Japanese otaku have fought back against Chinese propaganda by turning the favourite anti-Japanese insult of the Chinese into a moe character.

Some explanation is in order – “Japanese devils” (literally, “Japanese devil children”) is a traditional Chinese racist insult towards the Japanese, having come into common currency during WWII and been maintained by anti-Japanese propaganda ever since.

In Chinese it is 日本鬼子 / rìběn guǐzi (read as “nihon onigo” in Japanese), meaning simply “Japanese devils” (incidentally, 鬼子/guǐzi on its own is also the traditional “foreign devils” insult Chinese apply to westerners in general).

With the anti-Japanese riots in China, the term has seen plenty of recent usage.

Japanese artists on 2ch decided to use moe to appropriate the term and “turn the Chinese into moetards,” creating “Hi-no-Moto Oniko” based on an alternative reading of the 日本鬼子 characters – the characters for Japan, 日本, mean “origin of the sun” (Hi no Moto) and 鬼子 can be rendered into a female name, “Oniko.”







Chinese confronted with these lovely creatures are perplexed:

I didn’t think it would turn out like this… I just don’t understand that country. Damn, just damn. Japan is a dangerous country. Perhaps we should admit our loss. We boo and jeer them and their response is a moe character… We’re helpless before them. Riben Guizi is a moe character!? What can we call them now? Japs? Creepy otaku?

Related to this is the “little Japan” (小日本 / xiǎo rìběn) epithet used disparagingly by contemporary Chinese Japan-haters to refer to Japan – this also gives 小日本鬼子 (“little Japanese devils”), which has been co-opted into the devastatingly cute “little Oniko”:

More fruits of the “Let’s make Hi-no-Moto Oniko into a moe character and turn all those racist Chinese into moetards” project:



























































































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