# Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay

> The bullet-comment layer of Japanese and Chinese video sites, begun on Niconico in December 2006 and taken up by AcFun and Bilibili in 2008–2009. Viewers' one-line comments fly across the playing video from right to left, or sit centred at the top or bottom, each timed to the moment it answers. By default every line is the same white, black-outlined sans at one size; commands add saturated RGB colours and sizes, and viewers set opacity and speed. At climaxes identical lines pile into a 'bullet curtain' over the picture: anonymous crowd writing laid over someone else's image.

- Period: 2006–present
- Where: East Asia
- Origin: Japan: the video site Nico Nico Douga (created by Niwango, owned by Dwango), which opened as a provisional version on 12 December 2006 and overlaid viewers' comments on the video, synced to playback time. Its culture is close to the anonymous boards 2channel and Futaba Channel, and 2channel's founder Hiroyuki Nishimura was a Niwango director until 2013. Its scrolling lines also continue the amateur web's browser-default type (Arial first on Windows) and HTML marquee, and zh.wikipedia gives danmaku the alias 影片跑馬燈 ('video marquee'); together these are why this entry descends from the early web. In Japanese 弾幕 ('bullet curtain' or barrage, a military word taken up by shoot 'em up games) means a screen flooded with identical comments; in China the word came to mean each comment. AcFun added a Niconico-style danmaku player in 2008, Bilibili grew from Mikufans.cn (2009), and Tudou (2012), iQiyi (2014), Tencent Video, Youku, live-streaming sites and Taiwan's Bahamut Anime Crazy followed
- Branch: Digital native
- Also known as: Danmaku (弾幕), Danmu (弹幕), Bullet comments, Barrage subtitles, Bullet screen, Video marquee (影片跑馬燈)
- Page: https://stylogeny.com/styles/danmaku-comments/

## Use it with care

Danmaku is moving text that starts on its own, runs longer than five seconds and sits on top of other content, so any design that uses it needs a way to pause, hide or thin it (WCAG 2.2.2, which is why platforms build an off switch) and must keep it clear of faces and captions. Real comments are other people's words over footage someone else owns: write your own lines rather than lifting screenshots, and do not fake an audience's enthusiasm in advertising. A live comment layer can also be used to pile abuse on people, and in mainland China the China Netcasting Services Association's rules for short-video platforms of 9 January 2019 require danmaku to be reviewed before it is shown, so moderate any live use.

## How it works

- Lay the text over the picture, never beside it: one line per comment, flying right to left across the whole frame in a few seconds or pinned centred at the top or bottom edge, each line timed to the second of footage it answers.
- Set every line in the same default, a plain gothic or heiti sans in white with a thin black outline at one medium size, so that any stranger's comment reads on any footage and none outranks another.
- Let viewers' commands, not a designer, vary it: a short menu of saturated RGB colours (white, red, pink, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple, black), big or small, top or bottom, and on later players opacity, speed and density.
- Build the climax by repetition: when the scene peaks, let the same short line ('ｗｗｗ' for laughter or '8888' for applause on Niconico, '233333' and '666666' on Chinese sites, or the warning 高能预警 just before) be posted again and again until a bullet curtain covers the frame.
- Write in the crowd's shorthand (anonymous, undated, unthreaded one-liners, numeric memes, deliberate mistypes) and push text towards picture: comment art arranges coloured, resized characters into images and giant letters.
- Keep the layer removable: give viewers an off switch, keyword filters and density sliders, and mask figures so the comments pass behind faces rather than over them.

## Its design choices

Defining choices make the style, characteristic ones are usual, occasional ones turn up now and then.

### Layout & composition
- [Full bleed](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/full-bleed/) (characteristic)
- [Collage & layering](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/collage-and-layering/) (characteristic)
- [All-over field](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/all-over-field/) (occasional)
- [Central symmetry](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/central-symmetry/) (occasional)

### Space & hierarchy
- [Layered information](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/layered-information/) (defining)
- [Repetition & rhythm](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/repetition-and-rhythm/) (defining)
- [Flat hierarchy](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat-hierarchy/) (defining)
- [Horror vacui](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/horror-vacui/) (characteristic)
- [Sequential narrative](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/sequential-narrative/) (characteristic)
- [Visual tension](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/visual-tension/) (occasional)
- [Illusion of depth](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/illusion-of-depth/) (occasional)

### Typography
- [Grotesque & neo-grotesque](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/grotesque-and-neo-grotesque/) (characteristic)
- [Tight setting](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/tight-setting/) (occasional)
- [Type as image](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/type-as-image/) (occasional)
- [Rotated & vertical setting](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/rotated-and-vertical-setting/) (occasional)
- [Experimental & distorted](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/experimental-and-distorted/) (occasional)

### Colour
- [Fluorescent & neon](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/fluorescent-and-neon/) (characteristic)
- [Monochrome](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/monochrome/) (characteristic)
- [Full polychrome](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/full-polychrome/) (occasional)
- [Flat fields](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat-fields/) (occasional)

### Form & shape
- [Rectilinear](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/rectilinear/) (occasional)
- [Pictogram](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/pictogram/) (occasional)

### Surface & texture
- [Hard offset shadow](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/hard-offset-shadow/) (defining)
- [Flat](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/flat/) (characteristic)

### Ornament
- [Ornament-free](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/ornament-free/) (characteristic)

### Imagery
- [Typography only](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/typography-only/) (characteristic)
- [Found & vernacular imagery](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/found-and-vernacular-imagery/) (characteristic)
- [Icons & pictograms](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/icons-and-pictograms/) (occasional)

### Medium & production
- [Motion & broadcast](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/motion-and-broadcast/) (defining)
- [Web & CSS](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/web-and-css/) (defining)
- [App & OS interface](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/app-and-os-interface/) (characteristic)
- [Generative & AI](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/generative-and-ai/) (occasional)

### Tone & intent
- [Communal & popular](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/communal-and-popular/) (defining)
- [Playful & witty](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/playful-and-witty/) (defining)
- [Ironic & self-aware](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/ironic-and-self-aware/) (characteristic)
- [Warm & approachable](https://stylogeny.com/design-choices/warm-and-approachable/) (characteristic)

Avoids: Single focal point, Framed panels, Organic flow, Ornamented display, Script, Paper & letterpress bite, Borders & frames, Authoritative & institutional, Calm & contemplative

Palette: #ffffff, #000000, #ff0000, #ffff00, #00ffff, #ff8080

Typefaces: Arial for Latin letters and digits, then MS PGothic (ＭＳ Ｐゴシック) for Japanese, at weight 600: the Windows default of Niconico's comment rendering (Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN W6 on macOS); in the Flash player certain characters switched the Japanese text around them to Gulim or SimSun, a font change (フォント変化) (all as reproduced by the open-source niconicomments renderer, which cites a comment-art wiki for the font change), The 'gothic' and 'mincho' font commands of Niconico's later player (Yu Gothic and Yu Mincho in the niconicomments reproduction), SimHei (黑体) heiti in white with a 1-pixel black outline at 25 px, the default of Bilibili- and AcFun-compatible players such as CommentCoreLibrary, with Microsoft YaHei among the fallbacks, Full-width characters, Unicode symbols and kaomoji typed by viewers, the building blocks of comment art

Known for: Nico Nico Douga (Niwango/Dwango), opened as a provisional version on 12 December 2006: comments overlaid on the video and synced to playback time, crossing right to left in about three seconds; commands such as 'ue' (top), 'big' and 'red', with eight more colours added in June 2007 alongside the new paid premium service and, from April 2009, HTML colour codes for premium members and black for general members too; Niconico comment art (コメントアート, 'CA'), pictures and large lettering built from command-styled comments and special Unicode characters, named after ASCII art; AcFun (launched 6 June 2007), which added a Niconico-style danmaku player in 2008 and calls itself a 弹幕视频网 (danmaku video site); Bilibili (Mikufans.cn from 26 June 2009, relaunched as Bilibili in January 2010): rolling, top and bottom comments with user-set size and colour, 'advanced' positioned and scripted danmaku for special effects and subtitles, and later an AI feature that routes comments around people instead of over them; Danmaku on mainstream platforms: Tudou (September 2012), iQiyi (7 August 2014), then Tencent Video, Youku, Mango TV and the live-streaming sites Douyu and Huya; in Taiwan, Bahamut Anime Crazy; Bullet-curtain memes on Chinese platforms: '233333' for laughter, '666666' for awesome, and 高能预警 ('high-energy warning') before a shocking or funny scene; fan subtitlers ('caption-kun', 字幕君) adding translations as fixed danmaku; TOHO Cinemas Ikebukuro's shout-free 'Super Cheer Screening' (超・応援上映) of Rambo: Last Blood with Niconico/Dwango, 11 September 2020, where comments sent from phones scrolled across the cinema screen; Cosmic Princess Kaguya! (超かぐや姫！, dir. Yamashita Shingo, Netflix, 22 January 2026), an anime feature that quotes danmaku comments alongside stickers, emoji and memes

## Where it comes from, and what it’s close to

- Grew out of: [Early Web Vernacular](https://stylogeny.com/styles/early-web.md) (1994–2004)
- Alike in its design choices: [Kinetic Typography & Variable Type](https://stylogeny.com/styles/kinetic-typography.md) (2016–present), 59% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Brutalist Web Design](https://stylogeny.com/styles/web-brutalism.md) (2014–present), 54% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Internet Ugly & Meme Vernacular](https://stylogeny.com/styles/internet-ugly.md) (2003–present), 49% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Zagreb Modernist Graphics (EXAT 51 to Teatar &TD)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/zagreb-modernist-graphics.md) (1951–1975), 48% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Fluxus Graphics (Maciunas)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/fluxus.md) (1962–1978), 48% alike
- Alike in its design choices: [Seoul Independent Graphic Design (Small-Studio Scene)](https://stylogeny.com/styles/seoul-independent-design.md) (2005–present), 48% alike

## Sources

- Wikipedia, 'Danmaku subtitling' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danmaku_subtitling): originated on Niconico in 2006; term from shoot 'em up games such as Batsugun; AcFun and Bilibili around 2008–2009, then iQiyi, Youku, Tencent Video and Douyin; 'bullet curtain' moments; 233333, 666666, 高能预警, caption-kun (字幕君); editors for font, amount, transparency, speed and anti-block; AI to keep danmaku off faces; 2019 pre-publication review
- Wikipedia, 'Niconico' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niconico): launch 12 December 2006; created by Niwango, owned by Dwango; comments 'overlaid directly onto the video, and synced to specific playback times'; atmosphere close to 2channel and Futaba Channel; Hiroyuki Nishimura a Niwango director until February 2013
- Japanese Wikipedia, 'ニコニコ動画' (https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ニコニコ動画): opened as ニコニコ動画（仮） on 12 December 2006; comments cross the video from right to left in three seconds; commands such as big, red and ue; HTML colour codes for premium members (its 'eight colours for general members' is outdated); コメントアート; 弾幕 for screen-covering comment floods at a video's peaks
- Internet Watch, 「ニコニコ動画（RC）」提供開始、有料のプレミアムサービスも (18 June 2007) (https://internet.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/news/2007/06/18/16077.html): the paid premium service launches and eight more comment colours are added
- Internet Watch, ニコ動が新動画プレーヤー、処理速度向上やシンプルモード実装 (28 April 2009) (https://internet.watch.impress.co.jp/cda/news/2009/04/28/23320.html): Niconico (ββ) player; HTML colour-code input for premium members; 'black' newly available to general members
- Japanese Wikipedia, '弾幕' (https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/弾幕): 弾幕 (barrage) is the military term for firing many rounds at once to raise a curtain of bullets; on Niconico the net term for a screen filled by masses of comments
- Hayakawa Takuya, Hijikata Yoshinori and Nishida Shogo, 「実時間と動画時間から面白い動画コメントを抽出する手法の提案」, IPSJ Journal (情報処理学会論文誌) 56(9), September 2015, 1929–1942 (https://ipsj.ixsq.nii.ac.jp/record/145080/files/IPSJ-JNL5609036.pdf): on Niconico and other comment-synchronised video sites, comments made only of 'w' express laughter, and '888' (8 read as 'pachi') is the applause sound pachi-pachi-pachi, used for praise; both are very frequent
- Wikipedia, 'Bilibili' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilibili) and 'AcFun' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AcFun): Mikufans.cn founded by Xu Yi on 26 June 2009, relaunched as Bilibili on 14 January 2010 (Chinese Wikipedia gives 24 January); rolling, top-aligned and bottom-aligned comments, user-set size and colour, high-level danmaku; AcFun launched 6 June 2007 and in 2008 'launched with a Niconico-style player'
- Chinese Wikipedia, '视频弹幕' (https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/视频弹幕) and '中华人民共和国弹幕视频网站': in Japan 弾幕 means a screen flooded with identical comments, in China each comment; AcFun's danmaku player early 2008; Tudou September 2012; iQiyi 7 August 2014; Douyu, Huya, Mango TV, Bahamut Anime Crazy; Bilibili's AI feature routing danmaku around people; China Netcasting Services Association, 网络短视频平台管理规范, 9 January 2019, requiring review before display
- Daniel Johnson, 'Polyphonic/Pseudo-synchronic: Animated Writing in the Comment Feed of Nicovideo', Japanese Studies 33(3), 2013, 297–313, doi:10.1080/10371397.2013.859982: comments scroll 'like an animated subtitle-track'; 'pseudo-synchronicity'; orthographic 'mistypes' and a shift from denotational to pictorial text
- Jinying Li, 'The Interface Affect of a Contact Zone: Danmaku on Video-Streaming Platforms', Asiascape: Digital Asia 4(3), 2017, 233–256, doi:10.1163/22142312-12340079: an interface 'originally featured by the Japanese video-sharing platform Niconico to render user comments flying over videos', adopted in China by streaming sites, social media and theatrical film exhibitions
- Yuhong Yang, 'The danmaku interface on Bilibili and the recontextualised translation practice: a semiotic technology perspective', Social Semiotics 30(2), 2020, 254–273, doi:10.1080/10350330.2019.1630962
- Qunfang Wu, Yisi Sang and Yun Huang, 'Danmaku: A New Paradigm of Social Interaction via Online Videos', ACM Transactions on Social Computing 2(2), 2019, doi:10.1145/3329485: pseudo-synchronous display; more linguistic memes in danmaku than in forum comments
- Yue Chen, Qin Gao and Pei-Luen Patrick Rau, 'Watching a Movie Alone yet Together: Understanding Reasons for Watching Danmaku Videos', International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction 33(9), 2017, 731–743, doi:10.1080/10447318.2017.1282187
- Leticia-Tian Zhang and Daniel Cassany, 'Making sense of danmu: Coherence in massive anonymous chats on Bilibili.com', Discourse Studies 22(4), 2020, 483–502, doi:10.1177/1461445620940051
- CommentCoreLibrary documentation and stylesheet (https://github.com/jabbany/CommentCoreLibrary, MIT): comment modes (top- and bottom-anchored scrolling, static top and bottom, reverse, positioned with opacity, rotation and motion paths, code comments compatible with Bilibili's advanced danmaku); Bilibili's size menu 12–64 px with 25 px as medium; default white SimHei with a 1 px black outline
- niconicomments, an open-source reproduction of Niconico's comment renderer (https://github.com/xpadev-net/niconicomments), src/definition/colors.ts and fonts.ts: colour commands white #FFFFFF, red #FF0000, pink #FF8080, orange #FFC000, yellow #FFFF00, green #00FF00, cyan #00FFFF, blue #0000FF, purple #C000FF, black #000000; default Arial then MS PGothic at weight 600 on Windows, Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN W6 on macOS; gothic and mincho font commands (Yu Gothic, Yu Mincho); src/definition/initConfig.ts and src/utils/flash.ts: Gulim and SimSun as the Flash player's font-change (フォント変化) fonts, triggered by listed characters, with a reference to w.atwiki.jp/commentart; black outline at 40% opacity; Flash sizes small 15, medium 24, big 39
- ITmedia Nlab, 「叫ばない応援上映」TOHOシネマズ池袋で9月開催 スマホで送った言葉が弾幕に (8 September 2020) (https://nlab.itmedia.co.jp/nl/articles/2009/08/news030.html): Super Cheer Screening of Rambo: Last Blood with Niconico/Dwango, 11 September 2020
- Wikipedia, 'Cosmic Princess Kaguya!' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Princess_Kaguya!): Netflix release 22 January 2026; references danmaku comments, stickers, emoji and memes (citing J:Magazine!, 27 March 2026)
- W3C, Understanding WCAG 2.2, Success Criterion 2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide (https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/pause-stop-hide.html)

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From Stylogeny (https://stylogeny.com/), an atlas of graphic-design styles by Van Riel Online Services. How it is made: https://stylogeny.com/about/. Cite as: Stylogeny, “Danmaku Bullet-Comment Overlay”, https://stylogeny.com/styles/danmaku-comments/