Awaken, My Masters

About

“Awaken, My Masters” is a quote from a Japanese manga JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure uttered by a character named Wamuu during his and his masters’ bombastic awakening.

Origin

The original scene comes from chapter 64 of the manga, released on March 28th, 1988, which was during the events of Part 2, Battle Tendency^[1]. In the scene, the Nazis are guarding the site of sleeping Pillar Men, the Part’s antagonists, and are trying to subdue them. One of them, named Wamuu, awakens from his slumber, kills the Nazis, and after uttering the quote, awakens the rest of Pillar Men, his superiors, Esidisi and Kars^[2].

Spread

For the longest time, the scene has been popular within the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure community, the earliest known archived mentions of it existing on February 21, 2008^[3]. On January 11th, 2013, the scene gained even more popularity due to episode 14 of Part 2 anime adaptation^[4], where it was featured. The theme that was playing during the awakening scene, named “Awake”^[4], became associated with the Pillar Men and the quote ever since.

On May 15th, 2014, Tumblr user BotanicSage posted a remix titled “Pillar Men Hype Theme”, which mixed the Pillar Men theme with songs of Lil Jon, like “Turn Down For What”, “Snap Your Fingers”, and “Throw It Up”. As of August 2015, the Tumblr post managed to get over 5,60 notes,^[6] with its Youtube upload (shown below, left) having received over 567,000 views. On June 5th, 2015, Youtuber kanashiipanda uploaded an animation to Youtube based on My Little Pony: Equestria Girls combined with the awakening scene (shown below, right), which managed to receive nearly 2.5 million views in the following 2 months.