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Ohtani can’t lose, so how about the Ohtani premium capsule machine?

Master Blaster Mar 10, 2025
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It’s Shotime at the game corner…

It was only a few weeks ago that our reporter Masanuki Sunakoma swore off high-stakes capsule machines for the fifth or sixth time. Each time he’s been lured in by their promises of luxury goods and fantastic resort holidays, only to end up with an array of cheap accessories that were never worn a second time.

▼ Or, in many cases, even a first time.

So just the other day, as Masanuki strolled past the game corner containing several such gacha machines, he scoffed and told himself that he’d never answer their siren song again. However, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something…

This clearly was no ordinary capsule machine. MLB living legend Shohei Ohtani doesn’t know the meaning of “lose” and makes his own luck wherever he goes. So, it would stand to reason that the “Ohtani-san Gacha 17” (as the text on the machine’s sign reads) would share this philosophy and constantly outperform other machines.

The logic Masanuki was coming up with was starting to make a crazy amount of sense as he perused the prizes up for grabs. There were Dodgers shirts, bobbleheads, and even a pair of Beats headphones for which Ohtani is the spokesperson.

The machine boasted the usual promise that “every capsule is a winner” but our reporter was inclined to believe it this time. All he had to do was insert a 1,000-yen bill and a capsule would come out containing either a prize or a key to one of the many lockers surrounding the machine.

Masanuki noticed that one of the lockers was empty. Normally, he’d assume this was a ruse to give the illusion of someone having won at this machine and suggest it was lucky, but he felt such tactics would be beneath the Ohtani Gacha 17.

There really was no point in deliberating this any longer. Our reporter whipped out a 1,000-yen bill.

He then slowly fed it to the machine with a renewed confidence that he would get something nice that had something to do with Shohei Ohtani.

Still, Masanuki had been betrayed by these machines often in the past, so he looked up at the Ohtani Gacha 17 sign and made a silent wish to not get another crappy accessory.

Then, he pushed the button…

Unlike other gacha machines, the capsule flew down with a great deal of force, like a pitch from Shotime himself.

It was so fast that Masanuki didn’t even have time to react and it ended up on the floor.

“Another strike for Ohtani,” our reporter thought to himself, “You just can’t stop that guy.”

He quickly popped open his black ball to see what Ohtani-themed treasure was inside, only to find…

▼ Masanuki: “A dinosaur…”

It was a plastic fossilized dinosaur skeleton to be exact.

On the bright side, this was not another useless accessory. No, this was on a whole other level of uselessness.

As Masanuki stared at his prize, he struggled to think what a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton had to do with Shohei Ohtani. Hideki Matsui was nicknamed “Godzilla” but Ohtani has no such reptilian moniker to speak of.

A photo of the World Series winning Dodgers team also yielded no prehistoric clues.

After googling “Shohei Ohtani” and “dinosaur,” Masanuki found that in September of 2024, Ohtani wore a T-shirt with a picture of a dinosaur on it while practicing for a game against the Cubs.

In addition, during the 2023 Sapporo Snow Festival, a snow sculpture of Shohei Ohtani could be seen next to one of a T. rex. He was even seen doing a dinosaur impersonation during his time with the Angeles, so maybe there is a fair bit of connection between them.

Unfortunately, learning all those dinosaur-related facts about Ohtani, did little to make Masanuki any happier about getting this this cheap toy for 1,000 yen.

He should have known better than to gamble in Ohtani’s name, after what happened to the other guy. But it did confirm even more firmly that these machines are nothing but 1,000-yen bill vacuums, so he vowed to absolutely never again get tempted by these horrible machines. We’ll see how long that lasts.

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[ Read in Japanese ]