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Laputa Anime Film's Airing Sets New Twitter World Record

Japanese Twitter users set a world record for tweets per second during Friday's re-airing of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's 1986 anime film Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Users on 2channel and other forums gathered together to tweet the pivotal word “balse” at the same moment that the main characters Pazu and Sheeta chant the word at the climax of the film. (Niconico simultaneously streamed a special as the film was airing in Japan.)

During that moment in the film at 11:21:50 p.m. Japan Standard Time, Japanese Twitter posters set a world record of 143,199 tweets per second. This broke the previous record of 33,388 tweets per second that was set on New Year's Day in Japan this year, when Japanese Twitter users tweeted "Ake-Ome" (abbreviated "Happy New Year!")

Japan also set the earlier world record of 25,088 tweets per second during the 13th re-airing of Laputa: Castle in the Sky in 2011. During this airing, the movie earned an average rating of 15.9% in Tokyo's Kanto region. 2011's airing featured the first broadcast of Laputa's newly remastered version.

Source: Asahi via Hachima Kikō

Update: ZDNet reported that U.S. President Barack Obama's Twitter account sent a "Four more years" message that reached a peak record of 327,000 per minute on his re-election in November.

The Niconico stream was a live simultaneous commentary with Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki, NTV producer Seiji Okuda, and Dwango chairperson (and Studio Ghibli "producer-in-training") Nobuo Kawakami. Thanks, karenai_hana