Even among otaku, those with a fondness for anime series Love Live! are known for being particularly obsessive. As a matter of fact, it wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration to say that the Love Livers, as the franchise’s fans are known, worship the show’s central characters.
And if that’s the case, one arcade figured, why not give fans a place where they can kneel down and make offerings to their anime idols?
Although Sega is best known as a video game publisher, the company is also the primary merchandiser for Love Live!, playing a similar role to the one it does for perennial anime hit Evangelion. Of course, with Sega’s long history and expertise in the game industry, these days you’ll often find arcades in Japan stuffed with Love Live! UFO catcher prizes and other promotional displays.
Twitter user @S1Amk recently stopped by one such arcade, where he came across a whole wall of Love Live! posters, featuring the anime’s cast wearing their costumes from this summer’s Love Live! The School Idol Movie theatrical feature. Given the franchise’s current popularity, the posters themselves aren’t such a shocking marketing blitz, but what was directly underneath them was a little more surprising.
Spread out in front of the nine core Love Live! girls were a series of floor mats for those who felt the need to prostrate themselves in reverence. And just to make sure people knew exactly what the mats were for, diagrams were placed in front of them, emblazoned with text such as “My Goddess!”
When @S1Amk happened by, there was even a fan making use of the mats as he humbly offered a cake to Minami Kotori, his anime deity of choice.
That’s actually even more unusual than it looks, since there’s not really a custom of leaving offerings in front of posters of flesh-and-blood idols. Nonetheless, Love Live! fans are apparently a pious bunch, because when @S1Amk checked back later, he found a neatly lined-up row of candies and cookies, with one box for each animated songstress.
We’re pretty sure most of those goodies eventually ended up in the stomachs of the arcade’s employees. Knowing how passionate Love Livers are, though, we doubt anyone tried to collect the offerings until after closing time, by which time that the cake, which seems to be cream-heavy enough that it requires refrigeration, would have gone bad and been inedible.
Then again, since the fan clearly bought the cake for Minami, and no one else, maybe that was all part of his plan.
Source: Jin, Twitter/@S1Amk