As we’ve been constantly reminding you over the past year or so, Youkai Watch is really big in Japan now, and yet some of you out there still don’t seem to believe us. We’ve watched them rip the annual McDonald’s calendar endorsement deal out of the cuddly clutches of Pokemon. We’ve seen fans carve their graven images into pumpkins. We’ve tasted of their milk. Still, there are those who think that it’s just a flash in the pan.
For those people, we present the highest honor a character in Japan can receive: a sashimi platter in their likeness.
Yes the near-millennium-old art of slicing raw fish into aesthetically pleasing works of delicate, subtle tasting art has been applied to the face of main youkai Jibanyan as shown to the world in this tweet.
▼ I took a picture of this being sold at a supermarket in Tsukuba.
It appears the Jibanyan comes in two flavors: salmon and tuna. He’s also composed of some crazy kaleidoscope eyes from an octopus’ garden in the sea. The remaining parts are a little harder to figure out by the photo. It looks like the mouth lines might have been sculpted with a couple of pieces of hijiki.
Comments online showed curiosity over what was going on in the white part of Jibanyan’s head. Many figured it was probably squid or more octopus. I’d put my money on it being strips of squid over a pillow of shredded daikon.
The commenters also had this to say:
“It looks like they put a lot of effort into it…but I don’t know what to say.”
“The eyes! They’re octopus!”
“That doesn’t look like him. lol”
“Actually, it just doesn’t look delicious at all.”
“It certainly has the feel of a jibakurei.”
That last line is referring to the source of Jibanyan’s name which is a portmanteau of jibakurei and nyan. “Nyan” is just Japanese for “meow” and jibakurei is the type of ghost which died from a traumatic event and may not actually be aware they are dead. They may take the form of “residual hauntings” which are like spiritual imprints on the physical world without any free will, or they could be kind of like Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense…
It’s been 16 years. You really should have seen that movie by now if you were ever going to.
And so we congratulate Youkai Watch on being highly mortalized in the medium of raw seafood so that someone may enjoy it by the end of the day…or else it goes straight in the trash.
Source: Twitter via My Game News Flash (Japanese)