矛盾塊
(むじゅんがたまり, lit. "clump of contradictions" or "ball of radical contradictions") also known as 間違いAA ("wrong ASCII art")

A specific style of [[ASCII art]] that originated on [[2channel]]. It can also be considered a style of [[meme]].

In the most common form, many rows of fixed-width ASCII characters are arranged to depict a [[logo]], above which appears a picture of a character or object, usually with a speech bubble beside it. Artists often make use of [[emphasis lines]] to give context to their subject. The defining feature of this [[meme]] is that no two components of the image can match. Quotes, onomatopoeia, artist [[commentary|commentaries]], tags, [[furigana]], and so on: no matter how many elements go into the image, each one is from different source. Aside from the text, the picture itself often combines several characters into a kind of [[chimera]]. For example, the earliest known example of this [[ASCII art]] depicts a creature with [[Juushimatsu Juushoku]]'s head and the body of a dog, with a speech bubble saying "meow!!" and the caption "chick".

[[2channel]] users often deploy these pictures to defuse tensions in heated discussion threads full of arguments and flaming. Posting a Mujun-Gatamari usually carries an implicit meaning of "C'mon, you guys, chill out". In these cases, posters often introduce their image with a catchphrase meaning "殺伐としたスレに~が!! (Into the bloody fray of this thread, *** has arrived!!)" This usage originated with another [[ASCII art]] character, [[youkan_(food)|Youkan]] Man. Images of cheerful Youkan Man, who keeps on smiling no matter how many times he is cut in half, were once a popular option for calming down flame wars. Now, however, posters eschew this [[ascii art]] as something that just makes everyone angrier.

h4.See also

* [[out of character]] - some of [[out of character]] images on pixiv & NicoSeiga are incorrectly tagged as [[mujun-gatamari (meme)|]].
* [[tag group:meme]]

h4. External links

* "Nicopedia article":http://dic.nicovideo.jp/id/4971717
mujun-gatamari (meme)