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Attack on Titan rice ball is as titanic as the Japanese anime

Oona McGee Dec 20, 2021
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Convenience store onigiri just got a whole lot more colossal.

While Japan’s top three convenience store chains — Lawson, Family Mart and 7-Eleven — get a whole lotta love from customers, NewDays is another mainstay worth visiting.

Operated by East Japan Railway Company (JR East), the chain has branches inside stations, including kiosks on station platforms, and these days they’re the place to go for a range of unusual rice balls called Sugo Oni.

This new range, which features a baby “oni” (“demon”) on its packaging, takes its name from the slang phrase oni sugoi, which literally translates to “demon amazing” but is used to mean “hella amazing”. It’s an apt name for the series, which includes surprises like tonkotsu ramen, and this week, they’re giving us another reason to gasp “oni sugoi” in delight, with the release of a new collaboration with Attack on Titan.

▼ The tagline on the product reads: “Erase every single grain!“

A tie-up with a giant anime series requires a giant rice ball, and that’s what this one delivers, as it contains not one, not two, heck not even three, but FOUR rice balls, all slammed into one titanic offering.

▼ The Attack on Titan Sugo Oni is priced at 350 yen (US$3.08) and is limited for sale at stations in the Tokyo Metropolis, and Nagano and Niigata prefectures.

A treat this big is enough to distract a Titan from tearing into a human, with the four different rice balls containing: salmon, chicken, leaf mustard, and walleye pollack roe with mayonnaise. New Days says it’s around three times the size of a normal rice ball, and it’s been created to celebrate the upcoming fourth and final season of the Attack on Titan anime TV series, set to begin on 10 January.

Other Attack on Titan products coming to New Days stores to mark the long-awaited broadcast include the “My purpose is to eat this — Luxury Seafood Rice Ball“(240 yen), a luxurious rice ball containing three kinds of ingredients — yellowfin tuna, herring roe, and small scallops.

▼ This rice ball is only available at New Days in the Tokyo metropolitan area, Nagano, Akita, Niigata, and Tohoku (excluding Aomori).

There’s also a “Nine Titans Don“, a rice bowl containing an array of nine meaty offerings, packed up as a bento for 580 yen.

▼ This is a limited release in the Tokyo metropolitan area and Nagano.

No collaboration is complete without some special merch, and New Days customers will be able to purchase badges for 500 yen each…

▼ …and keychains for 850 yen each.

Customers whose purchases come to 600 yen or more, and include a Suntory beverage, will receive a free gift on a first-come, first-served basis. Only while stocks last, though, and only at non-Kiosk (non-station-platform) locations.

▼ Eligible customers will be able to receive either a postcard or a multi-case, with designs handed out at random.

Purchases of 600 yen or more, in line with the rules above, will also be able to enter a competition to win a signed Attack on Titan poster, by placing an entry via the QR code printed on their receipt.

The new range of Attack on Titan food and goods will be available from 21 December. Personally, we can’t wait to try the giant four-in-one rice ball, to see how it stacks up against the first Sugo Oni onigiri we ever tried — a giant in its own right as it was an entire bento lunch you could hold in one hand.

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[ Read in Japanese ]