Introduction

The OS-tans (OSたん) are an Internet phenomenon on Futaba Channel; the OS-tan or simply OS Girls are the personification of several operating systems by various amateur Japanese artists. Although a pure fan creation, the appearance of each OS Girl is generally consistent across artists. The OS Girls are typically depicted as women, with the OS Girls representative of Microsoft Windows (and other operating systems as well) usually depicted as sisters of varying ages.

History

A Summary about Personification

Natural phenomenon such as the animal and the stone, the thunder and the wind, god/s and spirits, etc. which exists along with humans are very common in myths and fables. Legends such as an animal or a plant that changes into a human form (or vice-versa) not only exist in fairy tales and fables, but such religious stories as well. Whether those stories were hearsay or not, it continued to spread in the form of caricature, novels, etc.

As those stories being passed, learned, taught, and used for amusement, etc. It is commonly adapted in cartoons especially in anime and manga where most characters are personified in the human form just like the OS-Tans, in which they have the following traits of the operating system they respectively represent.

In Japan, personification is not a thing to the extent that is alike especially in creative culture as a whole and can be called unique. It is to believe that the first personification related to computers is the OS-idol Win-chan (second version goes here) which is also a mascot of TECHWIN Magazine. There is also a personification used to promote BSD distributions in the net which is known as Princess of BSD; Magical Toko-chan, portrayed as an outrider, and to go back even to the time of 8-bit computer models in the 1980s. Even so, the iMacs were also personified by an artist named Satoshi Igarashi which is popularly known as Toy. He created the Toy's iMac Girl, the feature of a series of wallpapers first appearing between August 1998 and March 1999.

Popularity from the Early Times to the Present

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. This personification expanded, with the creation of Me-tan (dated to August 6 2003) followed by the other characters.

Futaba introduced a setting where a Toshiaki owns a PC. Then the author, all of a sudden included the personification of every operating system the owner had in a group of women, in which also the author didn't gave an explanation on how were they formed or did appeared in the setting. These group of women are the OS-tans. Those girls belong to the Windows family, which means this women are portrayed as sisters to each other. The mentioned setting on those stories became temporary at first, until Futaba artists accepted it and followed this setting popularly.

The OS-tans obviously considers Toshiaki their master. They live on a house where their master stays. It is interpreted by some viewers that their master may not be only staying at one house, but it could be rather that he had several houses or even own an estate. Although those still remain as theories, since the author/s never gave an exact background of personality to the master as a whole.

Other than the Windows sisters, other operating system such as MacOS, Linux, and Linspire were also given a personification and commonly appeared with the Windows girls at that time. Followed by the personification of MacOS9 along with the MacOSX catgirls and Vista as well. Futaba artist also started to draw male counterparts at that time. They are known as the OS-kuns. Although some non-OS male characters exist for programs and hardware. Norton Antivirus is usually portrayed as a creepy looking, possibly lecherous old doctor.

Since popular in Futaba, OS-tans were also seen in other japanese imageboards as well. Such as +Nijiura+ (not to be confused with the nijiura board on Futaba) in which they are more focused on being an OS-tan imageboard. +Nijiura+ mostly makes CG illustrations and wallpapers than 4komas.

Its exposure came to increase more when someone (or either some group of people) anonymously made and posted Troubled Windows (#12392;#12425;#12406;#12427;#12539;#12358;#12355;#12435;#12393;#12358;#12378; Toraburu Windouzu) in the internet. It is somehow showing a possible intro to an imaginary anime show (in which there also exists a Photoshop-modified picture, mimicking news of a new animation release in a Japanese magazine.). It features interactivity, where the viewer can click to cause different visuals in the animation. A fansub of this has been created, and can be found here. The fansub, however, is a video file, and is not interactive. The music is Sakuranbo Kiss ~Bakuhatsu da mo~n~ (#12373;#12367;#12425;#12435;#12412;#12461;#12483;#12473; #65374;#29190;#30330;#12384;#12418;#65374;#12435;#65374;; translates to Cherry Kiss ~it's an explosion mo~n~), by KOTOKO, which was originally the opening theme from a visual novel known as Colorful Kiss (#12459;#12521;#12501;#12523;#12461;#12483;#12473; #65374;12#12467;#12398;#33016;#12461;#12517;#12531;!#65374;), released by GIGA. An ending theme called OS-Pittan also exists. The music is Futari no Xenopittan (#12405;#12383;#12426;#12398;#12380;#12398;#12404;#12387;#12383;#12435;), a remix version of Futari no Mojipittan, a song from the PS2 word puzzle game Mojipittan. The song was made for a game based on Mojipittan called Xenopittan, which features characters and terminology from the PlayStation 2 game Xenosaga. It is found on a fan disc for Xenosaga, known as Xenosaga Freaks. It can be heard at the end of the medley found here. The song was sung by voice actresses Ai Maeda (who voiced Shion Uzuki in Xenosaga), Suzuki Mariko (who voiced KOS-MOS in the same game), and Shishido Rumi (who voiced MOMO in the same game). Both flash files can be viewed here. Also, as a satire, Bill Gates was mentioned in the credits of this hypothetical anime (after about 50 seconds).

There are still artworks, drawings, flash animations, videos etc. which continues being posted in the internet. In which it gave more exposure to the viewers outside Japan, and because of that, contributions about OS-tans coming from English-speaking imageboards and websites came to grow. Most notable example is Juzo-kun's renditions of Linux distros wallpapers.

OS-Tan Collections is an English speaking themed website that deals with OS-tans which is open for all OS-tan viewers around the Internet. Artists from OS-Tan Collections not only includes Futaba's OS-tan current line-up, but also other operating system they could name of and be given personification as well.

The -tan Suffix

The Japanese suffix -tan (#12383;#12435;) is a child's mispronunciation of -chan (#12385;#12419;#12435;), an informal, intimate, and diminutive honorific suffix for a person used for friends, family, and pets. In this case, the mispronunciation is used intentionally to achieve the contrived cute or charming effect that is commonly associated with its use by young children. It is also sometimes added to the names of non-mascot characters, such as Sakura from Cardcaptor Sakura. The personifications as a whole are commonly simply called mascots or mascot characters. The -tan suffix itself means nothing outside its role as an honorific and its implications of cuteness; it is never used on its own. Normal suffixes including -san, -chan, and -kun are also used with OS Girls depending on the character and the speaker's preference, or omitted entirely. A common misconception is that -tan is a word meaning mascot or its addition to a name denotes a character being a mascot or personification. This is not so. Furthermore, the -tan suffix has largely fallen out of favor with the original creators of the OS Girls on Futaba Channel. Various and varying suffixes and names are used instead, for instance, the Windows 98 and Windows 98SE OS Girls are most commonly called Hacchan and Secchan.

References and in-jokes

When the OS-tans are portrayed in comics, they are often accompanied by Japanese puns or references to Futaba Channel culture.

Scallion

Often the Windows girls are seen carrying scallions. This is a pun: a popular Japanese firewall program (NEGiES) sounds like the Japanese word for scallion (negi) so the OS-tan carry scallions around as shields or weapons. A scallion is also the icon used for the firewall itself. Me-tan eats long onions and so should you.

Breast Size, Hunger, and Memory

It has been suggested from time to time, that the breast sizes of the individual OS-tans represent their RAM requirements. Because Windows XP is considered a memory hog due to its increased resource consumption, XP-tan is incredibly well endowed (and she has no qualms about getting upgraded from time to time). 2K-tan normally rates as a close second, whereas as someone like MSDOS-tan lies at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. Another theory states that the breast size of an OS-tan represents the overall fanciness of their graphical user interface. Since XP was designed with 'bells and whistles', she has the largest breasts, but DOS, being no more than a command prompt, is at the other extreme. An alternate method of displaying memory or resource requirements in general is through the character's appetite. XP is often seen eating ridiculous amounts of food, sometimes to the point of obesity.

Movement against Netrunner

Netrunner, a monthly computer magazine in Japan, introduced an image board browsing software named Berry in one issue. Berry created a surge of traffic to Futaba, as well as many inexperienced users who knew nothing about the rules and decorum of Futaba. This troubled, but did not entirely anger, Futaba users.

However, the May 2004 issue of Netrunner was bundled with a set of trading cards, depicting (among others) many original characters from Futaba-including ME-tan. As this was done without permission from the original designer of ME-tan, many people became angry with Netrunner!-- I am unfamiliar with Japanese copyright law, but would this not have been a copybio? --, and the designer of ME-tan announced that it will never grant permission to use any of its work to anyone related to Netrunner.

Furthermore, users from Futaba produced a series of banners and images, indicating that it doesn't welcome anyone related to Netrunner. Several OS-tans were also included in these banners.

In one OS-tan 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 (as in Bill Gates) on it. 2K-tan and XP-tan refer to B. Gate as father.

Dispute between Futaba Society and Deja Vu

Deja Vu Art Works is a doujin group in Japan, which has published doujinshi of the OS-tan called Ky#333;y#363; Fol-DA! (#20849;#26377;#12501;#12457;#12523;DA! ky#333;y#363; foruda) (Literal translation: Shared Fol-DA!). However, it has clashed with Futaba society on several points:

1. Deja Vu's manga use its own design of NT-tan (Windows NT 4.0 SP6) instead of Futaba's design.
   • Futaba users claimed this is disrespectful to original creators of OS-tan, hence so called stealing OS-tan from them.
   • Deja Vu claimed it has rights to create new characters.
2. Deja Vu published a 2K-tan manga with ©Deja vu on it.
   • Futaba users claimed the copyright mark showed that Deja Vu ignored the original creator of OS-tan and claimed themselves as the original creators, and are intentionally misleading others (to think so). They also showed a screenshot on the Internet, showing some other doujin group mistaken Deja Vu and Ky#333;y#363; Fol-DA! as original creator.
   • Deja Vu claimed it was only a careless mistake.
3. A cosplay photo of XP-tan (by MALINO, a member of Deja Vu) was posted on Futaba, while the costume's tailor only permitted the photo to be posted in a membership-based cosplay site.
   • Futaba users claimed that Deja Vu posted those photos, hence violating the agreement.
   • Deja Vu claimed that it only posted the photo in the members-only cosplay site, but soon somebody posted those photos on Futaba with an insult.
     • Later, a Futaba user found a link (hidden by using text in the same color as the background) which later was deleted.
       • Futaba users claimed this as proof that Deja Vu actually violated the agreement.
       • Deja Vu claimed its post was only a counter measure against the post in Futaba, and had no intention of violating the agreement. Later they deleted the link as it received complaints from the XP-tan costume's tailor.
4. Originally in Deja Vu's homepage, one only claimed its manga was being published on Netrunner, but after the start of the dispute one changed its homepage and claimed that its manga on Netrunner was published without its permission.
   • Futaba users claim this is a fact showing Deja Vu had been working for Netrunner.
   • Deja Vu claimed the change in its homepage only reflects the facts.
5. There are some other minor disputes.

To the date of this edit (September 24 2004), it seems that the dispute still can't be resolved, or at least that the parties involved have no intention of resolving it. Generally, Futaba Society considers Deja Vu as another enemy (just like Netrunner), Deja Vu declared it would continue to publish its manga, and other people either remain neutral (e.g. the creators of ME-tan and XP-tan) or ignorant of the dispute.

See also

• List of OS-tans
• Links to OS-Tan websites