Claims that when you’re drinking a McShake, it’s supposed to feel like you’re nursing, but that can’t be right…can it?!?
Japanese Twitter user @AshijiruP is a fan of the anime/video game franchise The Idolmaster. He’s so passionate about the series that he recently drew his own short manga featuring some of its cast of perky young idol singers, and like a lot of anime fan art, it has a bit of a risque edge.
The manga takes place in an ordinary McDonald’s, which may not seem like the kinkiest of settings, but there’s definitely something suggestive about the way Mr. Producer is sucking on his straw as he looks at budding idols Arisu and Miki, especially since he’s muttering “Mama…Mama…” as he’s doing it.
“Widdle Producer is staring at us while he’s drinking whatever that is, isn’t he?” says the blond Miki, to which Arisu responds:
“It’s a McShake. Come to think of it…it seems that McShakes are designed so that you drink them at the same speed as a baby who’s nursing on breast milk.”
The manga ends with Miki’s shock plainly showing on her face, and Twitter commenters were equally astonished, leaving comments like:
“Say it ain’t so!”
“If that’s true, isn’t the producer sucking awfully hard on the straw?”
“Terrifying.”
“The heck kind of beverage design is that?”
At first, this seems like the sort of fetishization of everyday objects and situations that crops up pretty often in anime. A lot of otaku are students or young adults who have much of their disposable income tied up in anime and related merchandise purchases, and so many of them are fast food restaurant regulars as they stretch their dining budget. Giving them a tantalizing fantasy about something as mundane as milkshakes should scratch more than a few Idolmaster fans’ itches right?
Except the whole “the experience of drinking a Japanese McDonald’s shake is designed to approximate the sensation of getting milk from a breast” thing is 100-percent true, and confirmed by no less than Den Fujita, the founder of McDonald’s Japan, himself.
As we’ve discussed before, in one of his books on business strategy, Fujita informs the reader that “McDonald’s straws are designed so that when used with a shake, the speed will be the same as that of an infant drinking breast milk,” in keeping with the successful businessman’s belief that humankind’s inborn connection to the speed at which they nursed as babies makes other beverages drunk at the same rate, even as an adult, more delicious.
So yes, while “If you drink this milk shake, it’s like getting milk from a nipple” sounds as much like a convoluted sexy anime setup as “We can both blow into the same harmonica to play a duet,” it turns out that both of those claims are legit. However, with increasing environmental pressure for fast food outlets to do away with straws, it’ll be interesting to see what McDonald’s Japan does to keep this unusual part of its legacy alive.
Source: Twitter/@AshijiruP via Otakomu
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