Japanese memes can be uncanny. They often come out of nowhere and explode with the force of a thousand suns. This is pretty much the story of a 35-year-old man from Tokyo, interviewed by a TV channel on the streets of Shimbashi. You can see the interview at the bottom of the post courtesy of YouTube user 革靴吐きたい.
Local internauts started noticing that due to his expressions and mannerism, the man had an interesting “villain face.” Inspired by part of his comment in the interview mentioning self-defense, they started tweeting about him with the hashtag #自己防衛おじさん, which reads “Jiko boei ojisan” and translates as “Self-defense middle-aged dude”.
As memes often do, it spread virally all over the Japanese net, with many people even going as far as drawing “fan art” of that perfect villain face.
Self-defense dude became so famous that today even Square Enix decided to get involved. Many started to notice that the man’s “villain face” indeed resembled that of Final Fantasy XV‘s popular antagonist Ardyn Izunia. Today the publisher tweeted a couple of pictures created in the game’s engine and reproducing the interview. Just, this one is set in Lucis and shows Ardyn re-enacting the man’s expressions. You can see the hilarious results below.
「#自己防衛おじさん とアーデンが似ている」といった多数のコメントを拝見しました。
いつも #FF15 を話題にしていただけることに感謝いたします。※本投稿は、特定の主張について肯定や否定をするものではありません pic.twitter.com/CTRQb5HaP4
— FINAL FANTASY XV (@FFXVJP) March 19, 2018
“We saw a lot of comments mentioning that “#SelfDefenseDude and Ardyn are similar” Thank you as always for talking about Final Fantasy XV. *This post does not confirm or deny that specific claim”
Looks like Self-Defense Dude has found himself a new role in Final Fantasy XV, and Square Enix has found a good way to advertise the upcoming Episode Ardyn DLC.
It’s certainly pretty hilarious until you realize that this could happen to everyone, you included. As someone who has been randomly interviewed multiple times on the streets of Tokyo (it happens often to foreigners), if you ever see Japanese internet dwellers tweeting about #gamingjournalistwesterndude, I beg you to be merciful.
Final Fantasy XV is currently available for PS4, Xbox One, And PC. If you’re not familiar with the game, you can read our review.