Cartoon KAT-TUN: Jin Akanishi x Gudetama
One’s an egg with zero motivation. The other one’s a former Johnny’s boy group member who went solo. What do Jin Akanishi and Gudetama have in common? People like to admire both their butts, or what?
#JustJin’s got some company now
Seriously, we don’t know how the hell did a high-profile kawaii collab like this happened. It was revealed at the end of August 2018, on Jin’s Instagram – his ‘Jinstagram‘.
And we still can’t work out why. He’s been touring recently, sure, but it’s not like there’s a new Akanishi Jin single to promote. And if there was, we don’t think it’d be about raw eggs.
Plus… it’s not like Gudetama’s dropping in popularity and needs the boost. Coming in 8th for the 2018 Sanrio Character Ranking – with nearly 220,000 votes – is impressive enough.
Anyway, special reason or not, this unexpected partnership’s going ahead.
From ‘Pinky’ to dark and depressed
Sanrio’s pulling out all the stops for promo on their side. There’s an official YouTube video (on Jin’s channel), showing how Jin got converted to the darui side by Gudetama over dinner.
There’s also a limited-time winter 2019 pop-up cafe and shop – the Jin x Gudetama cafe in Tokyo. Gudetama’s already had a cafe for years, so we know what to expect: lots of eggy food.
For the official collab merch, Jin’s been drawn in full Gudetama style – black eyes, bored mouth, no nose. They made sure to keep the eye mole, at least, and that necklace that goes with everything.
Hey, it doesn’t look weird though. In fact, the more you look at the official art, the more you’ll feel like this collab makes total sense. It’s as if Jin always looked this way.
All the bored Gudetama talk’s switched to English. Just like Jin did when he started his solo career. Out goes ‘darui…’, and in comes ‘Meh.’
Long-time fans still Keep The Faith
It’s an unexpected, kinda crazy partnership. But if you look at Twitter, and Instagram, and see the fan reactions… it’s working.
And working crazy well. Jin’s original announcement post got over 71,000 likes. The comments are all like: this is cute, this is sooooo cute, this is way too cute.
Fans tweeting about cafe experiences and merch hauls went ahead and changed the collab name, making their own hashtag: #GudeJin.
You have to book a slot at the cafe, and that advance booking costs 500 yen. Before you’ve ordered anything to eat. Sanrio’s gotta be making bank here.
Don’t U Ever Stop looking for merch
Akanishi Jin x Gudetama promo items aren’t that easy to find.
Most stuff on the official online goods store was only up for grabs for 6 days. The exclusive hoodies, limited to clothes shop chain Shimamura, sold out the day they went on sale. The gacha capsule machine collection… well, you need to be near a capsule machine for that.
There’s still hope – after those sales ended, Sanrio shops across Japan (including at Puroland and Harmony Land) started selling items too.
We know you can’t drop everything, fly to Japan, and snap it all up. But think of the resales!
Trust us, it’s a good thing if you see those items being listed second-hand on other Japanese shopping websites. It means you can request them with us. Use the DEJAPAN item request form to order with the product page URLs.
