A year after the trend started, Shirou Day continues, with Fate fans flooding Twitter with images of the Visual Novel protagonist on October 20th.

What started as an in-joke in the community has become a global phenomenon, as Twitter finds itself celebrating Shirou Day. As of this writing #ShirouDay is trending globally, with people posting images of the character.

Of course, while people typically spend the day celebrating all things Shirou Emiya, the core of the tradition involves changing your profile picture to his image, with many fans celebrating everyone adopting his visage for the occasion.

It doesn’t look like there’s any in-universe explanation for the day- it just started from a group of fans collectively adopting the same profile picture of the Fate series protagonist, and subsequent Shirou Days have just been everyone playing along.

It’s not the 20th in the US right now, so we haven’t seen the celebrations explode in full earnest yet- right now the tag is just celebrating the sheer number of people ahead of the timezones and already adopting Shirou’s profile picture.

However last year’s celebrations were quite notable, with Funimation and Aniplex USA getting in and acknowledging the meme. As of writing, Aniplex USA has already jumped into the ring for this year’s celebrations:

Of course, it’s been a bigger year for Type Moon than usual- alongside the big success of the Fate series with Fate GO, we’ve also seen the revival of Tsukihime with the release of Tsukihime Remake and Melty Blood Type Lumina– so naturally one fan has decided Neco Arc should celebrate the festivities, too.

Interestingly enough, if the deluge of memes about a sword-obsessed eroge protagonist has you itching to get into Fate, Unlimited Blade Works is on Netflix. Meanwhile, you can also check out the video that started it all here: