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This meme has been prevalent in English-speaking part of the internet, but so
far no one really knows its true origins. I've searched for something similar
in the Japanese sphere of the internet and I haven't really found anything
either. So far as I know, it seems to be made up and not really existent in
anime. Yes, there has been stories about kouhai wanting to be with their
senpais, but it doesn't seem like this particular line could have come from an
anime.

What anime could have started this meme?


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2014-08-05T02:40:14.413
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tropes anime-history meme
What was the first anime to have a "please notice me senpai" moment?


To be perfectly honest there was no original "notice me senpai" moment in
anime. The way it started is when a female character has feelings for a guy,
but she never manages to tell him, and this just happens again and again. My
guess is that it was probably a fan of one of these anime that made the first
meme.

As for what anime was used in the first "notice me senpai" meme, neither I nor
anyone else would be able to give you a definitive answer.

Unless you got Google themselves to look it up for you :P

(I'm sorry that this probably wasn't the answer you were looking for, but I've
watched a lot of romantic comedy type anime, but have never actually heard
someone say that).


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2015-03-03T02:26:21.987
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'Notice me senpai!' Really didn't originate from anywhere, it's more of a
reference to when there's a romance in Animes that deal with school life.
Before it somehow always was the girl chasing the guy (and still is). So I'm
betting that whatever was the first anime to have an older male protagonist
and a younger female protagonist, is most likely where it really originated
from. If you watch older romance anime's their almost always about school
life, so I'm assuming as time went on people noticed the pattern and came up
with that meme.


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2015-03-07T16:50:32.250
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**In real-life Japanese culture** , many people do hope to get and attempt to
get the attention of their love interest without ever voicing it or being
direct, so **this is not an anime/manga-specific trope** but rather works of
anime/manga are incorporating a very standard experience of elementary/jr.
high/high schoolers in Japan past and through to the present. In other words,
a particular anime did not start the meme, but rather some particular anime
was simply the first to document the real-life occurrence of such moments.
**_Shoujo_ manga magazines such as _Ribon_ often feature color page spreads of
advice and instructions on what hairstyles, fashion, and accessories could
help you be noticed by the guy you like** (I personally find this very
dubious, having taught in 5th~6th grade in Japanese public schools... I'd be
surprised if any of the boys are paying attention to how darling a girl's
pencil case is and thereby thinking, "Oh, she's good at being cute. I like her
now," but I digress), so **from a young age, Japanese girls are encouraged in
this practice** of trying to attract a love interest without needing to
confess her feelings to him directly (so that he will get interested in her
before he realized she's interested in him).

_Sempai_ (「先輩」) are upperclassmen _in some sense_ to whom a Japanese person
will always be kouhai (「後輩」, underclassmen) throughout their lives after
graduation. There is no analogous system to the _sempai/kouhai_ system in
Western culture. **_Sempai_ are _often_ older, but not always**: more
important than age is the person’s year in school or number of years in the
shared _bukkatsu_ (student club), company, etc. at the time that the _kouhai_
enters said school, club, or company. This is true of both males and females,
so we cannot say that a meme developed out of only girls in romance-focused
series thinking secretly about their _sempai_ ; in _shounen_ action anime,
boys pine away for girls who they think might be out of their league too,
whether older or the same age. For example, I'm a member of the manga student
group at my university in Japan, and we all call each other by “-san.” Even
though they're all younger than me (since I'm a grad student and they're
undergrads), it would be totally inappropriate for me to start calling them in
_yobisute_ (that is, without a respectful name suffix) because they either 1)
are my _sempai_ in terms of number of years of membership in the club, or 2)
they entered the club at the same time as me. If you enter university as a
freshman and meet a sophomore who is your own age, he/she is automatically
your _sempai_ by virtue of being a grade ahead of you. Then, even if you have
not seen your _sempai_ in decades and you are now both middle-aged and working
at different companies of equal repute, when you meet again he/she is still
your superior to whom you must look up to, defer to, and serve; there is no
evening-out of level in Japanese _sempai/kouhai_ culture.

You write,

> "it seems to be made up and not really existent in anime. . . . it doesn't
> seem like this particular line could have come from an anime."

If you are asking, which anime first featured this exact line of inner
monologue where the _seiyuu_ voices it, you might be correct in that the exact
wording cannot be found; however, that would be hard to confirm. Since the
_sempai/kouhai_ relationship and the don't-confess-feelings-directly cultural
element are both so standard in Japanese culture, it would be hard to pin-
point and verify the earliest case of this moment documented in the anime
medium, because **you would need to be looking at the earliest anime TV films
and series produced in[the
60s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anime#1960s) that contain school
settings**, or possibly you would even need to check through the older
[propaganda films and shorts of the previous
decades](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anime) (which are difficult
to get ahold of, even for anime scholars). That would entail investigating all
the genres ranging from _shounen_ sci-fi to _shoujo_ sports series. Though I
am not very familiar with 60s anime, I can say, at the least, that **you can
find this "notice me, senpai" _moment_ , though not the exact phrasing, in
many anime produced in the 70s, 80s, and 90s**. Such an English phrase would
be summarizing the moment that we do often see occur in anime.

See also my [answer](https://anime.stackexchange.com/a/22209/8134) to this
[question](https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/22208/why-are-there-so-
many-perverted-virgins-in-anime/):

> . . . a major format of Japanese romance is to like someone who you are not
> friends with for a long time, and finally "confess" your feelings in a
> sudden love letter, on St. Valentine's Day, or on graduation day, in which
> the recipient must abruptly decide whether or not he/she has romantic
> interest in the other person -- who might not have been on the recipient's
> radar whatsoever. This can result in either being turned down on the spot
> ("I don't even know you"), a willingness to try to go on a couple dates
> ("Maybe I could get interested in you"), or the first-choice being the
> recipient is overjoyed ("I secretly pined away for you for years too!"). A
> lot of romantic feelings and sexual desire are never confessed, but some
> that are get rejected due to the format in which the potential couple does
> not get to know each other through friendship or casual dating before a
> major DTR (defining the relationship) event takes place, or reciprocal
> feelings are confessed right after the graduation ceremony and the
> respective parties part ways to go to different schools for high school or
> university, so the mutual interest doesn't lead anywhere.


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