SoraNews24 —Japan News—

Sometimes, you don’t realize how much you’ll miss something until it’s gone. A few months back, hungry Attack on Titan fans could get both hamburgers and bento boxed lunches inspired by the hit series. They were only available for a limited time though, and both are gone now, leaving us without a way to simultaneously satisfy our cravings for giant-fighting anime and a quick, hot meal.

That is, until the release of a new line of Attack on Titan instant curry. We got our hands on a pack, then created a batch of edible Titans to go with it.

Tracking down the curry proved to be no mean feat though, as our searches and inquiries at various anime and novelty goods shops turned up fruitless. In the end, our local branch of the offbeat book and gift shop Village Vanguard tracked down a supply at one of their stores a few towns over, and had it specially shipped in for us to pick up.

Three different varieties are available, including Levi’s Wings of Freedom Chicken Wings and Sasha’s Steamed Potato curries. We passed on both of these, though.

We don’t think we’re giving anything away when we say that Attack on Titan’s narrative isn’t exactly kind to its cast of heroes. Early on, the character Sasha decides to steal a hunk of ham from the officers’ mess to share with her fellow recent graduates from the military academy. As is so often the case in Attack on Titan, though, disaster strikes, and the group never gets to enjoy their ill-gotten meal.

It’s a surprisingly poignant moment, as we see that in this world, even our human protagonists’ most meager dreams will be crushed in the most spectacular fashion. So in honor of that inspired story-telling decision, we decided to try the lengthily titled Curry with the Meat Sasha Stole from the Officers.

The Attack on Titan curries are surprisingly expensive for instant fare, as a single box will set you back 1,000 yen (US$9.80). That price does get you a little more than a pack of curry, though, as each box also comes with a foldable, laminated place-mat featuring artwork from the Attack on Titan manga.

The easiest way to prepare the curry is to open the pouch it’s sealed in, pour the contents into a bowl, and microwave it for two minutes. Alternatively, you can place the unopened packet in a pot of boiling water for three to five minutes. We chose the latter option since it seemed just a little bit closer to real cooking, and we’re always looking for creative reasons to pat ourselves on the back.

While we were waiting for the water to boil, we started dishing up our rice. The scene in which Sasha steals the meat takes place at a point in Attack on Titan’s city has lost the outermost of its three protective walls, so we decided to use the outer lip of our dish and the rice itself as stand-ins for the remaining two lines of anti-Titan defense.

By the time we finished construction, the curry was ready to eat, so we fished the pouch out of the pot and opened it up. A lot of instant curry is pretty lacking in the smell department, with nothing more than salt and curry powder to stimulate your olfactory senses. To our pleasant surprise, though, the Attack on Titan curry has a rich, complex bouquet that reminded us a little of Japan’s king of curry chain restaurants, CoCo Ichi.

The taste didn’t let us down either. While it’s not particularly spicy, there’s quite a lot going on flavor-wise, with tiny bits of onion and carrot, plus garlic powder and tomato paste mixed in with the roux. There’s also a creamy quality that you usually don’t get with instant versions of the dish. Honestly, this was tastier than a lot of the bottom-rung budget curry you’ll find at school cafeterias and sports stadiums.

There were also two chunks of boneless ham waiting at the bottom of the pouch. Honestly, these tasted exactly like you’d expect vacuum-sealed meat to taste. They were tender though, and of particularly generous size for instant curry, which tends to include a few slivers or bits of pork to give you something more like the impression of meat than an actual topping.

Oddly enough, the pouch of Sasha-themed chow doesn’t contain any potatoes, despite the vegetable being a mainstay of Japanese curry plus the character’s favorite food. This simply wouldn’t do, and since we’d already proven to ourselves that we could boil a pot of water, we cooked up a handful of palm-sized spuds.

Looking at them, though, they seemed a little underwhelming, especially since the rest of our meal had a backstory and accompanying artwork. It’d be a shame to squander all that creativity by just tossing a couple of plain old potatoes in there, don’t you think? Looking for inspiration, we peered about our kitchen, where our eyes fell upon a pack of uncured ham.

The longer we looked at that luminous, fleshy color and marbled fat, the more it reminded us of Attack on Titan’s giant monsters.

So we decided to put those potatoes to use and make our own.

First, we peeled two potatoes. Ideally, we’d have done this using a cool set of replicas of the blades used by the anime’s heroes, but since we didn’t have a pair handy, we got to work with our kitchen knife from the 100 yen store instead.

Next, we grabbed a piece of ham and wrapped it around the smaller of the two potatoes, to form our Titan’s head.

We then took a sliver off the larger, “body” potato, in order to provide a better base to stack the head onto, and skewered the whole thing for even more stability.

Once we were sure our nine-centimeter-class Titan wouldn’t topple over, we wrapped the body in ham too.

Of course, the Titans often appear in packs, and usually come in various sizes, so we also made a smaller monster by wrapping a single potato.

Now all that was left to do was to let the Titans attack the town.

▼ Our Wall Sina, being made out of warm, soft rice, proved woefully ineffective in stopping the assault.

▼ Soon enough, the smaller Titan had breached the perimeter.

With no other way of saving the townspeople, we were now forced to do battle with the potato beasts. Remembering that the Titan’s only weak point is at the base of their neck, we took up arms and carefully aimed our strike.

▼ A clean (and delicious) kill

Sadly, by the time we’d felled the Titans, the walls were almost completely demolished. The town was beyond salvaging, so instead we finished what the creatures had started by devouring the remains of the once proud city.

Perhaps we were the real monsters. The real, full monsters.

Attack on Titan image from Wikia. All other images by RocketNews24