What exactly does "best girl" mean and where did the expression originate from?


I've seen the expression "best girl" being used several times, and I find it
quite self-explanatory. However, some people seem to define it in slightly
different ways. Here are some different definitions from
[one](http://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1rxldu/how_would_you_define_what_a_best_girl_is_in_anime/)
or
[two](http://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/226ubl/what_does_best_girl_mean_im_really_behind_the/)
reddit threads:

> It's when I get a boner in my heart.
>
> * * *
>
> Best Girl = Mai Waifu
>
> * * *
>
> I'm not sure if everyone thinks about it like I do, but with 'best girl' I
> just mean it's my favourite girl from a show.
>
> * * *
>
> As far as I can tell, it just means you post a hundred pictures of a pretty
> anime girl you're in love with. And its creepy without context. Unless its
> being done ironically, then its only a little creepy.

**I was wondering if there's some sort of "official" definition for the
expression "best girl".  
Beside that, where did the expression** (or meme, I'm not sure it is
considered a meme) **originate from?**  
Is this an expression that is used in Japan too, or is it a Western thing?




When I first sat down to investigate "best girl", I was pretty sure that this
was a fairly old lexical item - not pre-internet, by any means, but probably
c. 2003-04. Alas, I had fallen victim to internet time dilation yet again.

Having looked into it, I now claim that the idea of "best girl" as we now
conceive of it only started to come into being quite a bit more recently - I
would generously estimate c. 2010, or maybe a little bit earlier.

Of course, the idea of a "girl" being the "best" is as old as time. What we're
really interested in is the idea of "best girl" as a distinct lexical item; as
part of a particular grammatically-unusual construction, in which "best girl"
is not accompanied by the definite article, often in a clipped utterance; as
something that can be snowcloned (as it has been, to give us "worst girl" and
"best boy"); as something so argot-y that it provokes confusion from people
not familiar with the jargon of the internet anime subculture. In other words
we're talking about things that are archetypically like "Ritsu is best girl".

I decided to take a look through the [/a/ archiver](https://archive.moe/a/) \-
it only has posts from Feb 2008 forward (and I think its coverage is a bit
spotty for 2008), but that seems to be good enough for our purposes. Why?
Well, look at the search results for ["is best
girl"](https://archive.moe/a/search/text/%22is%20best%20girl%22/order/asc/) \-
there are about a hundred results between Feb 2008 and Jul 2010 (and thus
almost certainly very few _before_ Feb 2008), but a further 37,000 between Jul
2010 and now (Feb 2015). Some of that is certainly attributable to an increase
in users on /a/ ([see the bottom graph here for an idea of how much growth
we're talking about](https://archive.moe/a/statistics/activity/) \- roughly a
factor of three from trough to peak), but I think that far more of it has to
do with the "meme" of "best girl" taking hold. (Implicit here is my claim that
the idea of "best girl" as we now conceive of it is directly correlated to the
usage of "best girl" without a definite article.)

Another good proxy for the memeticization of "best girl" is the growing use of
["best girl thread" on
/a/](https://archive.moe/a/search/text/%22best%20girl%20thread%22/order/asc/).
Here, we see 25 posts from Feb 2008 to Apr 2011, and then a further 2800 from
Apr 2011 to now (Feb 2015). Here, I think we can identify a fairly discrete
changeover around mid-2011, when the phrase "best girl thread" began to
sharply rise in popularity.

> Beside that, where did the expression (or meme, I'm not sure it is
> considered a meme) originate from?

I am fairly confident that we can't pinpoint a specific origin for the term -
as I mentioned above, the idea of a "girl" being the "best" is obvious and
needs no explanation. The transition from discussion of "girls who are the
best" to discussion of "best girls" as a crystallized notion was almost surely
slow and gradual.

I should add: while I don't think we can pinpoint an _origin_ for the term,
I'm pretty sure that it was _popularized_ on /a/ before spreading to the wider
internet in the past two years or so. As the classic Human Centipede-inspired
graphic suggests, a large fraction of anime-related memetic content (that
isn't ganked directly from Japan) does come from 4chan.

> Is this an expression that is used in Japan too, or is it a Western thing?

I'm by no means a 2ch memelord, but I don't know of any direct equivalent in
Japan. Even if there is one, English "best girl" is assuredly an independent
invention, and isn't inspired by the Japanese equivalent.




When I first sat down to investigate "best girl", I was pretty sure that this
was a fairly old lexical item - not pre-internet, by any means, but probably
c. 2003-04. Alas, I had fallen victim to internet time dilation yet again.

Having looked into it, I now claim that the idea of "best girl" as we now
conceive of it only started to come into being quite a bit more recently - I
would generously estimate c. 2010, or maybe a little bit earlier.

Of course, the idea of a "girl" being the "best" is as old as time. What we're
really interested in is the idea of "best girl" as a distinct lexical item; as
part of a particular grammatically-unusual construction, in which "best girl"
is not accompanied by the definite article, often in a clipped utterance; as
something that can be snowcloned (as it has been, to give us "worst girl" and
"best boy"); as something so argot-y that it provokes confusion from people
not familiar with the jargon of the internet anime subculture. In other words
we're talking about things that are archetypically like "Ritsu is best girl".

I decided to take a look through the [/a/ archiver](https://archive.moe/a/) \-
it only has posts from Feb 2008 forward (and I think its coverage is a bit
spotty for 2008), but that seems to be good enough for our purposes. Why?
Well, look at the search results for ["is best
girl"](https://archive.moe/a/search/text/%22is%20best%20girl%22/order/asc/) \-
there are about a hundred results between Feb 2008 and Jul 2010 (and thus
almost certainly very few _before_ Feb 2008), but a further 37,000 between Jul
2010 and now (Feb 2015). Some of that is certainly attributable to an increase
in users on /a/ ([see the bottom graph here for an idea of how much growth
we're talking about](https://archive.moe/a/statistics/activity/) \- roughly a
factor of three from trough to peak), but I think that far more of it has to
do with the "meme" of "best girl" taking hold. (Implicit here is my claim that
the idea of "best girl" as we now conceive of it is directly correlated to the
usage of "best girl" without a definite article.)

Another good proxy for the memeticization of "best girl" is the growing use of
["best girl thread" on
/a/](https://archive.moe/a/search/text/%22best%20girl%20thread%22/order/asc/).
Here, we see 25 posts from Feb 2008 to Apr 2011, and then a further 2800 from
Apr 2011 to now (Feb 2015). Here, I think we can identify a fairly discrete
changeover around mid-2011, when the phrase "best girl thread" began to
sharply rise in popularity.

> Beside that, where did the expression (or meme, I'm not sure it is
> considered a meme) originate from?

I am fairly confident that we can't pinpoint a specific origin for the term -
as I mentioned above, the idea of a "girl" being the "best" is obvious and
needs no explanation. The transition from discussion of "girls who are the
best" to discussion of "best girls" as a crystallized notion was almost surely
slow and gradual.

I should add: while I don't think we can pinpoint an _origin_ for the term,
I'm pretty sure that it was _popularized_ on /a/ before spreading to the wider
internet in the past two years or so. As the classic Human Centipede-inspired
graphic suggests, a large fraction of anime-related memetic content (that
isn't ganked directly from Japan) does come from 4chan.

> Is this an expression that is used in Japan too, or is it a Western thing?

I'm by no means a 2ch memelord, but I don't know of any direct equivalent in
Japan. Even if there is one, English "best girl" is assuredly an independent
invention, and isn't inspired by the Japanese equivalent.

