Haruhi Suzumiya in Beckii Cruel BBC Documentary
A recent documentary on BBC 3 (a British television channel) featured Beckii Cruel (Rebecca Flint), a 14-year-old girl from the Isle of Man who has become an Internet celebrity and popstar in Japan. Beckii became famous after posting videos of herself dancing to J-pop using her own choreography. 
She did this secretly, without telling her parents. Beckii commonly cosplays in Haruhi Suzumiya costumes and has done covers for songs like Bouken Desho Desho? and Hare Hare Yukai. The BBC documentary explores Beckii’s rise to fame as an internet sensation and her impact on Japan where she has her own record label. The documentary explores the world of Japanese anime, manga, and pop culture; some Haruhi Suzumiya scenes are featured including the Hare Hare Yukai dance.
The program can be viewed here, unfortunately it is available only to UK-based IP addressed. If anyone has a region-free download or video link to the program, please feel free to share it by posting a comment EDIT: Nevermind, I found one, go here. Or watch on Youtube on our channel.
Thanks to the_time_hero for the news tip, sources: AnimeUKnews, BBC. If you have Haruhi-related news or media to share, feel free to send it in.
Her own record label? o.o”
Come to think of it, I’ve never really known much about the anime scene in the UK or Europe really, so this is very interesting too hear ^^
awesome girl
What a coincidence, I just saw a video of her earlier today because of the forums O:
Nice~
She has a good taste in anime and anime music then ^.^
Holy crap! I have a BBC free preview this month! I need to see if they’ll broadcast this documentary soon. The show this documentary appeared on is called “BBC Three” right? If that’s the case, I better check it out. Who knows? I might see it after all!
I’m going to keep an eye on this comment section, I really want to see that documentary!!
Heheh, I saw this live when it was aired a few days ago, no idea it was on and almost didn’t bother with it since I’m not interested in Beckii Cruel and I find the weeboo thing embarrassing for all the normal fans of anime and Japan. However, I literally shot up from my seat when Haruhi came on randomly.
They showed two short segments from season 1, english dubbed: The Mikuru moe introduction and later on, a clip of Taniguchi talking about Haruhi (but implying from different context, possibly about the otaku culture)
Other various anime posters appeared throughout the program. I only recognised Yui from Angelbeats, and nothing ero for a change lol.
Highlight of the program was Beckii getting sent a bass guitar as a gift from her #1 otaku fan, -which was played off as shocking and disturbing for mainstream audiences, but for everybody else experienced with the extremes of otaku, seemed like pretty normal behaviour to me. As we know, Japan does everything better, including fandom.
I liked how they completely skipped over the fine details of the guitar, eg. it being the same one Mio uses so it had more anime importance.
Making all those good sounding songs (which I’d never heard of before) and then getting tossed away when she made that awful english song to make money.
I feel I like her a lot less now though. What with her fat-ass weeaboo friends and her greedy cunt family.
Worst of all is poor Mr. Fuji
I did some more googling and found a MU download link for the documentary: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=S6AISRRQ
Yeah, I also wished they didn’t spin that bass guitar gift to be some otaku-creepy-stalker thing. If they really looked into Japanese culture for their documentary, then they would have found that they are a very generous people; the gift was a genuine expression of the fan’s dedication to Beckii and nothing else.
Thanks for the link, kyon!
I get mixed feelings while watching this. At 20:10, that moment (the one with the teasing) was just incredibly stupid and embarrassing D: I hate it when they don’t cut out parts like that. What’s the point of making this whole thing about fame in Japan seem so negative?
“… and the biggest age range of male is 45-54, heh.” LOL, damn!
… sigh… The only time I actually felt “satisfied” while watching this must be when they showed the Haruhi series xD and all the shitty music makes my head ache (meaning not to be harsh or too exaggerating here, but such noise shouldn’t become a global success).
English version of the Beckii Cruel documentary on my Youtube account – cranborneman.
Called THAT documentary. See also interview with Emma Bunton (Baby Spice).
Please enjoy !!
Interesting Documentary.
Though the british side of things seem to not understand that a cute image is the only way to get huge in Japan. Just look at Ayumi Hamasaki!
I watched it the first time it came on and all of a sudden Haruhi appeared and I went mad
Oh dear God…
This is begging to be youtube pooped…
What Would Haruhi Do?
This documentary is a trip since it is somewhat unbelievable to think that someone can get famous, literally on the other side of the world, by simply doing some dance routines to some songs over the internet.
That bass looks like the one Mio Akiyama from K-On uses.
the name is froggycompany, not the_time_hero
Ok… I get mixed feellings about this.
I don’t know, she just feels a lot… Bitchy to me.
And ungrateful.
She isn’t even an otaku, for godness sake! She just saw a cute dance on the Internet and danced too!
They made otaku look like weirdos! And I hate when people do that!
I think I hate that girl now. >.<
What I kind of wonder after seeing this is how does she keep up with her iGSCEs? I’m on the iGSCE course at my school and I’m not traveling to Japan, but I’m still somewhat running to catch up with my learning!
WOW she is not very cool if all her viewers on youtube is really old men! XD And i live in japan and most of the boys at my school who are otakus think beckii is an embarassment to everyone and how she does the danjo dance. But in japan most guys who like her are from ages about 18 to 50 years old so it really is an embarassment to all the young teenagers. And the british or americans sometimes ask us on facebook “does all the otakus like beckii cruel” and we always say no because a lot of people in japan find her a bit racist and a embarassment!
Great archived information, especially for my research.
Thank you for your generous contribution. – Please keep up the good work.
It’s good to see that there are anime fansd in the UK, and it’s a difficult thing to get into in this country in perticular, not because of it being a different culture, but the fact that we don’t even get the joy of watching fantastic anime like Haruhi Suzumiya, Fullmetal Alchemist or any other series. All we ever get are the Studio Ghibli films or the Pokemon shows for children television, and I feel that we’re missing out on some great shows.
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Haruhi Suzumiya is the creation by Nagaru Tanigawa and is licensed by Kadokawa Pictures USA and Bandai Entertainment (North America).