Me-tan

Me-tan (Meたん) is a character that is the personification of Windows Me.

Contents [hide]

1 Overview

2 History

3 Appearance

4 Personality

5 Weapon

6 Relationships

7 Controversy

8 Related Illustrations

9 Related Articles

10 External Link

10.1 English

10.2 Japanese

11 Article in Other Languages

Overview

Nicknames	ME-tan, Emui-san, Me
First Appearance	2003/08/06 (Date of appearance on Nijiura), 2000/09/23 (Simultaneous release date for Japanese PC/AT compatible and NEC version)
System Personified	Windows ME

Me-tan (Meたん, Me-tan) is sourced as the very first OS-tan. She was created on Futaba Channel with subsequent characters following suit. Me-tan was born out of a desire to personify the glitchy OS as "a cute yet troublesome girl". She was made to personify Windows Me's glitchy and unstable nature. She is also the sister of Me-kun.

History

In 2003, when the anthropomorphic boom was in full swing, The character was invented by Me-tan no Naka no Hito (Meたんの中の人, Me-tan no Naka no Hito), the original creator of the character, and was first posted on August 6, 2003, on the Futaba Channel's Nijura board.

She was active in the anonymous bulletin board community and, together with 2k-tan and XP-tan, was a pioneer of the so-called OS-tan.

With the help of the wonderful fan art of Troubled Windows and others, they became extremely popular both inside and outside of Futaba. It can be said to be a character that has created some of the characteristics (for better or worse) of the Futaba community up to the present day.

At the time of her birth, she was a so-called maid character (i.e., Nijiura Maid) who tried her best to serve her master Toshiaki, but she repeatedly made mistakes, such as freezing up easily, destroying important files, and failing to defragment.

As time went by and the maid character was replaced by Nijiura Maid, she became more like a daughter than a maid, and even her appearance and age have been interpreted in various ways, such as a Emui and a mature Adult Emui to this day.

Appearance

Despite artists changing designs of the OS-tan characters, Me-tan's appearance rarely varies. One of the appearance changes is her as an adult.

She wears her green hair in two parted braids with an ahoge on top to expresses her emotions.

Her outfit is a blue one-piece dress inspired by the background color of the default Windows Me desktop, and a white apron in front.

The crimson ribbon on her collar has an exclamation mark used to indicate errors on the active desktop.

Personality

Like stated before she is designed to mimic the behavior of Windows Me, such as freezing suddenly at critical moments, destroying important files, or running out of control without warning. When in this state she is shown to lack of common sense or knowledge.

Despite her unreliability she is a hard worker and overall cheerful, friendly and optimistic and always wants to help her master known as Toshiaki, and within the family, but predictably fails at everything she tries to do, often literally crashing and irritating her sisters.

In spite of, or perhaps due to, her pitiful plight, the clumsy Me-tan is one of the most beloved OS girls.

Her favorite food is roll cake.

Some interpretations overall stay the same but make her somewhat decedent at something.

Weapon

She frequently carries a scallion, or crowbar as a weapon to defend herself from malware attacks. The scallion is a pun on NeGIs (a freeware Japanese personal firewall for Windows) with the word negi being Japanese for scallion.

It has be theorize that her scallion is the Don Patch Sword from Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo that was given to her instead of the crowbar that she was often given in the early days because it was too dangerous. As a side note, when Hatsune Miku later started holding a scallion, it became a big topic of conversation.

Relationships

Aside from the frustration she causes to her family because of her unreliability, she generally gets along with them, being the closest to 2k-tan, XP Pro-tan, 95-tan and Inu-T. Being born around the same time as 2k-tan and the XP-tans, she tends to see her stepsister NT-tan (who is the mother of 2k, XP, etc.) as a mother figure as well.

She is generally civil towards the Mac-tans, and loves OS9-kun, so she certainly doesn't want to get on their bad side.

Controversy

There was numerous uproars in the past, copyrights have been clearly asserted to prevent unauthorized use outside of Futaba Channel. In the past, the use of characters other than Toshiaki was prohibited, which led to the creation of We as an alternative character on the Internet Character board.