Goro Majima Gifts a Watermelon

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Part of a series on Yakuza / Like a Dragon. [View Related Entries]

Here. Tranlated by MEMRI -TV Let's begin with Majima, that watermelon seller.

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About

Goro Majima Gifts a Watermelon refers to a series of memes based on a Yakuza 4 scene in which the character Goro Majima gifts his sworn brother Taiga Saejima and his sister Yasuko a watermelon. First included in a meme in 2017, the scene has since been used as source material for various memes, including edits, object-labeling, GIF captions and other references.

Origin

On March 14th, 2011, the open-world beat 'em up video game Yakuza 4 was released globally.^[1] In one flashback cutscene, the character Goro Majima brings a watermelon to his sworn brother Taiga Saejima and his sister Yasuko Saejima. In the cutscene, Majima takes the watermelon out of his bag and sets it on the table before Saejima.

Here.

On May 4th, 2017, Tumblr^[2] user xjjz posted a still image of Majima placing the watermelon on the table, with the post titled "thank you majima" (shown below). The post received over 4,100 likes and reblogs in four years.

Spread

On June 6th, 2018, Twitter^[3] account @Daily_Majima posted another still image from the scene, gaining over 200 retweets and 430 likes in three years.

On September 2nd, 2018, Facebook^[4] group Majima's Majimemes posted the earliest found meme based on the scene (shown below, left), with the post gaining over 50 reactions in two years. On October 2nd and December 1st that year, Majima's Majimemes^[5]^[6] posted two more memes based on the scene that received over 50 and 290 reactions, respectively (shown below, center and right).

On February 2nd, 2020, Redditor^[7] pikas6 posted an object-labeling meme based on the format that received over 960 upvotes in /r/tf2 subreddit in six months. On May 30th, 2020, iFunny^[8] user Paddyv62 posted a GIF caption based on the scene that referenced the 2020 George Floyd Protests and the watermelon stereotype, with the post gaining over 4,500 smiles in one year.

On August 3rd and 12th, 2020, content creator Conkface posted an Obamium edit and a Cacodemon edit based on the scene to Twitter and YouTube (shown below, left and right). The videos received over 114,000 and 316,000 views on Twitter in seven months, respectively.

The scene maintained a moderate presence online in memes online in the following months, primarily being used as source material for humorous image and video edits in which the watermelon was replaced with another object.