For those of us who know Tokyo’s famous Akihabara district (Electronic town) and love it for what it is, and all the craziness, cosplay, anime and whatever else we think is cool, screwy, funny and dorky all at the same time, a tragedy emerged there just a day ago.

Taken from Patrick Macias blog, the summary (worth checking out in more detail) is as follows taken from his blog.

The growing tension and push-and-pull between the cops, the normal people, and the otaku in Akihabara was shaping up to be a grand saga, complete with flash mobs and organized protests. But now, all of that has been preempted by some loser who just wanted to kill people.

(Here’s the part where I have to cover my ass by saying that I have friends who work in the area and who visit that very spot where the shit hit quite regularly, including me. So no, it’s not some abstract GTAIV sandbox where this all took place and I understand what it means when real human beings die real horribly.)

Meta Tame calls it the AKB Massacre. This is tragic because real people died and got injured because some insane person decided to go there, crash his car into people and then take out a knife and stab people before being taken down by police. It was said he announced his intention to kill to the public via the Internet days before.

Then, from the morass of it all comes an internet mob hunt against those that were less than respectful infront of news cameras… as posted in Japanprobe amongst other things and are now being hunted down by japanese internet mobs in more acts of hatefulness and other stupid things with posts and forum discussions debating the pro’s and con’s of effectively lynching innocent, yet arguably very stupid people. Were they stupid to do what they did? Yes, do they deserve to be lynched? I don’t remember reading in the constitution of any "democratic" country that you may be lynched for being stupid. As was commented, two wrongs does not make a right.

For more news related information check out the Times.