Restaurants, cinemas and other public spaces in Japan might still be open, but fears of the coronavirus have resulted in most major events being canceled, and made people self-isolate themselves indoors. And that’s all well and good for all the introverts out there who probably feel like they’ve awakened in Paradise, but how is everyone else supposed to weather their self-imposed quarantine? A few companies out there have come up with a couple of ideas:

I Stream, You Stream, We All Stream!

Kyoto Animation knows something about getting over difficult times. After a fire set by an arsonist killed 36 of their employees last year, the studio’s rebirth has become one of the most inspiring stories of the last decade.

And now, Kyoto Animation has added to their legend by making 17 of their anime series and movies free to watch online during the coronavirus outbreak. On March 16, the video-sharing service Niconico has started sharing one new KyoAni property a day, starting with the hit shows The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and K-On! New shows and movies will be available through Niconico every day until March 31, though it’s not clear how long they’ll stay up, so you should binge them all as soon as they come out. You know, just to be safe.

https://youtu.be/9BEwS0slRpI

And for all those who aren’t into anime, there is also the deal offered by Soft on Demand (SOD), one of the largest adult video companies in Japan. To help people beat the coronavirus, they’ve made 200 of their porn titles completely free on their site, although accessing them does require registering an account. If you can’t access the SOD site, just give it some time. They’ve apparently been experiencing increased traffic for some reason. Also, there won’t be any video linked beneath this paragraph. You understand.

Trailer for ‘Yowamushi Pedal’ Wheels into Our Lives

For the foreseeable future, most outdoor athletic events will be canceled, which is why we’ll have to rely on movies and TV to get our sports fix. So the trailer for the live-action Yowamushi Pedal movie couldn’t have come at a better time. Based on the bestselling cycling manga of the same name, which was also adapted into a number of anime series and movies, YP tells the story of Sakamichi Onoda, a shy geek who falls in love with bicycle racing. The live-action movie will come out on August 14 and star Ren Nagase (According to Our Butler, The Knife and the Sword) in the main role.

https://youtu.be/wx0B8D4v1JI

Kumi Koda Returns

In the early 2000s, Kumi Koda’s “ero-cute” and “ero-cool” fashion styles caused a tiny sexual revolution in Japan, popularizing a trend in sexier, more revealing clothing among the population.

Ideally, musicians prefer to be remembered for their music, and to be fair to Koda, she is a prolific artist, releasing an album almost every year since 2002. Presumably to remind people of her music, this year Kumi Koda releases a remix of her 2019 album re(CORD), where all her songs have been remastered by artists such as KATFYR, Adolfo De La Torre Casmartino, iamSHUM or DJ Shimamura. You can check out the samples of the reworked songs here:

https://youtu.be/AghswL_bYnU

Kids Get Crafty to Defeat Coronavirus

Closure is a great thing that we rarely get outside of movies. As such, it’s understandable that some Japanese schoolchildren were disappointed that they never got their graduation ceremony after the schools closed down because of the coronavirus. But kids don’t give up easy, as evidenced by Twitter user @backyennew.

In a tweet that has currently been liked nearly 87,000 times, they revealed that their child and his friends organized their own graduation ceremony… in the popular block-building game Minecraft. After constructing a pretty impressive venue, they all logged in to the game at the same time and held their own virtual shindig, completely without the school’s knowledge or help. We might be living in 2020 but those kids are living in the future.

Feature image: Daniskim / Shutterstock.com