Friday, December 3, 2010

El Shaddai – The Latest Japanese Internet Meme

El Shaddai – Ascension of the Metatron - [J] is a Playstation3/Xbox360 action game. The game having the Hebraic name of God is planned to be released in 2011 so at this point there are only an official site and few demo movies.

However, this uncompleted game has been causing huge buzz on Japanese web. Today, Net Buzzword Awards 2010 Grand Prix has been given to “Daijoubuda, Mondainai”(No problem, everything is fine), the most buzzed line from El Shaddai trailer. The trailer has English subtitle so that you may understand what the game itself is (or will be).

This first trailer, which was released at the mega game conference E3 2010, has many points caused “serious mirth” to watchers, such like Enoch (a main character)’s face being indistinct handsomeness, grandly scene settings and phrases but many strangeness (like Rucifer, another character, supposed to be in god’s role, wearing a pair of jeans and carrying disposable vinyl umbrella), etc.

There are no clear reason why this attracted so many people, but mix of those several things hit firstly the video sharing site Nico Nico Douga users, then MAD video editors.

On Nico Nico Douga, the official trailer has been played over 3 million times. Over 2,000 parody videos were made, top 5 of which were viewed over million times each.

Popular Parodies

Many are re-uploaded to YouTube. I picked up the ones more understandable without Japanese command from the most popular ones.

The one mixed with teddy bear detergent commercial film,

The one mixed with Antonio Inoki, legendary pro-wrestler’s theme, my favorite,

Rap mix?

Trailer re-made in 8bit NES style,

Mega Man mix, (pun with “Rokuman”=60,000 and Rockman=Megaman)

The live-action version,

beyond the movies

Enoch’s hand-made figure,

Enoch at the univ. of Tokyo kiosk customer communication board. The shop clerk answered with the line in the game.

Share photos on twitter with Twitpic

El Shadai Talking Calculator – Each key makes the line from El Shaddai.

Self Publish Comic Event For El Shadai – 92 circles joined and sold self-made El Shadai books and comics. (The game has NOT been released. just few demo movies) The attendees lined up,

There are cosplays,

Enoch bento recipes on Cookpad,

El Shaddai at Akihabara smartphone shop,

Someone even created the El Shaddai game for Windows,

…wait, wasn’t the beginning of this meme a game? Even before the original release, parody game is made and sold.

Some popular lines

Some of the lines from El Shaddai trailer are often seen on 2-channel, blogs and tweets recently.

“Sonna soubi de daijoubu ka?”(You sure that’s enough armor?)
“Daijoubu da, mondai nai”(No problem. everything’s fine)

“Kami ha itte iru, kokode shinu sadame deha nai to”(This is not your appointed time to die.)

“Enoch, sonna soubi de daijoubu ka?”(You sure that’s enough armor?)
“Ichiban Iino wo Tanomu”(I’ll take the best you have.)

“Otouto no kataki wo torunodesu”(subtext is “Come on, porklings! It’s payback time.” but the literal translation would be “Revenge for your little brother”)

“Aa, yappari konkai mo dame dattayo”(Not again…)
“Aitsu ha hanashi wo kikanai kara na”(The kid never listens to me.)

See Also:

El Shaddai parody images

El Shaddai(in Japanese) – Google Image Search


Link to full article

Bubble Motion partners with XL Axiata to deliver voice blogging to Indonesia

Bubble Motion announced that it has partnered with XL Axiata to bring voice blogging to Indonesia in a big way. As internet users in the country are gripped in social media hysteria, the US company sees an opportunity to seize the market differently.

Using its patented voice SMS technology, Bubble Motion’s service, called BubbleBlog, lets users record audio notes directly into their mobile phones and share them with their followers. For every note shared, followers will receive an SMS notice to listen to the recording. The entire system works through SMS exchange which means it is much more accessible to mobile customers than having to rely on the internet.

BubbleBlog has taken off in India and Japan and the service has acquired more than five million users, two million of which are premium subscribers. While Indonesia has somewhere between 35 to 40 million internet users, XL Axiata alone has 38.5 million mobile phone subscribers.

Dubbed XL Cuaps for the Indonesian market, the service relies on celebrity power to help popularize its offering. It has signed up a number of musicians, bands, actors and actresses. Customers and fans can subscribe by sending a particular SMS short code for the celebrity of their choice.

While peer-to-peer blogging and following is free, to follow celebrities and other ‘premium’ bubblers costs Rp 1000 (US$0.11) per week which includes free access to listen to all recorded updates that are posted by each blogger every week. Peer-to-peer subscription works by entering the person’s actual phone number, whereas celebrity and other premium subscription is done through a four digit proxy number.

Although the service has only been available quietly in Indonesia for a little more than two weeks, Bubble Motion CEO Tom Clayton is more than excited with how well it has been received in the country.

In an interview to be posted shortly on e27, he reveals in more details how BubbleBlog came to be, how it works, the service’s popularity, future integration with Twitter, and expansion plans for the region.


Link to full article

Kalmadi Tops Hall of Shame – Year 2010 in Review [Yahoo Search]

Like last year, we will start the year in review section very soon on Pi – covering various aspects (Technology/VC Investments/Startups etc).

For now, lets take a look at Yahoo India’s top searches for the year 2010.

  • Headline: Ayodhya Verdict
  • Event: IPL 3
  • Travel: Munnar
  • Auto: Volkswagen Polo
  • Gadget: iPhone 4
  • Controversy: Swami Nithyananda
  • Politician: Rahul Gandhi
  • Sportsperson: Sachin Tendulkar
  • Actor/Actress: Katrina Kaif
  • Mobile Search: Nayantara

Yahoo has categorized searches topically and here are a few top search categories.

India Commonwealth Games

Kalmadi Tops Hall of Shame

Hall of Shame

Bhopal Gas Tragedy Verdict, Is This Justice for Ruchika?, Rotting Food Grains, Kashmir: Valley of Unrest, Rooted in Corruption, Swami Nithyananda: Godman or Conman?, Tourist Rapes/Murders in India, The Maoist Menace, Cricket – The Great IPL Mess, Inflation.

Top Launches

Nissan Micra: Best Small Car?, Tata’s Grand Aria, VW Vento: Talk of the Town, Toyota Etios: Super Hatchback, Chevrolet Beat: Feel the Rhythm, The Year of the Tablet, Apple v/s Android Time, eReaders: Rekindled Reading, Experience 3D at Home, Gadgets for fun.

What’s your take on Yahoo’s top searches? Any surprises?

[link/image credit]


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Tokyo Taxis Become WiFi-Enabled

In association with NTT DoCoMo, Tokyo Musen[J], an alliance of taxi operators in Tokyo, started today providing in-car WiFi Internet access for free for taxi users on 820 cars travelling within Tokyo Prefecture.   100 of the 820 cars carry PSP Go (PlayStation Portable) as well, taxi users are allowed to playing games with it, and you may feel (relatively) comfortable even if you are caught in a traffic jam or when you come home in midnight after work.

The service is running on a trial basis and available until the end of next March.  It aims at promoting NTT DoCoMo’s WiFi service by appealing its high quality and wide coverage, giving potential cusotmers the opportunities to try and studying the needs of WiFi when travelling on public transit.

See Also:


Link to full article

Wikileaks Expose [PI Cartoons]

Dear Friends of Sid,

An interesting battle is taking place. Wikileaks has effectively washed away any veneer of respectability our leaders have. It has forever changed the face of international diplomacy and journalism. There is no protection against your own people leaking information out in the belief that they are doing well. Wikileaks has proven that publication of leaks is effective and more people will come forward. Even if the governments throttle Wikileaks successfully, the activists across the world have found a new way of making noise.

Wikileaks is the epitome of kind of “free” journalism which Pluggd.in advocates. The information is discovered and shared by stakeholders, with all other stakeholders without judgement (except for some random English edits :) ).

Wikileaks was recently shut down. However it has come back within six hours as wikileaks.ch. I think it is the volunteers who did it for Juliane because he is on the run.

I’d be curious to know who wins eventually!


Link to full article

Calling Angel Investors [Startup/Angel Connect]

Last week, we shared few details of the angel/startup connect platform we are about to launch and while we are in touch with angel investors (as the first roll out plan of our startup/angel connect venture), we’d like to speak to as many of you in order to build a substantial base of angel investors across different industry segments.

If you are an angel investor planning to invest in technology sector, please get in touch – fill up the embedded form.


We would love to hear from you! Please fill out this form and we will get in touch with you shortly.
  • Name*
  • Email*
  • Business Categories You Are Interested in*
    Please mention business categories of your interest (example: Internet/mobile/education/healthcare etc etc).
  • Your Contact Number*
    We'd like to get in touch with you and share our plan/work out next steps.
  • Business Categories You will NEVER Invest in*
    Please mention business categories you will never invest in (example: Internet/mobile/education/healthcare etc etc).
  • Earlier Investments, if any?
  • Angel Investment - RoI You Look For
    What's the typical RoI you'll look for in Angel investments/seed round?
  • Apart from Funding, How Will You Add Value? *
    Why Angel Investment (and not invest in stock market?)

Once you fill up the form, we will get in touch with you and have a detailed discussion on the venture. As far as startups are concerned, we will share more details next week.

More power to angels/startups.


Link to full article

The Groupon Story –From WordPress Blog to $5Bn Company [Lean Startup]

Lean Startups are a hit talk these days. You aren’t an early stage techology entrepreneur, if you aren’t talking about lean startups and MVP.
And on a different note, Groupon is quite a rage too, though for a much different reason (Google’s $5Bn acquisition bid).

We connect the dots for you and you’d be surprised to know that Groupon is actually one of the most amazing example of lean startup – the company was literally started as a blog (running on WordPress).

Interestingly, Groupon didn’t even had the .com domain (paid $250K for the domain), and was started as a subdomain of ThePoint (groupon.ThePoint.com), a failed venture of Andrew Mason, Groupon founder.

Groupon’s first version was a simple blog that carried all the deal details – deliverd as normal posts.

“All we did was we took a WordPress Blog and we skimmed it to say Groupon and then every day we would do a new post with the points embedded. It was totally ghetto. We would sell t-shirts on the first version of Groupon. We’d say in the right up, ‘This t-shirt will come in the color red, size large. If you want a different color or size, email that to us.’ We didn’t have a form to add that stuff. We were just, it was so cobbled together. It was enough to prove the concept and show that it was something that people really liked. The actual coupon generation that we were doing was all FileMaker. We would run a script that would email the coupon PDF to people. It got to the point where we’d sell 500 sushi coupons in a day and we’d send 500 PDFs to people with Apple Mail at the same time. Really the first, until July of the first year was just a scrambling to grab the tiger by the tail. It was trying to catch up and reasonable piece together a product.” – via

A blog or a simple Google group could have done the trick with the first version, in order to test the market – and that’s what Groupon did.
This looks quite straightforward now – but take a step back and ask yourself – If you were starting Groupon, would you first build a scalable product or go after deals/get consumer attention?

Lesson Learnt – Test your market before you you start building a giant machine. Have hypothesis and validate that with customers.

What’s your take?
Do watch this interview with Andrew Mason, Groupon founder.




Link to full article