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I'm new to anime and my friends really like it. They really like to say to me " notice me, senpai! I could be walking to class and one of my friends would say "Can you go to the canteen? This is a meme in the English-speaking internet anime community. This particular phrasing appears to have come into existence around December according to Google Trends , though variants are known to date back to It does not directly reference any particular work of anime or manga. This narrative trope is particularly common in shoujo media.
Goodness knows why your friends are exuding memes in real life; you would do better to ask them about that. As a meme originalist, I cannot help but notice that the contexts in which your friends are reportedly using this meme don't make much sense. If you know what senpai means you may understand. Senpai means upperclassman or someone you look up to. This phrase is quite common in anime which have a school background. It is generally used when someone wants another student who is older than them to notice them or acknowledge their presence.
I once found this online:. It's a Japan thing. Senpai means someone you're suppose to look up to. Maybe a fellow student or colleague. Maybe your teacher. All in all 'Notice Me Senpai' means you want someone older than you to like you. An example: Say a girl has a crush on a boy who is one class ahead of her at school. To the girl the guy is a 'Senpai'. Now, to impress him, she tries to act cool in front of him, cracks jokes, does some wierd stuff.
Now say the boy is walking towards her. So she silently wishes "Notice me Senpai! So she would say to herself "Senpai why don't you notice me? But many times in real life, people say this to each other just for fun, maybe as in the case of your friends. Since you are new to the anime world, this may seem a bit odd but a few anime later, you will understand when to use the Notice me senpai reference yourself.
