Video: Cosplayer Off-Kai Ends In Police Raid

This video is awesome! So this is an Off-Kai, or an offline meeting of online friends. I think these are people who "met" on a cosplay-for-fun board on 2-channel. They met up for real in the middle of an Akihabara street on a Saturday to perform this wonderfully synchronized dance with blasted stereo music. Look how happy they look!

Then the cops show up and the music stops and everyone runs.

To the lay person, this congregation might look like a harmless street dance unworthy of triggering the fear of cops, but you have to understand that it took a huge amount of guts for these law-abiding Japanese citizens to decide to do this without permission. I can't  imagine the cops in the US ever having this kind of power over the people, even with their fancy guns and booming voices. Sooo awesome.

(Thanks, Rog!)

Comments

[Peter]

Haha, that's golden. I talked with Chris about getting something about Haruhi in Wired, have you talked with him? This is the most important (and weirdest) anime to come along since Evangelion.

[vagrant]

That is pretty cool, but they probably did this on Sunday when the street is closed off to traffic.

This kind of "reckless lawbreaking" is rather endearing. I doubt we'll ever see the headline; "Cosplay Dancers Siege City".

[skat1140]

Whats kind of amazing here is: look how many and how "menacing" the police were that broke up this huge gathering: 2 cops! Strolling in. And 300 people scatter.

[robertsq]

If this is a weekend, that street is normally blocked off to traffic during the morning and afternoon. I wonder what law they would have been breaking? It looks more like a couple of them were startled, and the rest scattered in an instinctive panic.

[robertsq]

O.K., this explains it:

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/archive/news/2006/07/20060726p2g00m0dm015000c.html

[tomo-a]

I'm Japanese who really attended the performance. In that time, more than 50 people gathered there and danced together. Unfortunately, the ordinance of chiyoda-ku bans any performance on the Akihabara Central Street. So we had no choice but to do guerrilla live with care of policemans...orz

[eddiecst]

this dance is orinigated from a very famous japanese ainimation called "Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutu" end credit.

It's originated from a novel series about a teenage girl who only interested to meet with alien, people from the future and people with super nature power. The novels as well as the animation created quite a big sub-culture followers in japan coz the sub-text of the movie is about what is really happening in the young kids culture like cos-play, "muk", loneliness, etc etc. The way the animation made is also very innovative, all the episodes is not in order, actually you are watching the midden of the story in the first episode. Some of the editing method is very bold too considering it's a animation for kids......

For the end credit dance, you can check out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDdXlPvefYI

[jimmytheweed]

please see my anti-war video at-
http://www.ifilm.com/profile/GaryJohnson/video/2840373