Why Is She So Perfect?

About

“Why is she so perfect?” is a stock opening post often spammed on message boards such as 4chan’s anime & manga board, /a/. The post will include an image featuring a character about whom the discussion concerns and often affixes the website or board’s name on the end, for example, in the form: “Why is she so perfect, KYM?”

Origin

The oldest known use of the phrase was as a reply to a thread on 8th February 2008. Older image links in the archive are broken and it is difficult to tell which characters or series are being discussed.^[1]

The oldest archived use of the phrase as an opening post was on /a/ 20th February 2008, where the opening post simply contained an image of the character Noe from the anime True Tears and the sentence, “Why is she so perfect, /a/?” (the image link is now broken on DesuArchive.org).^[2] The thread prompted responses from other board users either elaborating on the reasons for perfection or staunchly opposing the idea that the character was perfect in the first place, preferring different characters.

The earliest known example of the phrase as an opening post on /a/.

Another thread on 15th April 2008 then used a similar OP, but discussing different characters from another show.^[3]

Spread

The phrase has remained consistently popular as an opening post on /a/, owing to its simple nature which quickly prompts discussion. Board culture practically invites an opposing point of view stating why the character is not perfect, and many examples of the post can be considered bait.

As of late July 2016, DesuArchive.org returns around 1,000 results for threads which have some form of the sentence as their opening post since 2008.^[4] Newer archive Fireden.net returns over 300 threads since 24th October 2015.^[5]

Sometimes the meme is used as a response instead of the OP. Desuarchive returns a further 1,600 results for the meme when used as a reply.^[6]

This meme spread beyond /a/ into other boards. Examples can be seen from /v/, ^[7] /vr/,^[8] /vg/,^[9] /co/,^[10] and many other boards.

Use of the phrase has spread beyond 4chan, and can be seen used as a tag on tumblr.^[10] Anime-related results can be seen with the tag, but there are many more examples that are not related to anime. Tumblr also returns results for a male-focused equivalent, “why is he so perfect”.^[11] Running a Google image search for the phrase will return quite a few anime-related results.^[12]