”The Saiyans are here” is just one theory from the otaku community for the mysterious object discovered in Hamamatsu.

There doesn’t tend to be a lot of excitement on Japan’s beaches during the winter. Between the cold weather and the short days most people choose to spend their leisure time elsewhere, and if you do head to the seashore at this time of year, you can usually expect it to be pretty quiet.

But when a woman was out for a stroll near the Enshu Kaigan beach in the city of Hamamatsu, Shizuoka Prefecture on Tuesday morning, she spotted something that then got a whole lot of people’s attention: a giant mysterious metal sphere on the beach.

The orb, partially sunken into the sand, measured 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) in diameter. After the woman called the police to inform them of her discovery, investigators were dispatched to try to determine what it was, and whether it posed any danger. Even before any preliminary results were released, though, Twitter commenters were offering their hypotheses, with anime fans in particular feeling confident in their deduction.

“Ah, so the Saiyans are here.”
“Whoa, didn’t expect the Saiyans to just show up out of the blue like this.”
“So was Vegeta inside, or Nappa?”
“I’m guessing it was Raditz.”

Yep, fans of Dragon Ball couldn’t help noticing a similarity between the sphere and the anime/manga series’ Attack Ball spacecraft, like the one that carried protagonist Goku from his home planet to Earth, and also provides interstellar transport for many other members of the Saiyan race.

https://twitter.com/hide_siva/status/1628174503837863938

Other tongue-in-cheek theories included the Black Spheres from anime/manga Gantz…

https://twitter.com/MouloudKhalloti/status/1628080848829284352

…the Utsuro-bune “empty ship,” a mysterious vessel found in the early 1800s that was piloted by a young woman who then disappeared, according to legend…

…a takoyaki octopus dumpling that rolled into the ocean and swelled to stupendous size…

https://twitter.com/OrWjv6Q3nUqwRgy/status/1628216007788724224

…or the egg of a dragon or kaiju.

Investigators were pretty sure that it wasn’t any of those fantastical things, but they did run a series of tests, including x-rays, determining that the sphere was hollow and empty, and that it was not explosive. The Hamamatsu Civil Engineering Office now believes that it’s a metal buoy of foreign manufacture, and specifically a buoy used in the installation of research sensors, as opposed to fishing.

The sphere has since been removed from the beach while the authorities try to determine its origin and owner. If they can’t find out who it belongs to, it’ll be destroyed, so if you lost your 1.5-meter metal buoy, now’s the time to speak up.

Source: Twitter/@nhk_shizuoka_, FNN Prime Online
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