"Don't know if this is a thing everyone knows but me, BUT WHAT THE HELL IS THAT NRRRWHRRRR NRRWHRRRRR NRRRWHRRR SOUND IN THE BACKROUND OF EVERY SINGLE FUCKING ANIME IN EXISTENCE."
— Anonymous, Posted to 4chan's /a/ on April 15, 2006
"I don't think people really like cicadas. There are lots of them and they're noisy. But if they weren't there, it would feel kind of lonely. Japanese people think of cicadas as a symbol of the summer."
— Shuhei Nomura, senior curator at Tokyo's National Museum of Nature and Science
"Japanese summers are not clear or refreshing. They're so hot and humid that you feel like you're going crazy. Then you have this huge number of cicadas all making this noise at the same time. It really stands out, so if you're trying to convey the sense of it being the height of summer in a movie or an anime, you can include the sound of cicadas and everyone will understand straight away."
— Makoto Aida
Did people always know about cicadas? Because I could see that taking a while to figure out. Maybe people just used to be like "oh, the trees are screaming. They do that in the summer."
— Tumblr
