Surely we can trust the makers of the t-virus to help us relax and improve our skin quality, right?
Our Japanese-language reporter Saya Togashi has been working especially hard lately, and so she decided to reward and refresh herself with a hot soak in some restorative bath salts. After looking around online, she settled on two verities from the Umbrella Corporation.
Yes, that’s right, Umbrella, a company familiar to any fan of the Resident Evil video game/movie franchise. As we all know, Umbrella is one of the world’s leading makers of consumer cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, so of course they have bath salts too.
Unfortunately, Umbrella is also the conglomerate behind the t-virus and its various zombie outbreak-triggering variants, so Saya couldn’t help but feel a little worried. However, the press release for the Umbrella bath salts says “As long as you have these, you might not have to worry even after getting bit by a zombie.” The makers do at least seem to acknowledge the threat posed by the walking dead, so maybe it’s OK to use, Saya thought, her mind half at-ease.
There’s further reassurance in that the bat salts are modeled on the green and red herb healing items that have appeared in the Resident Evil games since the first title in the series.
The bath salts come in 25-gram (0.9-ounce) pouches, and Saya started by pouring them out onto sheets of paper, mimicking their in-game appearance for maximum authenticity.
The red herb powder is a luxurious wine-like color, and the green is a dramatic hue with subtle blue shades to it.
Both powders have sharp aromas that feel a little more medicinal than herbal. They’re not bad, but they’re not quite what Saya was expecting…and they wouldn’t be her last surprises.
In the games, the green herb is the standard healing item, and the red herb generally is an enhancer, with no effect when used by itself. Because of that, Saya chose to start with the green powder, and when she poured it into the tub…
…she was shocked by how dense the color was.
The Umbrella bath powder ominously spread across the tub, turning the water into a zombie-level green solution.
The mixture isn’t opaque enough to completely obscure the bather’s skin, but it does sort of make your body look like corpse that’s being suspended in a vat of mad-science liquid.
After finishing her green herb bath, Saya drew a fresh tub of water and poured in the red powder.
With the green herb she’d been shocked, but with the red…
…she was terrified. Seriously, it looked like she had an entire bathtub full of blood, as though it were filled with hemoglobin drained from her green herb-bath corpse.
As frightening as the visuals are, there’s no need to be scared of staining, as the Umbrella bath salts wash away easily and leave no tint on tub or skin. As for their restorative powers, they left Saya’s skin feeling as nice as any other moderately priced bath powder (each pack costs 500 yen [US$4.60] and can be ordered here through the Capcom Store Tokyo online shop). We’re not sure if zombies would find her flesh tastier after a soak, but at least she’s not itchy, which is always a plus in both the Resident Evil world and our own.
Photos ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]