Tattoo artist shows off famous client’s newest anime-inspired ink.

Eevee has been showing up outside the confines of anime and video games a lot recently. First the eminently evolvable Pokémon visited the offices of some of the most prestigious companies in Japan, then she became the first non-Pikachu Pocket Monster to have a major presence at the annual Pikachu Outbreak celebration in Yokohama.

But now Eevee has shown up in the most unexpected location yet: the arm of singer Ariana Grande.

Los Angeles-based tattoo artist Kane Navasard recently shared a photo of one of his latest projects via his Instagram account, showing a smiling Eevee, accompanied by the message “For the best Pokémon trainer in the game, @arianagrande.”

Having been born in 1993, Grande would have been five years old when the Pokémon franchise first came to the U.S, in 1998, so it’s easy to imagine that she, like many kids of her generation, spent a lot of time playing the games and watching episodes of the anime as they aired on American TV. And also like a lot of those kids, she never really grew out of her love for Pokémon, as evidenced by this tweet from just a few days ago.

▼ You’ll notice she specifically calls the game Let’s Go Eevee, eschewing the more famous and commonly referenced Let’s Go Pikachu companion game.

https://twitter.com/ArianaGrande/status/1084552803995930624

This wasn’t Grande’s first public admission of affection for Eevee either, as back in August she posted this to her Instagram account.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bm8_az1n2ix/

Getting back to the pop star’s new tattoo, you might also notice a bit of Japanese writing near where her bicep meets her forearm. It appears to be a series of phonetic hiragana characters, the same text set Grande started studying back in 2015, and it reads “umai,” which can mean either “delicious” or “talented” depending on the context. However, it’s not clear if there’s any other writing accompanying it, or even if it’s associated with her new Eevee tattoo, the Spirited Away one that’s farther down her arm, or its own piece of body art all on its own.

Regardless, though, it’s clear who Grande’s favorite Pocket Monster is, and considering that Eevee herself sometimes shows up to greet guests at Tokyo’s Pokémon Cafe (like when we stopped by), we’d definitely recommend she make a dinner reservation there for the next time she’s in Japan.

Sources: Instagram/@kanenavasard via Anime News Network/Lynzee Loveridge, Comicbook
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