The Funniest Anime Memes of All Time
You have laughed at an anime meme this week even if you cannot name a single character or show! That is how deep anime memes have burrowed into every group chat, feed, and comment section online, and half the people posting them have no idea the jokes came from anime at all. Some of these are older than the teenagers spamming them, and almost every one hides a backstory that makes it ten times funnier once you know it. We are giving you the full tour of the funniest anime memes ever made, plus the exact scenes and moments that spawned them. Grab a snack, this is going to be a good one.
We will hit the giant ones your non anime friends recognize, the deep cuts that only real fans get, and the reaction faces you fire off every single day. Let’s go!
What Makes Memes About Anime So Good
There is a reason memes about anime hit this hard. Anime is loud. It is dramatic. Characters scream, they cry actual rivers, they pause mid battle to narrate their feelings, and the animation freezes on the most ridiculous facial expression you have ever seen. That is basically a meme factory running 24 hours a day.
Anime also lives for the big reveal and the bigger reaction. Someone powers up, someone gets betrayed, someone yells a single name for six straight episodes. Those over the top moments are perfect for editing, remixing, and slapping bold white text across. Fans clip the silliest half second of the most serious scene, and suddenly a life or death fight becomes the funniest thing on your timeline.
The other secret is that a great anime meme does not need context. You do not have to know the show. You see a shocked face or a dramatic pose and you instantly get the joke. That is exactly why so many of the best anime memes crossed over into normie culture without anybody realizing they were anime in the first place.
The Best Anime Memes That Broke Out of the Fandom
Some anime memes got so massive that they stopped being anime memes and just became internet memes. These are the ones your mom has probably seen.
First up, the king: “It’s Over 9000!” This one comes from the English dub of Dragon Ball Z, when Vegeta scans Goku’s power level, absolutely loses it, and crushes his scouter while screaming the number. Fun fact for the trivia hoarders: the original Japanese and the manga actually said “over 8000,” and the dub bumped it to 9000, which is the version that took over the planet. For years now, “over 9000” has meant anything huge, strong, or just way too much of something. It is one of the oldest anime memes on the internet and it flat out refuses to die.
Watch Vegeta lose it over Goku’s power level in the scene that started it all:
The full “It’s Over 9000!” scene, Funimation dub. Source: YouTube.
Then there is “Is This a Pigeon?” You know the one. A green haired guy points at a butterfly and captions it as a pigeon. The wild part is where it came from. It is a scene from a 1991 show called The Brave Fighter of Sun Fighbird, where an android named Yutaro Katori, who is genuinely still learning how Earth works, mistakes a butterfly for a pigeon. People assumed it was a busted subtitle at first, and now it is the go to template for anyone confidently misidentifying anything in front of them.
And we cannot skip “You Are Already Dead” from Fist of the North Star. Kenshiro points at his doomed enemy, calmly says “Omae wa mou shindeiru,” and the villain shrieks “NANI?!” right before exploding from the inside out. That “NANI” has grown into shorthand for total blindsided shock all on its own. It is one of those anime memes that still gets remixed constantly even though the show first aired in the 1980s.
JoJo Runs the Anime Meme Game
If you rank anime series by pure meme output, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is sitting alone at the top of the mountain. This show is a meme buffet, and fans eat very well.
The biggest one is “To Be Continued.” Every episode ends with a sepia freeze frame and a little arrow, perfectly timed to the bass hit of “Roundabout” by the British prog rock band Yes. Fans took that and went feral. Now you pause any clip right when disaster is about to strike, drop “To Be Continued” in the corner, cue up Roundabout, and it is instantly hilarious. There is a whole ecosystem of these edits that has pulled in a mountain of views on YouTube. It might be the most satisfying anime meme format ever invented, because the timing does all the comedy for you.
A whole genre of “To Be Continued” meme edits set to Roundabout by Yes lives on YouTube:
A compilation of the original JoJo “To Be Continued” meme edits. Source: YouTube.
JoJo also handed us “It Was Me, Dio!” After the vampire villain Dio pulls off something monstrous, he reveals it with that smug line, and fans turned it into the ultimate plot twist meme. Stack on Jotaro’s endless “ORA ORA ORA” punch spam and his signature “Yare yare daze,” and you have a show that treats printing memes like a full time job. Ask any longtime fan and they will tell you JoJo does not just make memes, it manufactures them by the season.
Anime Meme Faces That Live in Your Group Chat
Now we have to talk about anime meme faces, because these are the ones you actually use every day, probably without even thinking about it.
The heavy hitter here is the Smug Anime Face. It is exactly what it sounds like, a character wearing the most punchable, self satisfied little grin, used to say “I am right and you know it” without typing a single word. It got rolling on 4chan in August 2012 with a smug shot of Yozora Mikazuki from the comedy anime Haganai, and it detonated from there. Yozora is constantly smirking down at her rival Sena, which made her the perfect poster child. Now there are thousands of smug anime meme faces pulled from every show imaginable.
But smug is only the beginning. Anime hands you a flawless reaction face for every single emotion. There is the wide eyed shocked face for when the plot goes off a cliff. There is the ugly crying face with waterfall tears for when you are being dramatic on purpose. There is the disgusted side eye, the sweaty nervous smile, the deranged excited grin, the dead inside stare. Fans have built entire sorted folders of these anime meme faces, and they are the fuel that powers Discord servers, Reddit threads, and group chats everywhere.
This is also a huge reason VTubers took off, since so many of them are basically living anime meme faces you can react to in real time. If you are new to that whole scene, our guide on what a VTuber actually is breaks it all down, and plenty of them, like Nyanners, literally got their start making exactly this kind of meme content before they ever went virtual.
Death Note and the Galaxy Brain Anime Meme
Here is a deeper cut that anime fans absolutely treasure. It is the “Just According to Keikaku” meme, and it is one of the smartest inside jokes in the whole fandom.
It comes from a fan translated version of Death Note, where the scheming genius Light Yagami thinks “Just as planned” after pulling off another one of his galaxy brain schemes. The fansub translated it as “Just according to keikaku,” then slapped a translator’s note underneath reading “Keikaku means plan.” So the line literally tells you the plan went according to the plan, which is both hilarious and a perfect roast of over the top fan translations that refuse to just use normal English words.
Now the meme gets pasted onto any moment where someone acts like they masterminded something they clearly stumbled into by accident. Death Note gave the internet plenty of great anime memes, but this one is the connoisseur pick. It is peak fandom humor, the kind of joke you feel smart for even understanding.
Evangelion, Naruto Runs, and Other All Time Anime Memes
Let’s finish with a lightning round of legendary anime memes that each deserve a spot in the hall of fame.
“Get in the Robot” comes from Neon Genesis Evangelion, where poor Shinji Ikari really, really does not want to pilot his giant mech. Fans got fed up with his hesitation and flipped “get in the robot” into a rallying cry for telling anybody to just do the thing already and stop stalling.
The Naruto Run is another all timer. Ninja in Naruto sprint with their arms held straight back behind them, and fans adopted the pose as a full on bit. It rocketed mainstream during the 2019 “Storm Area 51” event, when thousands of people online swore they would Naruto Run past the guards so bullets could not catch them. That is a genuinely absurd level of meme reach for a running animation.
Then there is the Leek Spin, one of the oldest memes about anime on the entire internet. Back in 2006, a short clip of the Bleach character Orihime Inoue twirling a leek got looped over the scat singing part of the Finnish song “Ievan Polkka” by the group Loituma, and the “Loituma Girl” animation became an early viral classic. It is ancient by internet standards and somehow still weirdly charming.
And you have to respect the Tuxedo Mask “My Work Here Is Done” meme from Sailor Moon, where a fan lined up three panels so that he takes full credit for accomplishing absolutely nothing while Sailor Moon does the actual fighting. That format is a comedy staple to this day, and you have definitely seen it repurposed at work.
Once you start noticing these anime memes, you catch them everywhere, in movies, in ads, in your own texts. They are stitched permanently into internet culture at this point, and honestly the fandom deserves the credit for keeping every last one of them alive.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most famous anime meme of all time?
“It’s Over 9000!” from Dragon Ball Z is probably the most famous anime meme ever. It has been around forever, non fans recognize it on sight, and it still gets referenced constantly. “To Be Continued” from JoJo and “Is This a Pigeon?” are right up there fighting for the crown too.
Where do anime meme faces come from?
Anime meme faces are just screenshots of characters making extreme expressions during a scene. Anime loves gigantic dramatic reactions, so fans grab the silliest frame, whether it is a smug grin or an ugly crying face, and use it as a reaction image. The Smug Anime Face is the most famous example, and it kicked off on 4chan in 2012 with the character Yozora Mikazuki from Haganai.
Why is JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure so meme heavy?
JoJo is packed with over the top poses, dramatic freeze frames, wild catchphrases, and villains delivering unhinged lines. Every one of those is basically pre made meme material. The “To Be Continued” freeze frame set to Roundabout by Yes is the biggest, but “It Was Me, Dio!” and the ORA ORA spam keep the show at the very top of the anime meme scene.
What does “Just According to Keikaku” mean?
It is a joke from a Death Note fan translation that wrote “Just according to keikaku” and added a note saying “keikaku means plan.” Since keikaku already means plan, the line is redundant and funny, so fans use it to mock anyone pretending they planned something all along. It is one of the classic insider anime memes.
Are anime memes only funny if you watch anime?
Not at all! That is what makes the best anime memes so strong. Most of them, like “Is This a Pigeon?” or the Naruto Run, work with zero context. You see a face or a pose and instantly get the joke, which is exactly why so many of them went mainstream in the first place.
Related
If you liked this trip through anime memes, you will love our other fandom deep dives. Check out everything about Ironmouse, one of the most meme loving personalities online, and read how Hololive built its VTuber empire if you want to understand the anime adjacent streaming boom fueling so many of these faces.
Wrapping Up
So there you have it, a full tour of the funniest anime memes and the ridiculous scenes that created them. From Vegeta screaming about power levels to Light Yagami planning according to plan, these jokes have shaped internet humor for years and they are not slowing down one bit. Next time you drop a smug anime face in the chat, you will know exactly where it came from. Keep spreading the good ones, and we will catch you in the next one!
