abecomic

C’mon Abe, you can do it! You’ve got nothing to lose… Except maybe your pride.

Except for Ryutaro Nonomura’s hysterical plea to citizens back in 2014 and last year when a brawl broke out on the diet floor over what has been dubbed as Yoshitada Konoike’s “Coup D’Etat”, Japan’s politicians usually try to make a few waves as possible, especially when it comes to the international arena. That’s one reason why Japanese viewers were so surprised to see their Prime Minster, Shnizo Abe, don Mario’s red cap and costume to appear as the well-known video game character as part of the 2016 Rio Olympics closing ceremony.

While the 2020 Tokyo Olympics promotional may have sparked an online controversy over which of Japan’s many pop cultural icons were best suited to represent the country to the rest of the world, one user on Twitter took a minute to reflect on what was likely some very nerve-wracking moments for Abe just moments before he climbed out of his warp pipe with this illustrated comic:

“I had a good laugh imagining what might have been running through Abe’s head while he was waiting.”

The drawing is captioned with the PM thinking to himself as his heart races,“Will it go over well? If it doesn’t, I’ll be the laughing stock of the internet…”

The image quickly garnered over 100,000 responses, with many users adding their own edits of the night’s event to the thread.

Luckily for Abe, the world readily laughed with him, instead of at him, and he came out with his dignity completely intact, plus a few extra points for coolness.

Source, feature/top image: Twitter/@Kensuke_ex