Overview
This is one of the most common names for anthropomorphic OS, and is often applied to OS personifications that originated from Futaba Channel by various amateur Japanese artists.
They tend to have traits based operating system they respectively represent. They also are called by names and/or nicknames taken from real OS products.
In the start it was only Windows' products being made into characters but there have been others down the line much as the MacOS, Linux, and Linspire.
The female characters are known as OS Girls (OS娘) while their male counterparts are known as OS-kuns (OS君).
History
It is believed it started with the personification of Windows Me who grew on the users on Futuaba. Discussions on Futaba Channel likened this to the stereotype of a fickle, troublesome girl making her to what she is known as today as Me-tan.
Some anonymous Futaba artists introduced a setting for its comic strip where a Toshiaki owns a PC. Then anonymous artists, all of a sudden included a group of women in which they personify every operating system the "Toshiaki" owns, in which also they didn't gave an explanation on how were they formed or did appeared or born in the setting.
These group of women are the OS-tans. The first batch of OS-tans created are all personifying a series of Windows OS, which means they are portrayed as sisters from each other. The series of Windows OS that was personified includes 3.1, NT, 95, CE, NT Workstation, 98 98SE, ME, 2000, XP and Server 2003. The OS-tans obviously considers the Toshiaki their master and lives with him. They almost have the traits of the operating system they respectively represent.
Not only do they help their master on maintaining things that are technically related to computers, but they also do his chores and obligations around the house. That setting on those comic strips became temporary at first, until all Futaba artists accepted it and followed popularly.
+Nijiura+
Since popular in Futaba, OS-tans were also seen in other Japanese imageboards as well. Such as +Nijiura+ (not to be confused with the nijiura board on Futaba). +Nijiura+ makes three-dimensional works such as CG illustrations and wallpapers more so than two-dimensional works (drawn pictures) and comic strips. +Nijiura+ produced their own concept of the Mac OSX line, dividing up each new release into its' own character. +Nijiura+ felt the generic personification of Futaba's MacOS was inadequate, and choses to expand it using the release codenames such as Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and Leopard. A similar sentiment was applied to Windows Vista, for which designs have been expanded into Vista's several editions including Ultimate, Home Premium, Home Basic, Business and Enterprise.
Outside Japan
There are still submissions of 2D and 3D illustrations and multimedia etc. which related to OS-tans that continues being posted in the internet. In which it gave more exposure to the viewers outside Japan, and because of that, contributions about OS-tans coming from English-speaking imageboards and websites came to grow. Most notable example a fansub of Troubled Windows, a flash animated music video, the characters grew in popularity.
Another thing that helped spread it was Juzo-kun's renditions of Linux distros wallpapers. While imageboards such as 4chan, wakachan and idlechan gave English translations on some comic strips.
Characters
Refer to the article of List of OS-tan Characters for details.
References and in-jokes
When the OS-tans are portrayed in comics, they are often accompanied by Japanese puns or references from the Futaba Channel culture.
Scallion
Often the Windows girls are seen carrying scallions. This is a pun: a popular Japanese firewall program (NEGiES) sounds like the Japanese word for scallion (negi) so the OS-tan carry scallions around as shields or weapons. A scallion is also the icon used for the firewall itself.
Breast Size, Hunger, and Memory
It has been suggested from time to time, that the breast sizes of the individual OS-tans represent their RAM requirements. Because Windows XP is considered a memory hog due to its increased resource consumption, XP-tan is incredibly well endowed (and she has no qualms about getting upgraded from time to time). 2k-tan normally rates as a close second, whereas as someone like MSDOS-tan lies at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Another theory states that the breast size of an OS-tan represents the overall fanciness of their graphical user interface. Since XP was designed with 'bells and whistles', she has the largest breasts, but DOS, being no more than a command prompt, is at the other extreme. An alternate method of displaying memory or resource requirements in general is through the character's appetite. XP-tan is often seen eating ridiculous amounts of food, sometimes to the point of obesity.
Multimedia
One of the most popular works is Troubled Windows, becoming almost another name for OS-tan. It has also branched off into a fanbook with figures and present itself as an imaginary franchise.
There has also been other animations such as Trouble Brave (とらぶるうぃんどうず), OS Pittan, Love Love OS, Sakura-tan, OS-tan IDOLM@STER, Nijiura Tenshi OS-tan (にじうら天使OSたん) and much more. As well as ones made in MMD.
Controversy
OS-tan has fall into a lot of controversy when it comes to copyright. Despite this, the brands the characters where parody as was never one of them.
Whether it came from the OS-tans themselves or Microsoft branches in Singapore and Taiwan have made their own personification of Internet Explorer (Inori Aizawa), who also uses the tan suffix when called Internet Explorer-tan) and Microsoft Silverlight (Hikaru Aizawa).
There was Netrunner, a magazine claiming ownership of the design for Me-tan. Another was Troubled Windows USA, which has come under fire due to its excessive use of American stereotypes.
Dengeki Daioh
One of them comes from Vol.5 of the Dengeki Daioh magazine. They published a Troubled Windows story, they had to cancelled after only one episode.
DejaVu
Doujin circle DejaVu has tried to claim ownership of several designs. They have made a few works and doujinshis of the characters going by Shared Fol-DA (共有フォルDA!).
One of their works also gain controversy for the design of NT-tan. She is shown within the comic as a very strict and harsh teacher for a young 2k-tan.
Because of this the OS-tan community deemed her as a bootleg design and talking about it is seen as taboo.
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