About

Felix Argyle also known as Ferris, is a catboy from the anime Re:Zero who's depicted as a man with cat ears and a dress. Shortly after the anime's premiere in mid-2016, the character garnered significant attention online for his appearance, appearing in numerous fan art, memes and other media. Despite wearing a maid outfit and a collar, Ferris is a male and purportedly served as many anime fans' first exposure to the concept, with some considering him one of the earliest and most notable examples of a "trap" and "femboy."

Origin

On June 19th, 2016, episode 12 of Re:Zero aired, which showed an animated version of Ferris for the first time after his prior manga depiction. Within the episode, Ferris introduces themselves to the protagonist Subaru by sniffing him up and down, with it only being revealed in a later scene that Ferris is a male, much to Subaru's shock. On November 1st, 2016, YouTuber and content creator Gigguk^[1] uploaded a video on Re:Zero in which he did a parody of the scene, which quickly went viral and exposed many people to Ferris online, accumulating over 15 million views in six years (shown below).

Spread

Ferris's virality online was two-fold as both the progenitor of mainstream "cat boy" and "trap" memes, as seen in various different posts on social media and meme sites throughout the late 2010s and 2020s. For example, on October 16th, 2016, an anonymous^[2] Danbooru user uploaded a meme of Ferris with the 4chan text saying "that's not a trap it's an ambush" (shown below).

As the series grew in popularity over the following years, cosplayers began to dress up as the character, leading to viral interactions with people in the real world. For example, on April 6th, 2020, the cosplayer Johnny_Bullet_Seeds^[3] was filmed in his Ferris cosplay being approached by someone who thought he was a girl, with the interaction on YouTube earning over 15 million views in three years (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References