Edible fan art comes after the latest preview taste of the live-action Detective Pokémon movie.

While the titular star of the upcoming Detective Pikachu movie is instantly recognizable as part of the Pokémon universe, he also looks different from anything the franchise’s Japanese designers have created to date. That’s because Detective Pikachu is being produced by Legendary Pictures, which is bringing Pikachu and his Pocket Monster brethren into a live-action setting or the first time.

That means rendering Pikachu with more detailed fur and muscular structure than he has in the hand-drawn animation of the Pokémon anime, and with actor Ryan Reynolds providing not only Detective Pikachu’s voice but also his facial animation (through motion capture), the character looks far more wrinkly than any of his previous incarnations. Following the release of the movie’s most recent trailer, Japanese fan artists have been spreading “Wrinkly Pikachu” illustrations online, and now one fan baker, Japanese Twitter user Nakaya Najima (@n_akaya) has taken the slightly shriveled muse into both the third and edible dimensions with Wrinkly Pikachu cookies.

Using icing and a chocolate pen, Najima has reproduced Detective Pikachu’s creased brow and twisted eye and mouth lines, creating cookies that are some approximately near mixture of cute and ugly. As the first foray into Detective Pikachu sweets, Najima’s creative cooking has been racking up positive feedback, with comments such as:

“So cute!”
“I think I’d be crushed by the guilt I’d feel if I ate one.”
“I want to try them, but I feel like it’d also be a waste when they’re so cool to look at.”
“I get the feeling that if you tried to eat one, the Pikachu wouldn’t say ‘Nooooo! Don’t eat meeeeee,” but “Uh, hey, do you think you could, like, maybe not?”

Other commenters chimed in to let others know which of the eight Wrinkly Pikachus Najima made is their favorite. Since she wasn’t working with a pre-existing mold or pattern, each hand-drawn face came out a little differently, despite her best efforts at consistency. “While I was drawing the faces, a sort of Ryan Reynolds Gestaltzerfall occurred,” she says, referring to the phenomenon wherein an image starts to break down into its components after extended observation, making the complete, balanced image more difficult to perceive, which resulted in the variation between one Wrinkly Pikachu cookie and the next.

However, Najima did purposely draw one face differently…

…as the bottom left cookie is a Pikachu with its eyes angled upwards at the outer edges, making it look like it’s angru instead of tired.

Unfortunately, as a fan project, these seem to be the only eight Wrinkly Pikachu cookies in existence right now. However, seeing as how major Japanese chain Mister Donut sold official Pikachu-shaped donuts just a few months ago, and ones that initially looked even stranger than Wrinkly Pikachu, maybe some enterprising company will follow Najima’s lead and mass produce the things.

Source, images: Twitter/@n_akaya
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[ Read in Japanese ]