On Jan. 27, the day before Finland’s presidential election, a Finnish social media news and current affairs service called Kioski released an election video that caused a stir online, receiving over 700,000 views since its release. While President Sauli Niinisto’s landslide victory with 62.7 percent of the vote may have little correlation to the video’s popularity, the video proved so effective at engaging younger voters that it caught the attention of Japanese internet users.
What makes the video so entertaining? Kioski — a subsidiary of national Finnish broadcaster YLE — created a video inspired by Japanese anime that features cartoon superhero versions of the Finnish candidates, a villain who introduces himself as the “apathy of the voters” and a giant Transformer-like robot emblazoned with the Finnish word for democracy. The kicker is the comic Japanese title cards and voiceovers.
Following the video’s release, the Embassy of Finland in Tokyo posted the two-minute-long video on their official Twitter account. Accompanying comments from the embassy noted that the current generation of young voters was brought up surrounded by Japanese anime such as “Dragon Ball.”