Chinese Otaku Culture and Alternative Public Spheres: A Study of Bullet Comments and Bilibili

Abstract

Possessing millions of users and user-generated videos, Bilibili is regarded as the Chinese counterpart of YouTube, while a distinctive hue of youth culture makes it a special case among other streaming platforms. Bilibili publicises itself as an iconic brand of youth culture in contemporary China, boasting millions of sticky users of generation Z that make up nearly 80% of its demographics. Founded in 2009, Bilibili was initiated as an anime, comic, and games (ACG)-themed video-sharing website under the influence of the Japanese Otaku culture. After a decade’s development, Bilibili has made its way into the mainstream as its user number proliferates and its content diversifies.

Bullet comments, or danmu (弹幕), are the most recognisable feature of Bilibili. The technology allows users to post their comments onto a video, and the texts will fly across the screen and be seen by later viewers. With commentary integrated into the original video content, viewers reproduce the video and make it an alternative public sphere for participation and communication. Bullet comments thereby make viewing experiences cumulative, participatory, and collective.

After the success of Bilibili, mainstream video portals like Youku and iQiyi also started to adapt the bullet-comment feature to their applications, making bullet comments a representative Internet subculture in the Chinese mediascape. Nevertheless, this feature is still excluded from major video websites in the West. So far, bullet comments only prevail in Chinese and Japanese streaming platforms, potentially due to the succinctness of Chinese characters, as four characters can construct a whole sentence that can be understood at a glance.

China’s young people’s affinity to bullet comments may be related to the Chinese cultural traditions, for bullet comments could find their precursors in Chinese history, such as open-space film projections, and in-text annotations of vernacular novels. Also, the pseudo-togetherness that bullet comments bring about could be particularly attractive and significant to China’s “only child.” Behind the practice of bullet comments lurk the connotations about Chinese culture and youth dispositions. Focusing on the history of bullet comments together with the lived experiences of the users, this chapter offers a unique perspective on the streaming culture in China.