As the Internet continues to take over our lives, new net-related activities become popular. In Japan the video site Nico Douga has become a major destination for otaku wanting to watch various anime-related videos, and the newest trend there is watching TV broadcasts live while entering comments into the Nico system so others can see them. It’s called jikkyou (lit. “live updating”), and it seems to create the feeling of being part of a giant wave of other fans as they all watch together. Last week the popular Hayao Miyazaki film Castle in the Sky Laputa (officially known as “Castle in the Sky” in the U.S. due to the unfortunate meaning of la puta in Spanish, a joke Jonathan Swift included intentionally to troll us from beyond the grave) was broadcast on TV, and fans all through Japan logged into Nico to share comments with each other. Twitter was buzzing, too, with thousands of users tweeting comments about about the film. At the climactic moment when Sheeta and Pazu shout the Spell of Destruction — “Barus!” — everyone joined in, resulting in 14,595 tweets being sent in one second, which appears to be a new record for Twitter.
Laputa caused an otaku “shared moment.”
