Our resident blade boy supporter doesn’t need to look at the label to know what flavor her favorite characters are.

When she’s not busy creating her own doujin manga, our Japanese-language reporter Udonko likes to enjoy the works of other talented illustrators, and she’s got a major soft spot for anime/video game franchise Touken Rambu and its cast of anthropomorphic sword boys. So when Udonko found herself craving both eye candy and edible candy, she knew what she had to do and ordered a box of Touken Ranbu chocolates.

Officially, this is the Variety Choco Can Touken Rambu Online-Black Version. There are also Red and Blue versions, but all three contain three different types of chocolate. The only difference is which characters are on the tin and wrappers, and since the Black version has the highest number of characters that get Udonko’s heart racing, that’s the one she picked.

The tin is pretty big in surface area, but not all that deep. That’s actually a good thing, though, because it means the container will fit easily on a shelf or desk to use as a decoration even after you’ve eaten all the sweets inside.

▼ Considering the extra-slender build of most of Touken Rambu’s blade boys, the thin tin makes aesthetic sense too.

Removing the lid reveals a solid tiling of chocolates underneath, each in a wrapper bearing a Touken Ranbu character’s portrait on the front…

…and on the back, their individual emblems.

▼ The series’ logo is on the underside of the tin.

As mentioned above, the assortment consists of three kinds of chocolate: milk chocolate, white chocolate, and, as is fitting for a franchise about actual historic Japanese swords, matcha chocolate.

But how do you know which character is which flavor? Well, the simplest way, if you can read Japanese, is to look on the bottom-side of each wrapper, where that information is written in Japanese text.

▼ For example, these three pieces are all labeled ミルクチョコ, meaning “milk chocolate.”

However, if you’re a true Touken Ranbu fan, you won’t even need to look at the wrapper’s text, because you’ll probably tell their flavor from the character’s portrait. For example, here we have Murakumo Gou, Samidare Gou, Matsui Gou, Kuwana Gou, Kotegiri Gou, and Buzen Gou.

Aside from sharing the name Gou and all being members of the same in-game school of swordsmanship, there’s another thing these characters share: in their character artwork, they’re all dressed in green.

So naturally, all of their chocolates are matcha (green tea) flavored.

Likewise, the Fukuoka Ichimonji school’s Nansen Ichimonji, Ichimonji Norimune, Sanchoumou, and Nikkou Ichimonji…

…who dress like this…

…are all white chocolate, and the characters without image colors other than white or green in Udonko’s box were milk chocolate.

Though the primary appeal is clearly meant to be the Touken Ranbu tie-in, to Udonko’s delight, all three chocolate flavors taste great too. The milk chocolate has a touch of cocoa bitterness to it, and while the matcha initially comes on very sweet, it too transitions to a sophisticated green tea finish thanks to the flavor of the Uji matcha powder that’s mixed into it. On the other end of the spectrum, the white chocolate is sweet and creamy the whole way through.

Obviously, no true fan would be able to bring themselves to tear through the faces of these fine young men/swords, and so thankfully the portrait portions of their wrappers slide cleanly off. For a moment, though, Udonko was faced with a dilemma, since just like she wouldn’t have been able to force herself to rip through her oshi, she also couldn’t bear the thought of throwing their likenesses into the trash like ordinary pieces of wastepaper. That’s when she remembered, though, that she had a nice, sturdy tin to keep them in, so the question of what to do with the chocolate assortment’s portraits is a pretty easy one to answer.

The Variety Choco Can Touken Rambu Online is offered online by Premium Bandai here for 3,240 yen (US$28) and comes with 32 chocolates, which should be plenty to keep you satisfied for your next gaming session, anime viewing, or Touken Rambu-related mountain hike.

Photos © SoraNews24
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