ライカントピニ, the term evolved to be used to refer to one’s bias or 推し. You know, the person who you do 友達推し活 for who isn’t your 友達. As this new use of トゥアトゥン spread though, it saw wider applications in Thailand to just refer to the best member of a any kind of media group (either one’s opinion or the strongest performing data-wise), or the one who is getting the most attention (good or bad).

So why am I talking about Thai? Isn’t this a Japanese slang review? Well did you know Thai has a huge BL scene? My colleague just wrote a book about it, check it out. But Japanese fans of this scene often use Thai-based words over Japanese ones to mark their fandom. Calling your bias an 推し? Oof, normie stuff. Calling them a トゥアトゥン? Ah-ha, you’ve passed the Thai-BL-fan shibboleth. Make sure your トゥアトゥン is Thai though. You can’t use this to refer to Japanese idols, no.

A small note of caution though if you are a big Thai BL fan living in Japan: everything I’ve written is kind of hypothetical. The term is, as of September 2023 when I’m writing this, just kind of finding its feet in Japanese… but it is out there!

“Am I using this right?”

So, a short entry here, as トゥアトゥン is a simple word that’s not seeing active use yet. Who knows? It might die off before catching steam. But if you suddenly see it everywhere, well, you’ll be ready. And if it does die, well, at least we can keep its memory alive here.

3. 推し変 (おしへん)

This is a really odd month, because it’s going to look like I planned “themes” across a lot of the words. I guess these themes do exist, but it’s an accident! It wasn’t planned. However, we are now squarely in an accidental “stan/bias” theme, so let’s keep up the momentum by discussing 推し変. An 推し変 is, very simply, the process of 変える-ing your 推し. A change in the person you stan! Nothing more, nothing less. If you were into a certain member of a group, show, or whatever, and you decide to start spending your time thinking about and supporting someone else, well, you’ve just done 推し変.

The term is often used a bit jokingly, as in this statement that the writer “changed my 推し from my bride to an idol and got dumped”…

Poor planning

…and 推し変 does’t have to relate to idol fandom. It can even just refer to a change in preference of a non-living thing! This cosmetics reviewer is thinking about changing their 推し from one brand of maximizer to another, rather than from one idol to another.

But they aren’t idols, just lips!

Indeed, in this next image, someone’s just switching their favorite snack! But I suppose that both makeup and snacks do certainly welcome a sort of fandom.

I don’t know any albums by this band

Obviously though, while 推し変 is clearly flexible, the “core” meaning involves switching between idols you like. This person, for instance, finds themselves wondering if the lyrics “cheating, parting ways, theft, and change of heart” represent the way that people swap between their favorite idols while, well, watching their favorite idols.

There’s lots of jokes about these lyrics online actually

But don’t despair! If you feel too bad about abandoning your 推し to all their other fans, there’s one option left: you can always do an 推し増やし instead! Yes, why give up on your favorite when you can just have two? It’s certainly a suggestion others have made.

Do I change or do I increase?

One mild note of caution though: while there are many legitimate reasons to change your 推し, such as scandal, graduation, or, of course, just a change of opinion, some people do look down on 推し変 as a kind of betrayal. So like, when this person notes they are glad they like their 推し because they will be killed if they switch… they’re joking, right? Haha? It’s all a joke? I hope so. But their claim is probably responding to at least a small real threat of anger from fellow stans.

Maybe not though

4. もうやめて![NAME]のライフはゼロよ!!!

We leave the world of our 推し theme now to move to our new unintentionally themed group of words: words from games! We start with a longer phrase that comes from Yugioh. The specific origin is a bit of dialogue from Episode 162 of the anime, released in 2003, wherein Yugioh battles a insect loving player named Haga. Yugioh ends up knocking Haga to zero life points, but then keeps attacking, causing Yugioh’s companion to beg Yugioh to stop via the phrase:

“もうやめて!遊戯!とっくに羽蛾のライフはゼロよ!もう勝負はついたのよ! [Stop already, Yugi! Haga’s life points went to zero a long time ago. The battle is already over!]”.

You can watch the dialogue here at about 6:00 or here at about 1:15, but here’s a screenshot with subtitles:

Game over man!

This clip became a bit of a meme, circulating first as a part of video edits like this one where the phrase “I draw, it’s a monster card” gets remixed over and over until Yugioh is yelling things like “draw all the cards… they’re monster cards!”. This virality lead the phrase もうやめて![NAME]のライフはゼロよ!!! itself being using memes and online discourse, which leads us to where we are today.

Uh… wait… where are we today? Oh, right, people are using もうやめて![NAME]のライフはゼロよ!!! in a number of variant formats to show that someone is going too far. For instance, if it’s too hot out, you might replace [NAME] with “everyone in Nagoya” while begging the sun for reprieve…

Stop already, all of Nagoya is dead

…or you could put わたし in the [NAME] slot to note that a glut of products is making your life, or more accurately the contents of your bank account, go past zero…

Don’t know the characters again, knowing characters ain’t my job 😦

…or you could employ the phrase to lament how your phone is almost out of data…

Main storage life zero

…or you could just make a joke about how Godzilla does a bit over overkill every time he shows up.

Godzilla: I’ll put you in negative

As you can probably tell by now, もうやめて![NAME]のライフはゼロよ!!! is generally used to note something negative is happening to someone. Consequently, the phrase is often used in political slap fights – which I didn’t include because they are a mess to explain, but I promise you I saw them – to support clever comebacks or piercing fact checks. As a pretty straightforward example, while doing research for this entry, I saw many people using もうやめて![NAME]のライフはゼロよ!!! while posting Twitter community note screenshots correcting someone’s misinformation bluntly, utilizing a “stop [OP] is already dead” phrasing.

That said, there is a positive use of もうやめて![NAME]のライフはゼロよ!!! where “having zero life points” is a good thing because you are “dying” from too much great information. In the sense, we see the “good” kind of death which is found in terms like 死体蹴り or 助けて. One example might already have been shown in this very review! I talked about how the post with the pillows was a lament for the poster’s wallet, but it’s actually unclear. The poster could have been screaming with joy about new products they are excited about in a meme-y way. Not convinced? Think that earlier person is legit sad there’s too much stuff out there to buy? Well, here’s an unambiguously positive example. This next individual posted a picture of Konoka Matsuda of Hinatazaka46, and told her to “stop” because his life is zero. Is she beating him up? Winning a flame war? Doing something horrible which is making him think about 押し変え? Kicking his ass in Yu-Go-Oh!? No, he’s just a fan, and she’s “killing” him with how much he likes her, and how cute the photo is. Oh, dang, I said this entry was going to be about Yugioh instead of idols but it looks like it’s about both. Guess it makes it a great “theme transition” entry.

Impossible to avoid 推し活 online I suppose

Similarly, this next person is “dying” of delicious food. In the screenshot, you can see White post about their day playing video games, wasting time, and looking at Pink’s food pics, only for Pink to tell White to also go eat rather than just looking at food pictures. White then posts their own food pictures (they ARE White’s, by the way – white is not reposting Pink’s food to say it’s making him jealous, and I know this because later on in this same chat Pink gets “mad” about how good White’s photos look), and notes that his life is already zero. In other words, White has eaten so much good food he’s going to die if he has any more.

“Eat more” “Did it”

This final person is then just so happy looking at photos of an idol (they take these with them to eat a lot) that they could die.

Congrats!

By far, negative uses of this phrase outweigh positive ones. But there’s usually a playful element even in the negative use, and as we’ve seen there’s absolutely 100% positive applications. This is also true of expansion forms like “もうやめてライフはゼロよ状態”, or the “already 0 life condition”. Here’s a great use negative use of this expanded form by someone who notes that they really want ball games to start on time, and because of their frustration they are in a “already 0 life condition”… but they’ll come again anyway…

Suffering for the team

…and here’s a more positive use by someone, you guessed it, is talking about their 推し. Lately, the 推し has been “attacking” too aggressively, and so this person is already in a death state. A happy one though. The post is filled with aggressive metaphors for things they enjoy.

Thanks for the 攻撃 my 推し I’m already dead tho

Oh no, we are ending on discussions of 推し again even though we were supposed to be talking about games! Well, let’s get back on theme with another game related terminology:

5. ターンエンド

In a video game, ターンエンド is just the end of a/your turn. So yeah, we’re done here, right? That’s all we need to say? Well, as you may have guessed, the word has expanded from that origin to develop a more specific, slang meaning of “it’s over”.

While the meaning of ターンエンド is pretty straightforward, it’s difficult to say what game popularized ターンエンド as slang. The general assumption is a card game, but games like Dragon Quest have long had techniques like the “turn-end attack” that are fairly well known in Japanese gaming. Still, phrases like “I place one card face down and end my turn” from Yugioh are better known than techniques from Dragon Quest, to the extent that Yugioh “ending his turn” is the source of many memes in both Japanese and English. Some of these have even been made into jokes in the Yugioh show itself, such as this popular Japanese image of a guy throwing a bear and then “ending his turn”.

“I overturn a bear and end my turn”

Regardless of the origin, ターンエンド is now used to state that you’ve completed some kid of action with a sense of finality, and/or that you’ve done all that you can. For examples of the first type, here’s someone who sends a message to their “shit boss”, blocks them, and then “ends their turn”…

I cast “I quit”, block you, and end my turn.

…here’s someone who orders a fancy pizza and then “ends their turn”, placing a sense of finality on their order (and perhaps adding a bit of “check out how good my ‘turn’ was” feel)…

Aha, but my pizza has protection from corn!

…and here’s someone who just uses “turn end” to say “and that’s what I got at Costco”. I went to Costco. I bought things. Turn’s over.

Not all turns are mind blowing.

The second type of ターンエンド, wherein someone is stressing they’ve done all they can, can be seen in this next post where someone gets a score that creates a gap which “cannot be overtaken”. As a result, they end their turn. This is the best they can do, they’re confident, the end. Your turn/try.

Winner?

But a “I’ve done all I can turn end” is not always filled with braggadocio. There are some unimpressive turns in any game, after all. Here’s someone who is ending their turn after they got home in the morning. Why so late? Who knows. Did they do amazing thigs at work? Doesn’t say. The point is that they’re exhausted, done, at their limit, and therefore ending their turn.

I cast sleep, it count be countered

And in this final example, we see someone who lost some parts for their model, so they are going to borrow some from another one, order some more, and then call it a day. They’ve done what they can, their turn is over. Not issuing any kind of challenge to the world, just noting the limits of what they can do today.

So some are a bit bummed out. Not all turns are good.

There’s also more minor uses of ターンエンド which just employ it as a bit of playful meme-like text. This person, for instance, places their hamburg steak and croquette in “defense position” and then “ends the turn”. I assume this is a bit of 飯テロ crossed with a bit of card game humor.

Ah ha, but you activated my trap card, now I get to eat your food

As you saw, ターンエンド is mostly used to end a sentence, often with だ or です. I did find a solid amount of ターンエンドする out there, but it’s less popular. Additionally, ターンエンドする is far more likely to be used literally (that is, in reference to a game) than just ターンエンドだ and its ilk. There’s no strict grammatical boundary, but that’s what I noticed, so I’m telling you everything I could find before I ターンエンド this entry.

6. ずっと俺のターン (ずっとおれのたーん)

On the other hand, I’m not ターンエンドing our “video game theme” block yet, because I need to talk about ずっと俺のターン too. This phrase also is heavily associated with Yugioh fandom, and literally means “always my turn”. We don’t know if Yugioh is the actual source of the phrase, but the phrase’s popularity apparently spawned from a comment on an upload of the Yugioh meme video I discussed earlier which popularized “already 0 life” phrase. Wait, is this the video game themed section, or just a Yugioh themed section? I don’t know. Anyway, the origin comment which turned ずっと俺のターン into a meme/phrase itself is obviously lost to time. But as the phrase ずっと俺のターン itself wasn’t used a specific Yugioh episode, most people think ずっと俺のターン existed as a set phrase before the aforementioned video comment popularized it. That is, ずっと俺のターンwasn’t an original joke. Meme use certainly spread through the Yugioh fandom though, as the first major memes using ずっと俺のターン are Yugioh related.

Yugioh ASCII meme from 2006

And, indeed, even the aforementioned Yugioh video where he attacks his defeated opponent is regularly labeled the “it’s always my turn” video.

As you can see here

Regardless of where ずっと俺のターン came from, the phrase is now used to indicate that you are in full control of the situation. Either no one else can control you, you are dominating a contest, or you are just leading everything that’s going on from this point. Like if you’ve freed yourself from a bad working situation, you might say that “it’s all my turn from now”…

しごおわ is a variant of こーおわ, but for jobs

…same if you’re dominating a boss in a video game…

Comboing off

…and if you’ve been ill, you might make some kind of defiant shout that although your shoulders hurt your canker sore is going away and the pain is healing. It’s now your “recovery turn” and until you heal it will always be your turn…

お大事に

…or ずっと俺のターン can just indicate that things are going good, like if the beer your ordered arrives.

It’s my turn now!

Like with the “zero life” phrase, there’s also a ずっと俺のターン状態 variant, referring to a condition where someone is in complete control or absolutely dominating. The 状態 can be literal, such as when you combo off in a game and no one else can stop you…

Never played so can’t explain, sorry!

…or figurative, like if you’re just like, hyped, because you’ve had too many energy drinks. Go you random person, you’ve got this, you dominate those last four hours of work, it’s your-turn-forever-status now.

I’m not sponsored but if Monster wants to throw cash at me they are welcome to

You can even use ずっと俺のターン状態 to describe things that are a bit erratic, and not paying attention not the rules. Like, I was certainly surprised to see the movements of a typhoon called ずっと俺のターン状態, but I guess when you look at the map it makes a bit of sense. The typhoon certainly isn’t going in any kind of straight line here. Just doing it’s own thing, taking it’s own turn. Are you going to stop it? No, of course not. You’re not even running counter magic!

Blue players do like to take extra turns

If you weren’t aware, by the way, it’s actually still the “video game based slang” section of this review’s turn. So allow me to combo off a bit more by talking about…

7. パリィゲー

…パリィゲー! A パリィゲー is not, as I first thought, a party game. I don’t know why I thought that, as “party game” wouldn’t ever become パリィゲー in Japanese, but maybe someone else made the same initial mistake and we can both feel good about being wrong in the same way. We aren’t alone! Anyway, if your brain does work all the time, unlike mine, you’ve probably guessed that a パリィゲー is actually a game where you… パリィ. And パリィ here is just a borrowing from “parry”, as in blocking a blow from a weapon.

Parry is 弾く, 弾く is parry

Formally in Japanese, parrying a blow uses the verb 弾く (はじく), as you can see above. However, there is no such thing as a “弾くゲーム” or anything like that. You can certainly note that in a game like Sekiro you “take (=受ける) blows and parry (=弾く) them” rather than dodge, but the game itself doesn’t fit in any kind of 弾くゲーム category.

“It’s like an action film”

On the other hand, a パリィゲー absolutely is a category of games, and has been since at least 2010. It’s not on Google Trends yet, but I can find tweets. That said, the term really starts picking up across 2011-2014, and I’d say the first real explosion of popularity is in about 2015.

Forerunner here, a historical document

As you can see in the interaction below, パリィゲー also share a home, or at least often overlap, with ジャスト回避 (じゃすとかいひ) games. This latter term literally means “just avoid”, with the “just” the one in “just in time” not the one meaning “that’s all you have to do”. So when this poster uses both パリィゲー and ジャスト回避 terms to talk about the game CRYMACHINA, they are saying you have to block attacks regularly, and make split-second dodges.

“Therefore if you aren’t used to action games you’ll have trouble”

It’s also probably no surprise that Fromsoft games are often called パリィゲー. Here’s a reference to the aforementioned Sekiro as something the author bought because they like パリィゲー.

I’ve yet to play it either actually

In many cases then, a パリィゲー is similar to what we might call a “Souls-like”. I’m guessing this definition might make some people upset, in which case, uh, sorry? Defining video game genres online itself is certainly a Souls-like but I’m going to attempt to ジャスト回避 any criticism because the idea that パリィゲー is synonymous with “Souls-like” is Google’s fault not mine: when I googled the names of a bunch of games Japanese people called パリィゲー on Twitter, the English descriptions for every single one came up with “[X] is a souls-like” or “[X] uses souls-like elements”. I imagine Japan has the same debates over what is a パリィゲー as we do over what a Souls-like is, although perhaps defining a パリィゲー is a bit easier as I assume if a game doesn’t allow you to parry at all it can’t be a パリィゲー, and I don’t know if “parrying” is the make-or-break feature of a Souls-like. But I’ll stop conjecturing, lest I do end up having to パリィ complaints that I’m not defining “Souls-like” correctly.

“It’s a parry-game so I’m probably screwed”

Perhaps complicating this terminology discussion is another word: 死にゲー. A 死にゲー is a game where you can expect to die a lot. In some ways, it overlaps with a “rouge-like”, but, before you get mad at me again, let me stress the key difference that a 死にゲー only means that you will die a lot in the game. It doesn’t imply any of the other elements of “roguelike”, such as the “restarting from 0 when you die” element. Anyway, to take the heat off me, here’s a list of 死にゲー compiled by Pixiv. If you don’t like it, yell at them.

Source

死にゲー has a bit more currency than パリィゲー, as it’s been in Weblio since 2014. So I can’t say that 死にゲー pre-dates パリィゲー, but only 死にゲー has been noticed by dictionary-senpai. More surprisingly to me though, the terms are almost never used together. Like, check this out: not a single hit. Google also gave me zero hits for “パリィゲーと死にゲー” or the inverse. If you search the pair now, this blog might be your only hit.

The hardest game is using both terms in one sentence, apparently

So what do you call Sekiro and games like it? Are they games where you parry, or games where you die? Well, it’s both. But the phrase you choose depends on perspective.

Sekiro is “shinige like” but another game is “not like Sekiro” because it isn’t a “parige”.

In fact, I even found people asking questions like “would I enjoy this 死にゲー” and getting responses like “yeah if you like パリィゲー”, so it’s really a question of focus. This person certainly is also a bit confused as to the proper term.

They don’t know either

But some people seem to draw some kind of line. Like here, the game is noted that “a death-game is fine as a death-game” but “despite being a parry-game the NPC interrupt to much”. This implies, at least for this person, that intricate combat is what makes a パリィゲー, whereas just pure difficulty is a 死にゲー. So NPCs ruining your combat experiences is totally fair in the latter, but not in the former.

More NPCs = More Difficulty got it

I guess this comes down to the question of what matters currently: the fact that you die a lot, or the fact that you parry a lot? If you can figure that out, I’m sure you can use both terms with great confidence and ease.

8. シミラールック

And with that, we close the second theme of this month, and move into theme three. From now, we are going to be talking about fashion and fashion subcultures, starting with シミラールック (“similar look”). Before talking about シミラールック though, I should note that the phrase ペアルック (“pair look”) has also existed for some time. Indeed, it’s so established that there are Irasutoya clip art for it.

Best website on the internet IMO

What’s the difference then? Well, a “pair look” is designed to be as close to identical as possible. In contrast, a “similar look” is just, uh, similar. There’s effort put in to making the clothing clearly match or link, but you don’t have to wear the exact same top or design. Another difference is just the age and popularity. A ペアルック has been a thing since at least 2010, but シミラールック really only started to emerge in discourse around 2016.

Although this website claims 2015ish

How different can a similar look be while still being “similar” then? Well, apparently even just wearing all a similar tone can be fit…

I know I’m just cataloguing here, but I feel like this is a reach

…although to me something like this makes a lot more sense…

White and white, sure

…but some people even use “similar look” just to reference the same kind of fits. For instance, there’s no color coordination in this next picture, but the author considers the overshirt+tshirt combo, and perhaps the hair styles, enough to call their looks “similar”.

No comment on my opinion if this is similar

Indeed, if there’s one consistent element of シミラールック, it’s that I personally don’t really get what’s similar about the outfits it describes very often. At least as a result of this kind of “vague overlap” which runs throughout シミラールック though, I can say that a シミラールック sure is more “similar” then a “pair” to the word ペアルック. Like, are these next two outfits similar? I guess they both are a bit blue, and dots are… kinda similar… to squares? And both people are revealing their midriff? But apparently that’s all that is required for a “by chance similar look”. There’s no way you could get by calling this a “pair look”.

Blue for sure

To wrap all this up, let’s look at a direct comparison of similar vs. pair. In this post, the right image is defined as a “pair look”. Makes sense! Black shirts, bangs, definitely paired. The left though is “similar look-ish”. This time, I straight up don’t even see what is similar. But my job isn’t to argue, it’s to document. So the point I want to stress here is that a similar look can really just be style or vibes.

I agree the left ones fit together well

In the end then, a シミラールック is a bit hard to define, but there’s no question whatsoever that it’s quite different from a ペアルック. And if Google Trends is any indicator, it’s snipping at ペアルック’s popularity. I suppose it’s more fun (and easier!) to dress up in a way that vibes with the others in your group rather than the exact same way sometimes, so シミラールック probably has a bit more utility for a lot of people.

9. リンクコーデ

Let’s link our discussion of シミラールック to our ninth term this month through highlighting their shared interest in matching clothing. By doing so, we are participating in a bit of リンクコーデ. The phrase リンクコーデ (link coordination) refers to an act of fashion coordination that sits somewhere between a ペアルック and a シミラールック. While a ペアルック is literal matching, and a シミラールック is vibe-based matching, a リンクコーデ are two separate outfits connected by one thing that is absolutely the same. This can be color, pattern, or even literally just both outfits having one of the same item as part of their overall construction.

The term リンクコーデ basically co-exists with シミラールック, appearing about the same time and now sharing about the same popularity. As a result, the word/fad kind of supports my earlier thesis that people are trying to think up new fashion trends that are a bit less difficult and conspicuous than ペアルック yet still keep what’s fun about coordinating outfits with your partner/friends.

Neck and neck race here

As mentioned, there’s lots of ways you can “link” your coordination. Color is obviously a simple choice, as you can see here: the blues and sandy browns (by the way, I’m colorblind, so don’t email me if you disagree with my labels please) link the outfits, but they certainly are all very different outfits.

“Perfume is too good at link coordination”

You can also just wear one similar item – no matter how small – to link two very different outfits. If you move your fashion to the digital world, this linking item could even be a piece of chainmail or something.

Chain LINK, get it?

There’s also リンクコーデ which is based around matching via overall color scheme. This next poster’s clothes don’t have cloud motifs or any other clearly shared item with the character they are standing next to, but they nevertheless feel that the “white/blue” style makes both outfits vibe well, and clearly that vibe is a bit more pronounced than what we saw with シミラールック.

Like, I get this claim for sure

Obviously though, if you spend the time linking your outfits with someone intentionally, you probably want to take a picture. But what should you do with your hands? Well, one option for you is…

10. ギャルピ

I’ve never started an entry with a screenshot before, but I’ve never done a set of linked words across a slag review either

…a ギャルピ! Yes, that’s right: a ギャルピ is not a “gal picture”, but rather “gyaru (ギャル)” doing the “peace (ース)” sign in an inverted manner where the palm is held out and the raised fingers aim forward and down. If you’re asking yourself “wait, people do this?”, well then you haven’t been keeping up with gyaru trends, as it was egg’s 2022 word of the year.

Gyaru doing gyarupi

So while you can certainly take pictures of ギャルピ, the ギャルピ itself is your hand gesture, not the picture. And while this next screenshot claims that ギャルピ is a dead word, I can at least attest that it’s still very alive on Twitter.

“Far away from gyaru but doing gyarupi

Indeed, while the gyarupi is associated with gyaru (and is probably their invention), there’s no requirement that you be a gyaru in order to do a gyarupi. There are even plenty of images out there of men doing gyarupi, or being described as doing gyarupi, like you can see below.

micchi gyarupi

And that’s it for September! Whether you’re getting ready for some シミラールック based 友達推し活, considering an 推し変 of your トゥアトゥン because they’re bad at リンクコーデ, or flashing a ギャルピ as you go into ずっと俺のターン状態 against the boss of a パリィゲー, I hope you enjoyed this month’s review so far because this is where I ターンエンド, as I worry that making you read more of my nonsense would put you in a state of もうやめて!!ライフはゼロよ!! If you have survived though, I’ll see you next month for more reviews!


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