It’s totally him, right?

The human brain is a wondrous thing that can steer our consciousness one way or another without us even noticing. As pattern-recognizing animals, our minds often make us see things that don’t necessarily exist, like Disney princesses in ice cubes or anime girls in the visitor map to the Japanese space agency.

And then we have the following can of Gaban-brand paprika which appears to contain the image of someone even a person with only a passing fancy for anime ought to be able to recognize. I mean, I saw it instantly, and I hope you do to, because otherwise I have a date with an MRI.

The photos were posted by a Kyoto-based illustrator who goes by the Twitter handle of Studio Takeuma (@StudioTakeuma) who said someone had pointed out to him that the bunch of peppers drawn on the can look a lot like Dragon Ball’s Goku.

It’s perhaps easy to see why. The four peppers kind of resemble the Saiyan’s limbs and the bunch of leaves sprouting out the top look an awful lot like his hair. But the real kicker is that particular shade of orange they used that’s almost identical to Goku’s uniform in many of his more famous appearances.

I’m a little comforted to see that a lot of others online felt the same way.

“I thought Goku was licensed for that paprika at first.”
“I can’t see anything but Goku on that can.”
“Absolutely looks like him.”
“That picture of Goku looks a little bit like a can of paprika.”
“That’s copyright infringe…oh wait, it’s just peppers.”
“That made me do a double-take.”
“It’s a natural defense for plants to mimic Goku in order to ward off predators.”
“It kind of looks like Vegeta cosplaying as Goku…and singing.”
“Did…Did they do that on purpose?”

It’s not implausible that some bored illustrator, when tasked with drawing some boring peppers and perhaps inspired by the fact that “Gaban Paprika” kind of sounds like a Dragon Ball character’s name, decided to pull a little subliminal trickery. If so, boy did it work. Even though I know exactly what this is and it doesn’t even really look much like him up close. my brain keeps making me see Goku in there.

Oh well. I guess if my brain’s going to make up stuff like this, better to see the cheery face of Goku in a delicious condiment than some spooky ghost child in my curtains.

Source: Twitter/@StudioTakeuma, Hachima Kiko
Featured image: Twitter/@StudioTakeuma
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