OS-tan
A small internet phenomenon on Futaba Channel, the OS-tan (OS for Operating System, and -tan as an overly cute Japanese honorific for a person, specifically a child slurring "-chan") or simply OS Girls are the personification of several OSes, most famously Windows, by various amateur Japanese artists. A pure fan creation, the appearance of each character is generally consistent among artists. OSes are almost always portrayed as women, the Windows girls usually as sisters, despite sometimes seeming the same age.
History
The concept is reported to have begun as a personification of the common perception of Windows Me as unstable and prone to frequent crashes. Discussions on Futaba Channel likened this to the stereotype of a fickle, troublesome girl. The personification became expanded, with the creation of Me-tan (dated to August 6 2003) followed by the other characters. Another version of the OS-tan history claims that they were inspired by a cute girl mascot for Gigabyte Technology hardware.
A large collection of these images can be found here. Some of the comics have been translated by readers on 4chan and idlechan. They have been archived at Trouble Windows Translations, along with the japanese counterparts. There are still many raw comics left and new translations or corrections of previous ones are always welcome.
A collection of avatar images based on the OS-tan characters has been created by members of the Megatokyo forums, which is available here.
There also exists a Macromedia Flash Animation showing a possible intro to a hypothetical, but highly unlikely, anime show, Troubled Windows (とらぶる．ういんどうず). There also exist a photoshop modified picture, mimicking a news of new animation release in Japanese magazine. The music is Sakuranbo Kiss (さくらんぼキッス ～爆発だも～ん～), by KOTOKO, which is originally the opening theme from an H-game called Colorfull Kiss (カラフルキッス～１２コの胸キュン！～), released by GIGA. An ending theme called OS-Pittan also exists. The music is Futari no Mojipittan (ふたりのもじぴったん) from Mojipittan (もじぴったん), a word puzzle game released by Namco. MP3 version of this song is available here. The music in the ending flash animation is probably a remix of some sort.
A Ghost in the Shell crossover has also been made.
OSX, Linux, and Lindows girls have also shown up on the internet, although some non-OS male characters exist for programs and hardware. Norton Antivirus is usually portrayed as a creepy looking, possibly lecherous old doctor.
The OS girls
Windows
ME
The more cutesy personification of the much maligned and infamously unreliable Windows ME OS, ME-tan's appearance rarely varies and was likely the first created (by who?). She is instantly recognizable; she has green hair in long pigtails and wears a maid outfit with a ! badge on the front in the spirit of the Windows yellow error icon. ME-tan is a hard worker and always wants to help her master (i.e. Toshiaki), but predictably fails at everything she tries to do, and often literally crashing and irritating her sisters. When she is not frozen or out of control, she tends to do things showing a lack of common sense or knowledge, such as putting soda into microwave oven or attempting to kill people by swinging a scallion (see below). In spite of, or perhaps due to, her pitiful plight, the clumsy ME-tan is one of the most beloved OS girls.
XP
XP is a sexy, dark-haired girl wearing the XP logo as a hair ribbon. As XP is sometimes criticized for bloating a system and being very pretty without being equally as useful, XP-tan wears very little and has large breasts. Also, as XP uses up large amount of memory, XP-tan eats a lot, usually holding a large empty bowl with the word "memory" on it, but still requests more. A rare variant that represents XP Professional features a more reserved look, akin to 2K Pro-tan. She has XP shaped hairclips instead of a ribbon, and tends to wear her hair up in a short ponytail. An even rarer variant, for XP Media Center Edition, has short hair and small earrings in the style of XP Professional's hairclip.
2000
A few variants exist, but the most common is Win2K Professional. She is typically drawn as an intelligent, professional, reserved looking woman with short blue hair, glasses, and hairclips that resemble cat ears flanking a small white bonnet or ruffle, similar to maid's hairclip, that shows the windows logo. Her outfit resembles a swimsuit suggesting the windows logo colors, and she wears a long coat. This is thought to reflect the opinion that Windows 2000 is the most stable, dependable, and balanced system. She is characterized as the "dependable woman" among the OS-tans and one of the domain controllers. Because of the greater stability of Win2K compared with WinME, which was released near 2K, 2K-tan is often described as a guardian of ME-tan.
95
95, being an older version of Windows, is usually represented as a traditional lady from Edo period Japan. She is a gentle-looking brown haired woman in a kimono, with a hair ribbon showing the four Windows colors. Her most common activities are drinking tea, serving meals or doing other housework. She is also occasionally depicted wielding a katana in an aggressive manner, suggesting long-ago training by samurai. One comic strip shows her talking to other OS-tans about beating up the Mac girls. Perhaps she is the old warrior-maiden, who defeated all other operating systems and finally solidified Microsoft's market share...!
98 and 98SE
Many variants exist; however, the most common is a box with sticks for arms and legs, and a face and dial drawn on the front in crayon—blue for plain vanilla 98, green for 98 Second Edition (98SE). Sometimes the box is open with the lid resembling a crayon box, and a small girl peeking out. Some variants are the small girl from inside the box. The First Edition of 98 has a white and blue uniform, navy blue hair with a clip shaped like "98" and has a windows logo as part of a necktie. The 98 Second Edition normally has grey-blue hair a green sailor school uniform with the letters SE on the front. She sometimes carries a green 98SE box around as a doll. While both are fairly shy girls, 98SE is seen hiding in her box a lot more often. The box sizes can vary, ranging from doll-like to taller than an adult.
NT
This character is not so common. An even rarer version, Windows NT Workstation, also exists. NT Workstation-tan has dog ears, a dog's tail and a necklace. "NT" has the romaji representation of "enu ti"-- this sounds a lot like "inu ti", and "inu" is the Japanese word for dog.
CE
Being an OS designed for small devices, the personification of Windows CE (CE for short) is portrayed as diminutive and fairy-like; complete with gossamer wings and ever wielding a USB cable wand. She usually handles her "workload" by casting enchantments with the wand.
Longhorn
This character doesn't have many pictures as she's based on the new Microsoft Operating System Windows Longhorn, one picture shows her as a girl with dark blue hair and two horns extending from the back of her head to the front, her clothing is all white except across the shoulders where its black and there is the letters L and H on her chest. A design becoming more common is a young girl with long brown hair in pigtails wearing one or two clips featuring an orange and black logo resembling a stylized bull's head.
Not much is known about her as she is still in development.
2003 Server (Saba)
2003 Server is often portrayed as being half-girl, half-fish, with an ethernet hub as a bonnet on her head. Other versions show her as a girl with a short white skirt and a vest-style top with a long tail in the back (usually with a bow) and Windows four-square logo pins in the bow at her neck and on the tail. In some forms, she has a belt made from ethernet cable wrapped around her waist. Saba is a pun, as it is both the literal sound of "Server" in Japanese, and the word for mackerel, as well.
3.1
Sometimes Windows 3.1 is a white box with stick arms and legs, and other times a robot suit piloted by a girl, possibly DOS/V.
MS-DOS
A rarer character, MS-DOS is a cute but very shy little girl carrying around a keyboard and usually peeking around corners. The implication is that, like MS-DOS itself on most pre-2000 versions of Windows, she is always lurking somewhere in the background, just out of sight.
DOS/V
DOS/V is a variant of MS-DOS designed with Japanese language support. She is about the same size as DOS but has long grey-blue hair and a dark bodysuit. She is also a lot less shy.
Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9 is the most common Mac OS girl. She is blonde, and wears a ribbon shaped like a 9 and a "platinum white" bodysuit. She usually carries a large apple on her head, or
a bomb from the standard Macintosh error dialog. Other common accessories
are a white dress with the Mac face logo on the skirt with a slit
up the front that follows the nose/profile line, and showing some of her hair
like the "detached leaf" as used by the multi-coloured Apple Corp. logo. Usually
friendly and demure, OS 9 has been known to fly into insane rages when angered -
perhaps reflecting the oft-held adage that Macintosh computers may not crash as
often as their PC-based cousins, but when they do crash, they crash hard.
Mac OS X
The Mac OS X girl is often portrayed as cat-eared, in following with the Apple "wild cat" naming tradition (every MacOS X release has a codename like "Jaguar", "Panther" and so on). Otherwise, she is shown as an older variation of the Mac OS 9 girl, wearing a platinum white coat and a wireless AirPort device fashioned as a hat. She is occasionally shown holding a newspaper or yearbook, as many high school newspapers and yearbooks use Mac OS X.
Linspire
A girl with blue and green hair who wears a white shirt. As the color of her hair is similar to that of a scallion, she is usually refered to as "Scallion girl". Formerly known as Lindows.
Linux
A girl with a penguin-like helmet and flippers, a reference to Linux's penguin mascot Tux. Her helmet usually has horns on it, likely a reference to the GNU project which is often associated with Linux. The "gear-teeth" on the helmet is a reference to KDE, a common desktop environment used with Linux. She is often seen with a spear that has flags attached representing the GRUB, LILO and GCC tools for Linux.
Other characters
Norton Antivirus
Doctor Norton, an unspeakably horny old doctor, personifies the Symantec Norton Antivirus software. While an ingenious physician, he is infamously known to request (and attempt) the total undressing of an OS-tan for a full physical inspection, even when they're completely healthy. The doctor's lust has no bounds, and his morality is void.
Trend Micro Virus Buster
A personification of another antivirus software. He is a young boy, who wears a white T-shirt with the words "Trend Micro" on it. It seems that he also likes to take a peep at OS-tans' bodies, a so-called "virus scan", just like Doctor Norton.
Mcafee Antivirus
A personification of another antivirus software, but images of this character are rare. Unlike the two antivirus programs above, Mcafee Antivirus is a blonde woman, wearing a long red dress. It seems that both Doctor Norton and Trend Micro welcome her existence, due to her beauty.
Toshiaki
A personification of typical anonymous users that visit the image boards (i.e. Nijiura). Sometimes portrayed as the OS-tans' "master" - representing computer users in general. He is as perverted as Norton, if not moreso. There is a short series of comics where he tries to take advantage of the OS-tans by getting them drunk, but gets beaten up each time.
"Toshiaki" is the default name used when posting at some bulletin boards, it does not mean "anonymous" in Japanese. It originates from Futaba (2chan); a user calling himself "toshiaki" posted all sorts of messages that he thought were "intelligent" (of which the others thought differently), so everyone on the board started using his name to post stupid things. Eventually this was so common that the site keeper changed the default "anonymous" name to "toshiaki".
FireFox-tan
A personification of the browser Mozilla Firefox. Little is known about this character, but she's portrayed as a red foxgirl, in a shinto priestess outfit.
Outlook
Based on Microsoft Outlook, a blonde girl in a blue maid uniform, with a white apron and orange collar bow. Delivers mail to the OS-tans.
Other Sabas
These represent the Server versions of NT and 2K. They wear the same fish costume, but resemble their respective operating systems. They tend to be incredibly subservient to 2K in regards towards handling work; even more so than the other Windows sisters. This supports the notion that 2K is their domain controller, although logically the "Sabas" should also be domain controllers as well.
Windows 95 OSR 2.5
The last patched version of 95, Windows 95 OSR 2.5, resembles the first but has shorter hair, and outfits are black and dark coloured versions of 95's. She also has a more extroverted personality. She also seems to regard 98-tan as a rival, and is sometimes seen wearing a black skirt, black gloves, and a white sleeveless shirt like 98, but with a red tie and black 95 style bow.
Other references
Scallion
Often the Windows girls are seen carrying a scallion. This is a pun: a popular Japanese firewall program (NEGiES) sounds like their word for "scallion" (negi) so the OS-tan carry scallions around as shields or weapons.
Movement against Netrunner
Netrunner is a monthly computer magazine in Japan. In 2004, the May issue of Netrunner was bundled with a set of trading cards, including one of ME-tan. However, as the publisher did not have permission from the original designer of ME-tan, many people became angry with Netrunner, and the designer of ME-tan announced that they will never grant permission to use any their work to anyone related to Netrunner. Additionally, Netrunner had published several articles about Futaba, which the users of Futaba found offensive.
As a result, users from Futaba produced a series of banners and images, indicating that they don't welcome anyone related to Netrunner. Several OS-tans were also included in these banners.
In one manga, 2K-tan and XP-tan break into Netoran's office (or literally "Netrun", an abbreviation of Netrunner) to rescue the abducted ME-tan, only to find that ME-tan has already killed everybody there using a knife with the name "B. Gate" on it. 2K-tan and XP-tan refer to "B. Gate" as "father".
Breast Size
It has been suggested from time to time, that the breast sizes of the individual OS Tans represents their RAM size. Because Windows XP is considered a “memory hog” for its bizarre operating requirements, XP-tan is incredibly well endowed (and she has no quams about getting "upgraded" from time to time). 2K-tan normally rates as a close second given her network sever functions, whereas the DOS pair are at the distant end of the spectrum.
See also
External links
- Futaba Channel
- Other OS and hardware inspired CG artwork (all by Satoshi ("Toy") Igarashi; his homepage):
- iCandies, a frequently used image among various websites and messageboards, especially among computer enthusiasts and gamers. Based on the iMac.
- Generation 3 Concept Drawing of a girl with PC hardware specifications. Based on the manga "D4 Princess."
- Spirit of Sega Saturn Based on the Sega videogame system.
- Spirit of Playstation Based on the Sony videogame system.