Anime girl holding cheeks with white caption reading 'But that's forbidden love'

That's Forbidden Love

2011image macroclassic

Published October 1, 2026

"That's Forbidden Love" is a catchphrase and image macro pulled from a line spoken by Hitomi Shizuki in the 2011 anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica. After a 4chan /a/ poster paired a screencap of Hitomi with the quote in January 2011, the format spread as a reaction to taboo relationships, usually between two girls, and became an exploitable redrawn with countless other characters.

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Overview

The format pairs a screencap of Hitomi Shizuki, a side character from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, with the caption "But that's forbidden love," delivered as a flat observation about a taboo pairing1. The joke almost always targets a romantic or sexual implication between two female characters, which is why the macro became shorthand on /a/ for calling out yuri subtext in any series2.

A companion macro built on the same character carries the line "Girls can't love girls," lifted from the English dub of the show, and the two images are often used side by side as a one-two punch3. Over the following years, the panel became an exploitable, with artists redrawing Hitomi's pose and expression using characters from other anime, games and cartoons to apply the same forbidden-love punchline to new fandoms4.

Origin & Background

Platform
4chan /a/ (origin and viral spread)
Date
2011

The quote comes from Hitomi Shizuki in Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which first aired in Japan in January 2011. On January 29th, 2011, an anonymous poster on 4chan's /a/ (anime and manga) board uploaded a screencap of Hitomi with the comment "But that's forbidden love," which is the earliest known use of the exact phrasing attached to her image1.

The original image was a plain screencap rather than a designed macro, and the identity of the poster is not recorded in the archived thread, so the meme has no confirmed individual creator4.

How It Spread

Just over a month later, on March 10th, 2011, a cleaner image macro built from the original screencap was posted to /a/, formalizing the format with set caption placement2. That macro circulated on the board as a reaction to any thread discussing lesbian subtext in anime, with Madoka Magica's own cast providing a steady supply of material1.

On February 12th, 2012, a second /a/ post introduced the companion macro captioned "Girls can't love girls," borrowing a line from the English dub to double the format's reach3. From that point the two captions functioned as a paired reaction set, and the Hitomi panel became an exploitable template, redrawn with characters from unrelated series to deliver the same joke about a taboo pairing4.

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