This article needs to be updated.(July 2024) |
Corona-chan (Japanese: コロナちゃん) is a moe anthropomorphization of the coronavirus which became a popular meme on 4chan, Reddit and other websites during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.[1]
In mid-January 2020, 4chan users created the Corona-chan character as a girl with bat wings and green eyes[2] wearing a red cheongsam, an item of traditional Chinese clothing,[3] with thorny spheres for hair buns, symbolizing the virus. In some representations, she holds the flag of China and hands out bat soup.[4] These features reference the popular bat soup and Wuhan lab theories for the origin of the virus. Vice Media reporter Samantha Cole said that "Turning a virus that's killed nearly 8,000 people, especially in China and Japan, into a cute anime girl is insensitive to that reality... but it's also a way people have chosen to cope using gallows humor and a horny anime drawing".[5] On 4chan, a user made a thread titled “All hail, Peng Zhou, creator of Corona-Chan”, linking to an article by Zero Hedge, claiming that the new coronavirus may have been created by the Wuhan Institute of Virology, at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.[6] As a pun, she was also often represented holding or drinking a Corona beer.[5]
The subreddit "r/coronachan", which features illustrations of the character, had 2,000 subscriptions by 2020.[5] There are Corona-chan galleries on the Internet.[7] Lushsux created a wall graffiti showing the coronavirus Corona-chan standing behind a mask-wearing PewDiePie.[8]
Moe anthropomorphism had been applied to diseases online before: during the Ebola virus outbreak of West Africa in 2014, the character of Ebola-chan was already circulating on image boards and online discussion forums in the English-speaking world.