Interest

Laputa: Castle in the Sky's Climax Fails to Trend #1 on X/Twitter in 19th Airing

Almost without a doubt an airing of Laputa: Castle in the Sky generates a lot of buzz on Japanese social media. Having broken X's (formerly Twitter's) worldwide posts-per-second record in 2013 and reaching roughly half that number in 2016, Japanese people love taking to the platform just to post “Balse” as the film's protagonists, Pazu and Sheeta, utter the command at the film's climax. However, an odd thing happened this year in the 19th airing of Laputa: Castle in the Sky, “Balse” did not even rank the Top Trending chart in Japan on X/Twitter, let alone break any world records.

Laputa: Castle in the Sky aired on the Nippon Television Network on August 30. According to the Japanese news outlet Suponichi, this is the 19th time the film aired on television since first doing so in 1988. The article also noted “Laputa” and “Laputa Matsuri” (Laputa Festival) reached #1 and #14 respectively on X/Twitter's Trending tab in Japan three hours earlier at 6:00 p.m. So, fans were excited for the airing. However, as the scene in question drew closer, it appears there wasn't as much buzz — at least on X/Twitter — as people anticipated.

According to Nikkan Sports, the scene where Pazu and Sheeta say “Balse” occurred at 11:23 p.m. (10:23 a.m. EDT). Like clockwork, X/Twitter was abuzz with Japanese people posting “Balse” at the same time. Unfortunately, unlike previous airings of Laputa: Castle in the Sky, “Balse” did not break X/Twitter's trending page in Japan. Instead, the word did not even rank in Top Trending 29 chart domestically. While the article quoted many hypotheses surrounding the dip in the trend, none can be verified.

While it's generally Japanese people who get on the fun of posting “Balse”, the 2024 airing saw a couple of official accounts posting the word as well. The first was the Kinyō Roadshow (Friday Roadshow) programming block's official X/Twitter account and the second was the Heidi - A Girl of the Alps X/Twitter account. The former used an official image from the film, while the latter replaced Pazu and Sheeta with the leads Peter and Heidi from Heidi - A Girl of the Alps.

The tradition of posting “Balse” during an airing of Laputa: Castle in the Sky is still going strong. But due to some unknown factors, it didn't have the trending factor on X/Twitter. Hopefully whatever caused “Balse” to drop completely out of the Top Trending chart will be resolved before the movie's next airing.

Sources: Kinyo Roadshow X/Twitter account (link 2), Suponichi, Nikkan Sports via Yahoo! News Japan, Heidi – A Girl of the Alps X/Twitter account, Studio Ghibli's website