Creeparka

About

Creeparka (Japanese: クリーパーカー; Kurīpākā) refers to a hoodie decorated with Creeper, an iconic mob in the video game Minecraft. The hoodie is usually worn by sexy characters in most of illustrations on the Japanese illustrators communities pixiv and Nico Nico Seiga. They are called as a moe gijinka version of Creeper, “Creeparka-san” (クリーパーカーさん) or “Crepaka-san/chan” (クリパカさん/ちゃん) for short.

Origin

The idea of Creeparka, a blended word of “Creeper” (クリーパー; Kurīpā) and “Parka” (パーカー; Pākā), comes from the Japanese language that expresses hoodie by a borrowed English word “Parka”. And that Creeparka hoodie was first visualized by a Japanese amatuer illustrator called 221. His illustration named with “Creeparka” was uploaded to pixiv on April 9th, 2011^[1] and Nico Nico Seiga on 18th of that month.^[2]

Spread

The trigger that led to a substantial increase in popularity of the hoodie was the other illustration. It was drawn by niconico user otomix who is also a popular uploader of "Let’s Play" videos for Minecraft in the Japanese video sharing service Nico Nico Douga (NND). That illustration titled “Reeper-chan” (リーパーちゃん) was first appeared on his video posted on July 14th, 2011^[3], and then uploaded to Nico Nico Seiga on the following day.^[4]

The hoodie finally succeeded to reach to a large audience by the help of his popularity among Minecraft fans on NND. Illustrations for Creeparka began explosively increasing in Japanese illustrators communities Nico Nico Seiga^[5] and pixiv.^[6] Throughout those following works, Creeparka became to be associated with moe characters, mainly sexy girls wearing only the hoodie. Those characters are usually called “Creeparka-san” or “Crepaka-san/chan” for short. Creeparka-san is also active in dozens of parody videos on NND.^[7] Creeparka-san is sometimes dubbed “Meister” (匠; Takumi) by linking his/her exploder nature to a specialist of house remodeling.

Meanwhile, Creeparka had been already exported to the outside of Japan within its birth year. The amount of Creeparka illustrations on the English illustrators community deviantART is more than 800^[8], and those have continued to be posted since the late of 2009.

Official Creeparka

The official Creeper zip-up hoodie was released by Jinx in July 2012 (shown below, left).^[9] And Creeper hoodie avatar items for X360 were released in September^[10] and December^[11] of 2012 (shown below, center & right).