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I wrote about a funny Japanese word: 謎 (nazo, mystery). I was inspired to look at 謎 because I was curious about the effect that a viral video from the late 2000s had (or didn’t have) on the career of comedian/actor Katagiri Jin. There’s not much out there, to be honest. All of the original posts of the video were taken down from YouTube due to copyright strikes, so we’ve lost the conversation in those comments. I did manage to find this Reddit post from 2011, which is super interesting and shows that the video had an impact on Redditors at least, and I think this is emblematic of the internet at that point in time. We were shifting from an internet where Homestar Runner thrived to an in-between state as YouTube was getting going but before Vine or TikTok were even imaginable.

And I don’t think the video had much of an impact on Japanese fans. I’m sure many enjoyed the skits, but Katagiri is much more defined by his time in Rahmens and his podcast エレ片のポッ. The skit isn’t even mentioned in the longform blog post I found that examines Katagiri’s career. That article is worth a read. I’m not sure I understood 100% of it, but the thesis is pretty clear and, I think, on point. Worth a read.