Banpresto has just announced their latest Pokémon Ichiban Kuji, and if you can’t tell already, this one’s a real doozy. The series is titled Pikachu Nebukuro (sleeping bag) Collection, and features pikachus in a variety of Pokémon-inspired sleeping bags. As if it weren’t cute enough, the website even opens with an adorable short story that shows how the pikachus ended up with such an adorable sleeping arrangement! Read More
Tag Archives: Pokemon
Japan Envy: Pokémon Time Eevee Collection
Who doesn’t love Eevee? The iconic first generation Pokémon has a whopping eight different evolutions, each as adorable as the next. There certainly isn’t a lack of Eevee-related merchandise, but the Pokémon Time’s latest collection is going to capitalize on that cuteness even more in its newest line, the Eievui Collection! Wait… Eievui? You can chalk that up to a weird attempt to romanize the Japanese name, but for sanity’s sake, I’ll be sticking to Eevee. However you spell it, it’s too cute to resist!
The collection launches on June 6th in Pokémon Centers in Japan, with an exclusive tote bag to commemorate the launch available to those who spend over ¥10,000 (about $100) on any items in a Pokémon Center from June 6th through the 14th.
I absolutely love the above photo, which shows how Eevee Collection items can be integrated into your daily life. While the items themselves are not very easy to spot, there are a number of t-shirts, a blanket, and even a backpack featured! Sometimes it’s nice to own nerdy merch that isn’t so in-your-face, wouldn’t you agree?
Here’s another way they’re advertising the items, this time focusing on fashion. I absolutely love the way the products are integrated into the Sylveon girl’s outfit! Let’s take a close look at the merchandise, though, shall we?
Pokémon Café at Shibuya Parco 2015 [Guest Post]
Waiting in line at the Pokémon Café |
Greetings, Chic Pixel readers! This is Sarah (@everydayfoxlife), one of Anne’s newest correspondents in Japan. Recently Roy (@kotowari) and I had the opportunity to visit the Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire Café Anne wrote about recently in our neighboring city of Shibuya. Was it worth the 7 hour wait? Let’s see…
Getting into the Café
First, we had to wait in line to get tickets in order to make reservations. The process went like this:
- Line up for the entrance of the café. We arrived a half hour after it had opened, and the line went down several flights of stairs. It was maybe a 45 minute wait in total, which wasn’t bad.
- While you wait, staff members come along and ask how many people you have in your party so that they can create tickets ahead of time.
- Once you reach the café entrance, a staff member gives you an assigned ticket with a QR code that you scan with your mobile device, and proceed to actually make the reservation. We hit a snag with this because our QR reader couldn’t open the URL, and we realized that there was a specific app that the café requests you use to read the QR code (geez!). We just got a new Japanese phone plan, which was a life saver because without it we wouldn’t have been able to make reservations. We scanned the QR code and sent off an automated email, which confirmed that they would email us when it’s near time to for us to be able to get into the café.
- We once again lined up with the rest of the group who were called around the same time. This wait felt pretty long because it depended on people being done – a lot of times people will hang out and talk for a while after their meal. While we waited, staff members came by and let us review the menu and order ahead of time.
- Finally, time to eat!
Our view waiting in line. There was a little photo set where a staff member would take your picture. You could use whatever props you wanted, which were just Pikachu dolls and ears. |
Ta da!
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Dining Experience
Roy and I both unabashedly love food, so we were extra excited to try out the menu items themed after the game. We decided to each try out one entreé dish and one drink.
Reviewing the menu while waiting in line. |
First came the drinks. I ordered the “Voltekka Soda,” which had a Pikachu-shaped mango sorbet on top of crushed ice with some rosemary and lime. It came with ginger ale and pop rocks, which you mix to make an especially fizzy drink. The ginger ale, despite being called Wilkinson, is actually a product of Asahi, and has a surprisingly strong ginger flavor – the menu actually goes as far as to have a small warning for younger children.
The pop rocks came in a tiny plastic bowl which had the pokéball button taped to it. A laminated Pikachu tail was taped to the spoon handle. |
The drink itself didn’t taste like anything special (which doesn’t mean it was bad – the ginger ale is becoming a new favorite for me), but being able to add the pop rocks to it was a lot of fun and I am easily amused. The sorbet was kind of hard to eat, so I let it melt a bit, but then became a goopy mess inside a ton of ice. Guess I should’ve made more of an effort to eat him.
Melting Pikachu |
Roy ordered the mix au lait, which is modeled after an in-game item. The presentation was less than thrilling as it was merely a piece of paper taped to a jar.
Um. Ok. |
Roy said the drink tasted similar to a lassi – fruity and creamy – but with too much crushed ice. Maybe the café was anticipating little kids to take their time with the drinks, and not a grown man drinking it down like the world is ending. Who knows.
After hanging around a bit and enjoying the drinks, our food finally arrived.
Roy ordered a mabo tofu dish, which is a spicy tofu and ground meat mixture served alongside rice. The café decided to reinterpret the dish after Groudon.
The Pokéball-shaped tofu sitting a ground meat mixture next to the red rice. |
The salad had a “dai” character cut out of a carrot, which resembled the bonfires that are lit on the mountainside in Kyoto during summer. |
Roy initially thought the dish was too sweet, but it became clear that he was supposed to dump copious amounts of spice onto it to increase the heat. After that the dish was pretty good (although he found eating bright red tofu a little unnerving).
I ended up getting the Pikachu omurice (folded omelette with flavored rice) and “aqua” sauce. It came with a complimentary cup designed to look like a Pokéball.
The black parts of Pikachu’s face were made with dried seaweed sheets, and the rest were cut out of radishes. His ears were the omelettes, and the blue sauce tasted like curry. |
The rice part was a little disappointing because it was room temperature, but as was the case with Roy’s dish, everything became increasingly tastier when mixed together. The omelettes were nice and melty on the inside, and pouring the sauce over everything made it addicting. The salad was refreshing and had a simple vinaigrette, which makes me think the café put some thought into the adults that would be dining in.
I was anticipating the portions to be a lot smaller since the menu is presumably aimed towards kids, but I left the café feeling really stuffed – which was nice after such a long wait.
Goods Shop
After we ate, we headed towards the joint goods shop to get some souvenirs. There was a lot of pining after items we didn’t have any use for, so we did the next best thing: take pictures.
12 year old me needs this. |
Roy’s purchase: a miniature Farfetch’d doll (sorry – “Duck Onion”)
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Special Café Pikachu
Whether you were waiting in line to get in the café or just walking by, you could download a special café themed pikachu as an in-game gift simply by hanging around. This was a nice incentive for people to hang around and create buzz for the event.
Final Thoughts
So was it worth the arduous wait? I’d say so just for the experience alone! The food, while nothing extraordinary, was still surprisingly good, and the atmosphere was a lot of fun to be in. I will definitely keep an eye out for more Pokémon Café announcements in the future (most likely via this very blog!).
Wow, thanks so much to Sarah and Roy for the amazing coverage of the Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire Café at Shibuya Parco! I was sad I wasn’t able to go, but these photos made me feel like I was right there with them! And what’s this? They even sent me a little souvenir!
I’ve found my missing artistic half, and her name is patty
I’m pretty sure the Pixiv artist who goes by the name patty and I are sisters separated at birth, because her work just about covers all of my favorite things (for the purposes of this post I’m going to assume she’s female). Retro-inspired color palettes? Check? Pokémon gijinka? Check. Girls with glasses, big hats, and frilly clothes? Check. Viera-esque bunny people? Check. She’s even done Princess Tutu, Odin Sphere, and Freya (of Final Fantasy IX fame) fanart! My heart be still!
Since I’ve been burying my nose in Pokémon Black Version 2 since I got it on Friday, I’ll just dedicate this post to showing off some of patty’s gorgeous illustrations. I absolutely adore her fairytale-like style! In honor of the new Pokémon games, I’ll start off with some of my favorite of her Pokémon gijinka (humans characters designed to look like certain Pokémon) works:
What an adorable Ho-oh! I love how she’s taken its feathers and used their design in her hair as well as her sleeves. And none of that “pretty girl sitting around doing nothing” business – this Ho-oh gijinka’s a fencer!
Let it be known that I am actually quite partial to Shinx and its evolutions, so that may be part of the reason why I love this Luxray design. Some may think it looks nothing like the Pokémon it’s meant to be designed after, but I love the small details like the star on her parasol and her spiky blue hair. Regardless of whether she looks like Luxray or not, her costume is adorable, and the color palette used in the image is amazing, in my opinion!
Now Arceus is a Pokémon that I’ve never liked, but patty has managed to make it look so appealing! Again, the gijinka doesn’t look all that like the Pokémon aside from the color scheme and the gold spikes near her tail, but the Greek inspiration makes it a really interesting image.
Last but not least, we have a Leavanny gijinka. Leavanny just so happens to be the evolution of one of my favorite ‘mon, Sewaddle, and I’m thrilled with how patty has interpreted its design in this image. That’s actually an outfit I’d love to wear! And see how she represented its feelers with the feathers on her hat? I’m melting from sheer bliss!
She has plenty more gijinka illustrations and other Pokémon-related art that are just as amazing over at her Pixiv page, which I highly recommend checking out! Before I go, I’ll just share a couple more pieces that caught my eye:
I absolutely adore these rabbit-people that appear frequently in patty’s portfolio. Apparently they’re from something called Toto no Mura (Toto’s Village) which, as far as I can tell, is a series or world of characters created specifically for a Pixiv event called Pixiv Fantasia, where artists registered on the site are encouraged to submit pieces that fit the theme. The Toto no Mura theme seems to be from the fifth Pixiv Fantasia, as you can find many other pieces featuring the same characters under the Toto no Mura tag. I wish I knew exactly what Toto no Mura is, so if you know more, please do let me know in the comments!
And finally, I couldn’t help but include her rendition of the Mad Hatter… I blame my Alice in Wonderland obsession!
Pokémon Battle Royale art show
Venusaur by Mare Odomo |
Dragonite by Chie Y. Boyd |
Gloom by Julianna Brion |
Clefable by Katie Turner |