"History of Japan" YouTuber Bill Wurtz Finally Updated His Channel

When Bill Wurtz published his purposefully sparse comedic animation, “history of japan,” to YouTube in February 2016, Reddit got a hold of the video and rocketed his channel to viral stardom. To date, “history of japan” has almost 25 million views, and the phrases Wurtz drops into his informative video have spurned memes of their own. “How ‘bout I do anyway?” and “knock knock, get the door, it’s religion,” sayings he attributes to feudal Japanese leaders and cultural movements, have appeared in macro images across Reddit and Tumblr.

Since “history of japan,” Wurtz has posted only six videos. When Reddit found his “history of the entire world, I guess,” it shot to the top of /r/videos so quickly that the site didn’t even have time to generate an upvote count. In the nearly 20-minute animated video, Wurtz brings his viewer from the very conception of time and space, through molecular changes, all the way through racism and apartheid, global warming, and the technology boom. He ends the video by spinning his cartoon globe out into space, asks, “by the way, where the hell are we?” and thanks his millions of viewers for watching.

Before posting his video, he tweeted to his 44.6K thousand followers, and the response was huge.

Part of the joy of watching Wurtz’s video is that they’re usually finished before you’ve had time to get your bearings. His greatest non-history related videos are mostly about having low self-esteem and not wanting to clean his room. As far as the man himself, he is unavailable for comment.

Watch Wurtz’s new video in full below.

You can watch all of Bill Wurtz’s animation on his YouTube channel, and check out his other art and music on his website.