One of anime's most popular memes is an absurd joke about soup. This is how it survived for 5 years without losing its charm.

• One of the most popular memes of 2010s anime fandom was "soup store," also known as "I'm at soup."
• Originally a short clip from anime abridged series "Code MENT," it was created by Nick Lizzo, better known by his online persona PurpleEyesWTF.
• Five years after its debut in May 2015, "soup store" is still going strong, due in part that it's spread more like an online inside joke than the short-lived, viral memes we see today.
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These days, it's rare for a meme to last more than a week before the online culture cycle bludgeons it into oblivion. In fandom circles, however, the case is a bit different — good memes stick around, becoming cultural touchstones that people can refer back to without fail. Although anime fandom is becoming more and more mainstream on apps like TikTok, there are memes in the community that have their roots in content from earlier in the decade and have, against the odds, remained beloved reference points.

"I'm at soup" — also known as "soup store" — is a perfect example.

"Soup store" is one of anime fandom's best-known memes, featuring a now-iconic format: two characters have a gradually escalating conversation that starts civil but ends with one of them screaming, "WHY ARE YOU BUYING CLOTHES AT THE SOUP STORE?"

While still somewhat of a niche meme in terms of the overall zeitgeist, "soup store" has become such a fixture in certain corners of the internet that even vague references are enough to make the connection.

"Soup store" was originally a clip from abridged series "Code MENT"

"Soup store" is perhaps best enjoyed with as little context as possible, but it actually originated as part of a much larger work. The clip in question is part of the 16th episode of "Code MENT," a parody of popular late aughts anime series "Code Geass" called an abridged series. Per The Artifice, this trend of dubbing over popular anime series in a comedic way traces back to the early 2000s, with 2006's "Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series" frequently heralded as the first anime abridged series to be popularly labeled as such.

"Code MENT" was created by Nick Lizzo, better known by his YouTube handle PurpleEyesWTF. Arguably the best-known parody of anime series "Code Geass," the series was known for its absurdity and the fact that it completely flipped the script on its protagonist, turning cunning into exaggerated idiocy. Inspired by other contemporary abridged anime series, Lizzo started the project in college in the late 2000s, editing and dubbing over footage in Windows Movie Maker.

While Lizzo published the first 15 episodes of this iteration of "Code MENT" on YouTube from 2010 to 2013 (there was an earlier version of the series that he mostly scrapped, although the sixth episode is still uploaded on his channel), the "soup store" clip originated from what is currently the series' sixteenth and final episode.

Out of the full canon of his work, "soup store" stands out — and ultimately enjoyed viral fame — due to its simplistic humor.

"It's about two people talking past each other, getting answers to their questions, but clearly not communicating as well as they could," Lizzo said. "To an audience member, you laugh because the expectation for each person is well-understood, but somehow, it subverts your expectation. Both people are getting their questions met and their desires met at the same time, but they're also not getting what they're actually after."

Inspiration for the clip came from real-life

According to Lizzo, the inspiration for the "soup store" bit actually came from a real-life conversation. He decided to call up a friend that he hadn't seen in a while, asking him what he was doing. "I was wondering, like, how is his job? How's his family?" Lizzo said.

"'I'm eating chicken,'" Lizzo said the friend replied.

Lizzo heard a ding from a cash register and asked, "Where are you right now?"

The friend replied, "Oh, I'm at Gap."

"We were such close friends, it never missed a beat," Lizzo explained. "He just assumed that I had known everything that was going on because we had been in each others' lives for so long… But as I was pulling details out of his story, it started making no sense.... It was so funny, I could not help but laugh."

Ultimately, that conversation was what pushed Lizzo to finish the 16th "Code MENT" episode, publishing it on May 2, 2015, nearly two years after the most recent episode in the series. That organic inspiration is part of why he thinks the clip went viral in the first place, and why it has staying power today. "I did it almost instantaneously after getting off the phone with my friend," he said. "The magic was still there. The idea was still there. I think you can almost feel the experience."

"Soup store's" meme legacy began with parodies featuring other popular franchises

The clip's began to gain attention not long after its original upload. One YouTube channel uploaded an animated "Dark Souls" parody of the dialogue on the same day (May 2, 2015) that the original episode went up; an isolated clip of the "soup store" bit was re-uploaded by YouTube channel AndeePasta on May 4 and later posted on r/Videos the same year. A "Team Fortress 2" version of the meme uploaded in June 2015 helped to popularize the meme by attaching it to already popular video memes made in Source Filmmaker.

The parodies racked up over the years as people made parodies featuring franchises like "Gravity Falls" (in late 2015), "Danganronpa" (in 2016), or "Undertale" (also in 2016). Popular YouTuber Markiplier reacted to the "Team Fortress 2" version of the video in 2017. Parodies of the original clip are still going strong — take this video from March 2020 featuring characters and music from 2019 anime film "Promare."

What truly makes "soup store" such a powerful meme, however, is its staying power. While only an approximate metric, per Google Trends, search interest in "I'm at soup" has wavered over the years but remained relatively steady since 2015 (related topics include "Undertale," "Meme," and "Code Geass"). A cursory Twitter search will reveal plenty of people cracking low-effort "soup store" jokes; even vague references are enough to make a good "soup store" joke.

While some hailed it as the best meme of the previous decade — "Comedy peaked in 2015 and we've been going down hill [sic] ever since," one tweet reads — "soup store" has arguably lasted so long because it never truly broke into mainstream consciousness. Rather than exploding like Twitter memes that tend to live fast and die young, "soup store" has been a slow burn, spreading like an inside joke in fandom circles online.

"I literally taught me things about how the internet talks," Lizzo said. In this case, the conversation was more of a muted whisper that left people in on the joke, ironically in sharp contrast to the ridiculous shouting that made the clip so popular in the first place.

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