Spread

On September 19th, 2011, YouTuber GeneralIvanVA began submitting voiced versions of Meduca Meguca, posting all five episodes. Among the releases, episode 5 is the most popular with almost twice as many views as the first episode due to a rap song that was included at the end. In particular, Kyubey’s statement, “being meguka is suffering…” sprouted into a sub-meme of its own. Users of the internet liked this phrase and started to replace “meguka” with other subjects and characters. While the original video is no longer available, on May 2nd, 2013, YouTuber Exists to Keep Meduka Video on Youtube re-uploaded the video, which received more than 1 million views.

Following the spread of the threads and videos, people began posting memes featuring lines of dialogue from the retelling, particularly “being megucka is suffering” (example below). The phrase “being meguka is suffering” is still commonly used even in contexts where magical girls are not involved. Generally, it is used to express sympathy for the suffering of another person/thing or to express your own suffering. “Suffering” or “being ‘x’ is suffering” is now a commonly used phrase in internet culture.

Additionally, Meguca was also initially used as a parody of Me Gusta In these memes, the play on the similarities between the spelling of “Me Gusta” and “Meguca” inspired a series of image macros in which the two used interchangably.