Meet Aki Higashihara. She might look like your typical Japanese pin-up with a blog and a smile, but she is anything but. This is the woman who could be killing the Nintendo Wii.
In Japan, Higashihara's blog is referred to as the "DEATH BLOG" after popular manga "Death Note". If she blogs about something, that means it's dead. D.O.A.
Here's her success rate (via 某たむらの奇妙な冒険記 and nejinoki):
•Higashihara works as a campaign girl for the Dreamcast, and then the console is defeated by the PlayStation 2.
• She works as a campaign girl for loan firm DIC. DIC goes under.
• She dates the best Judo athlete in the world, Kosei Inoue, and he only places fifth at the 2004 Olympics.
• When she attends the Kano Cup Judo World Grand Prix for the first time the following January, Inoue is injured.
• Every horse she picks in horse races loses with her record at 38 straight losses.
• In May 2007, she picked her three favorite horses to win — all three break bones.
• Two months later, a jockey tells her to select any horse but his. In her pre-blog days, Higashihara replies that she'll repeatedly write his name in her notebook — then referred to as the "Death Note". Two months later, the jockey falls off his horse and ends up with a broken rib and punctured lung.
• Higashihara jokes that she'll write the names of all horses in her notebook, except her favorite horse "Vodka". There is an outbreak of equine flu later that year at the Japan Racing Association stables, resulting in all races for that year to be cancel. Vodka doesn't fall ill to the flu, but develops swollen ankles and cannot race.
• In 2007, she begins appearing on horse racing show Super Keiba. The show, in its 20th year on air, is cancelled three months later.
• In 2008, she states she'll marry Inoue at the Imperial Hotel. A fire breaks out at the hotel.
• After marrying Higashihara, Inoue not only loses the judo championships but doesn't even make the Olympic team. Regardless, she attends the Summer Olympics, and the Japanese team post its worse performance ever.
• Every K-1 kick boxing fighter she has cheered for has lost.
• In early 2008, Higashihara appears at a McDonalds. Parasites are found in the burgers the next day.
• That same year, she appears in an ad for instant ramen. Later, parasites are found in that company's instant noodles and insecticides are found at the factory.
And there are countless other examples where bad luck seems to follow Higashihara. Take her January 16 blog entry in which she wrote about a centuries old ginko tree. Two months later, the tree suddenly topples over.
Granted, every one of these claims has not been thoroughly fact checked like the Madden Curse, but Higashihara's DEATH BLOG is very much part of Japanese internet folklore. So her recent entry is already sending shocks and doomsday notices:
She writes that she's playing Mario, and it looks like she bought the Wii Sports Resort bundle with the new Wii Remote Plus controller. This comes as Nintendo Wii sales slow drastically. Coincidence? Dun dun dunnnnn.
Wii衰退の影にあのデスブログの存在が・・・ ほか [はちま起稿]