The Tokyo ATMs sound like the perfect cash dispensers for female otaku, so naturally we sent Mr. Sato to try them out.
After our reporter Mr. Sato’s lunch of 12,960-yen (US$117) seaweed, his wallet was feeling a little light. So to restock himself with legal tender, he stepped out of SoraNews24 headquarters to go hit up the ATM.
After a brief stroll, he arrived at the Seven Bank ATM corner in Tokyo’s Kabukicho neighborhood. At least, that’s what the sign outside said.
Once he stepped through the doors, though, Mr. Sato thought he might have wandered into a video game arcade instead. Yes, there was a wall of touch-screen terminals, but they were decorated with illustrations of vibrantly coifed, formally dressed handsome anime men.
▼ Regular proportions on the bottom, super-deformed versions up top
It turns out that this ATM corner, not far from Shinjuku Station, is taking part in the Seven Concierge promotion, in which seven (of course) sexy 2-D dudes verbally greet you and thank you for your patronage.
For example, the blond-haired gentleman who graces the leftmost ATM is Kanade Hino. According to his official profile, Kanade is a 22-year-old college student who’s always cheerful and talkative. His hobbies are listening to music and traveling, and his blood type is B.
As Mr. Sato carefully inserted his card into Kanade’s machine, the character greeted him with a gentle but enthusiastic “Oh, wow! You came to see me♪”, as you can hear in the video below.
The intimate tone of voice was a little surprising, considering that Mr. Sato and Kanade had never met, but hey, like his profile says, Kanade is a friendly guy.
What really startled Mr. Sato, though, was when he tried out the ATM featuring the dark-haired Itsuki Hinata, the second voice in the video above. In contrast to Kanade’s effervescence, the brooding Itsuki speaks in an affectedly deep and breathy voice, asking:
“’Sup. So, whadda you want?”
Instead of producing lustful heart palpitations, Itsuki’s obvious attempt to put up a cool-guy front simply irritated Mr. Sato, who wound up going on a one-sided tirade against the inanimate machine:
“Where the hell do you get off talking to me like that! I’m your customer, so you can stick the hot-and-cold tsundere act! where the sun don’t shine All I want to do is check my account balance. You got a problem with that? Huh? DO YOU? And according to your official profile which I just looked up, you’re just some 17-year-old kid. You wanna go toe-to-toe with my middle-aged anger? Then bring it on!”
▼ He was so angry that he spontaneously transformed back into his alternate form: Thug Sato.
After giving Itsuki a through tongue-lashing, Mr. Sato put his card into the machine again, hoping to see an improvement in the anime pretty boy’s manners. But obviously it’s pointless to argue with a machine, and Ituki remained his same doth-protest-too-much flirtatious self as always.
Speaking of things that are obvious, it should also go without saying that Mr. Sato isn’t the target market for the Seven Concierge service, which is clearly aimed at female anime and romance game fans, and so for their benefit, the address for Seven Bank’s participating Shinjuku ATM corner is listed below. Just remember that ATMs can only draw money from your bank account, not any cash you’ve stuffed into your favorite anime star’s pants as part of your interior decorations.
ATM information
Seven Bank Shinjuku Kabukicho Corner / セブン銀行新宿歌舞伎町コーナー
Addres: Tokyo-to, Shinjuku-ku, Kabukicho 1-5-4, #22 East Building
東京都新宿区歌舞伎町１丁目５−４ 第２２東ビル
Open 24 hours
Photos, video ©SoraNews24