Leave Me Alone! (Akira)

About

Leave Me Alone! (Akira) refers to a scene from the anime movie Akira in which the character Tetsuo Shima is saying, "Leave me alone!" while having painful, headache-like flashes of psychic powers, making him scream "Ahh!" and grab his head. The scene became a meme originally on YouTube in December 2022. Going into early 2023, meme creators added various characters and image macros to represent the flashing visions Tetsuo was having. The scene became a prominent meme on TikTok in May 2023 when meme creators used the TikTok sound to portray agony akin to a certain situation or scenario that was outlined in the video's text caption.

Origin

On December 23rd, 2022, YouTuber^[8] Aeinzalot posted a meme that used the English dub of Akira in which the character Tetsuo Shima was having flashes and screaming "Leave me alone!" In the video, a purple version of the Handheld Pupper (also known as Geeble in Alienposting memes) to represent Tetsuo's flashes. Over the course of five months, the video gained roughly 70,600 views and 3,800 likes (shown below). It is currently the first discovered upload of the video.

Spread

On April 3rd, 2023, Tumblr^[1] user midiport reposted a moldy version of the aforementioned meme, gaining roughly 3,000 notes in one month. On April 10th, 2023, the meme was reposted by YouTuber^[2] BigMouse, gaining roughly 10,000 views in one month. On April 18th, 2023, TikToker^[3] @matcha.rat.26 posted their own iteration of the same format, instead showing flashes of Miku Nakano from The Quintessential Quintuplets, gaining roughly 17,800 plays and 2,300 likes in one month (shown below, left). On April 24th, 2023, TikToker^[4] @mitcherru posted another iteration featuring the Goku XenoVerse 2 Stare, gaining roughly 797,700 plays and 88,600 likes in three weeks (shown below, right).

The TikTok^[5] sound of @mitcherru's video started to gain usage going into May 2023, predominantly used by TikTokers who described a scenario in text overlay that humorously caused them agony. For instance, an early, viral iteration was posted by TikToker^[6] @user121110987654321007 on May 3rd, 2023, that was about "fumbling a bad bitch," gaining roughly 1.3 million plays and 304,200 likes in 10 days (shown below).

Over the course of three weeks, the TikTok^[5] sound created by @mitcherru gained over 9,300 videos using it. Additionally, more videos surfaced on YouTube, including one video uploaded by YouTuber^[7] kmlkmljkl on May 12th, 2023, that used the original Japanese version of Akira, gaining roughly 30,000 views and 2,500 likes in three days (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References