>> What is Spacecraft Gijinka?
The term "gijinka" is the romanization of the Japanese word for anthropomorphism, the attribution of human characteristics to non-human entities. It's used interchangeably with moe anthropomorphism, which is a sub genre of anthropomorphism originating from Japanese media, with an emphasis on "moe" traits designed to invoke the feeling of cuteness and strong affection.
It follows then that spacecraft gijinka is all about turning spacecraft―satellites, rockets, space shuttles, and the likes―into human-like characters! It's a relatively niche community compared to its sister genres ship and aircraft personification.
>> Search Terms
English
- spacecraft
gijinka
(this is the term most commonly used in the English-speaking side of the community) - spacecraft personification
Japanese
- 人工衛星擬人化 = manmade satellite gijinka
- 宇宙探査機擬人化 = space probe gijinka
- 宇宙機擬人化 = spacecraft gijinka
- ロケット擬人化 = rocket gijinka
- 宇宙船擬人化 = spaceship gijinka
Chinese
- 航天器拟人 = spacecraft gijinka
- 探测器拟人 = space probe gijinka
- 火箭拟人 = rocket gijinka
- 火箭娘 = rocket girl
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I got into spacecraft gijinka around early 2021. When I made my first spacecraft gijinka design, I didn't even know there was a term for it, let alone a community of artists who were just as enthusiastic about it as I am :]!
What I love about this community/fandom is that there's not really a set of generally agreed upon fanons, so there's a lot of variety when it comes to gijinka designs and worldbuilding <3
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- Methodology -
- I download pretty much every spacecraft gijinka art I come across and organize them using Hydrus.
- Every art is manually tagged, so human error is to be expected lol.
- I don't collect Art Fight attacks for the most part because that'd just be way too many, though I do make an exception if it's drawn by an artist who has at least 1 spacecraft gijinka design. There's also not a lot of 17776 fanart because I haven't dived into that too much (yet).
- Data last updated: 11/08/2024
- Disclaimer -
All the spacecraft gijinka art I download is purely for my own personal collection. This is a relatively niche community, so I treasure every art I come across, which is why I want to preserve them. I will never reupload any of the art I've downloaded under any circumstances, with the exception of the inclusion of certain images on this page for archival purposes. Artists have every reason and right to remove their work from the internet and prohibit reupload, and I would like to respect that.
All* Spacecraft
gijinka artists
My Favorite
Spacejinka OCs
>> Orion
>>
Starliner
>> JWST
>> Starship
>> SLS
>>
Vulcan
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Of course, what's a good archive without a timeline. Originally a Twitter thread, I present to you, the spacecraft gijinka hall of fame! Featuring spacecraft gijinka popping up in unexpected places, events that may have inspired more people to engage with the concept, and things that I personally feel are important to the community. Although this isn't a detailed write up on how the fandom came to be, I hope I was able to convey why spacecraft gijinka has been and continues to be a fascinating concept to many.
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Originally a Twitter thread, I present to you, a time line of the Crazy Ass Moments in Spacecraft Gijinka History, aka the Spacecraft Gijinka Hall of Fame! Featuring spacecraft gijinka popping up in unexpected places, events that may have inspired more people to engage with the concept, and things that I personally feel are important to the community. I try to keep the description pretty neutral in tone, but hovering your cursor over the images will reveal my personal commentary.
Artist Sahiro Sasaya creates Angara-chan. This is the oldest known spacecraft/rocket gijinka art on the internet (2004).
Hayabusa-tan, a gijinka of the Hayabusa spacecraft created by artist @shikishima, is made into a figure by model manufacturer Aoshima Bunka Kyozai (2010).
MC☆Axis, a moe military magazine, publishes Space Development Girls Ignition and Liftoff, featuring gijinka of various rockets and spacecraft around the world (2012).
NASA hosts the GPM Anime Challenge in which participants created a character based on the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, a joint satellite mission between NASA and JAXA. An educational comic was made using the winning designs by @kiriga_yuki and Sabrynne Buchholz (2013).
Artist ithey_wer creates 140+ spacecraft gijinka artworks over the course of 2 years, all posted in a thread on Baidu Tieba. This is possibly the earliest instance of a JWST gijinka surfacing on the internet (2014).
This specific Falcon 9 gijinka by artist @PinaxPinakes is posted to Twitter, which was later reposted by Scott Manley in 2018 (2016).
17776 is published by Jon Bois on SB Nations. The story features a main cast of three sentient spacecraft: Pioneer 9, Pioneer 10, and Juice. It is arguably one of the most influential works that inspired artists to create spacecraft gijinka designs (2017).
The #jwstART social media campaign invites the public to submit artwork inspired by the telescope and receives multiple JWST gijinka submissions. Many can be found in the official Flickr album (2017–2021).
"Let's Go! To the Far Side of the Moon!" is an educational miniseries featuring Chang'e 4 gijinka. The videos were uploaded to Bilibili by the official account of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China, which makes this technically a state-endorsed spacecraft gjinka (2019).
Project Rocket Girls makes their first post on Twitter. The project's main goal was to "spread the concept of Rocket x Bishoujo with the world" and "spark interest in space developments". It was planned to have web content, a doujinshi, and a game (2020).
4chan anon draws various rocket gijinka, which were later reposted onto Reddit (2021?).
Item 37 of the 2021 GISH Hunt prompts participants to write a Perseverance Rover x Zhurong Rover fanfic. Some of these fics can be found on AO3 (2021).
Amal Goes to Mars, a children's book inspired by the Emirates Mars Mission, has a gijinka mascot based on the Hope probe (2021).
Pro Kosmos hosts a Prichal module anthropomorphic drawing contest on Pikabu. Cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov printed out drawings from the competition aboard the ISS and hung them in the Prichal module. Dmitry Rogozin, who was the head of Roscosmos at the time, even made a tweet about it (2021).
SkyMaster, a project dedicated to the personification of Chinese spacecraft, posts their first music video on Bilibili. So far, the project has produced two music videos and two visual novel adventure game videos out of the planned four (2021).
@Spacecraft_1h, an account ran by artist @Funanori_nori (formerly @Norium_norinori), hosts the first round of spacecraft 1-hour drawing/writing challenge on Twitter. The prompts typically include a list of spacecraft and seasonal themes such as "Halloween" (2022).
Niwa Circle, a doujin circle formed around CubeSats developed by students at the Chiba Institute of Technology, makes their first post on Twitter. The five satellite girls in the GARDENs series are Botan, Kashiwa, Sakura, Yomogi, and MOMIJI (2023).
Tory Bruno, CEO of ULA, quote retweets @wheel_stop's Vulcan Centaur gijinka Valentine's Day art (2023).
Pro Kosmos hosts a Luna-25 drawing contest on Pikabu and receives multiple gijinka submissions. The best drawings were presumably sent to Roscosmos with a request to apply them to a future Luna spacecraft. The featured artwork is a submission by artist @O33mPulsarArt (2023).
Artist @sbarky designs a spacecraft gijinka mascot for the UC Davis REALOP Cubesat Project (2024).
The gallery page of the SLIM mission features an artwork of SLIM gijinkas drawn by a staff member at JAXA's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (2024).
SLIM's landing had also sparked quite a few gijinka fanarts of the spacecraft, including this one by artist @shapoco which received more than 10k likes on Twitter (2024).
The Prayer for Probe Safety 2024 visitor's booklet features many gijinka art of Hayabusa2. Prayer for Probe Safety is hosted by @okayama_uchu, which also hosts other outreach/education events related to space at the Chuka Shrine in Maniwa (2024).
Adam London, one of the founders of Astra, holds an "Astra Space mascot plush" in front of Rocket 3 at Chabot Space and Science Center. The plush is a custom fumo made by user Sevgonlernassau (@curlyangw on Twitter), who has also made a custom SLS fumo and HLS fumo (2024).
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To Be Continued!