In English, it refers to "Bullet Hell" or "Bullet Curtain", which is a function that allows floating comments created by any watchers overlay onto the video. It is firstly invented by a video sharing website in Japan, Niconico, and has its name-Danmaku- in Japanese.
Due to the sense of a shared watching experience, Danmu right now is popular in both Japan and China. China has two websites that are specialized in Danmu, namely, Acfun and Bilibili. Moreover, recently, three Chinese movies, 秦时明月之龙腾万里, 小时代：刺金时代, and 绣春刀, had some special screenings that allowed audience use their cell phones or tablets to use Danmu. The following two pics show one screening. And the movie tickets for these screenings were in great demand.
Interesting, Danmu now is not limited in videos or movies. A Chinese computer engineer and lay stock investor recently launched a website for people to post Danmy on the state of the Chinese stock market, which attracts Chinese people's significant attention. (Please click here for more details)
However, Danmu does have many shortcomings such as destroying the whole movie if having too many comments, and possibilities of having dirty, personal attack and other bad comments. And thus, many researchers are not optimistic about the future of Danmu.
What do you think about Danmu?
Hmmm. Weird. I'm not sure that I would enjoy this kind of commentary experience.
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