Interest
Prince of Tennis's Atobe Created with 4,176 Chocolates
posted on by Eric Stimson
The Prince of Tennis has a very large and devoted female fanbase who customarily send their favorite characters chocolate on Valentine's Day. Each year the number is tallied for each character to determine which one is most popular that year; already this year Shusuke has received over 8,000. Now fans have taken to Twitter to call for more chocolates for Keigo Atobe, and the chocolate manufacturer Morinaga has responded.
Morinaga celebrates October 4 as "Angel Day" — its trademark is an angel, and the Japanese word for "angel" (tenshi) corresponds to ten and the Japanese word for four. October 4 is also Atobe's birthday, however, and his fans demanded some kind of collaboration with Morinaga's "Dars" line. Morinaga ultimately decided to create a giant picture of Atobe activating his signature move, "Atobe Kingdom," using a total of 4,176 pieces of Dars chocolates (or 348 boxes). The "pixel art" will be on public display in Morinaga's headquarters in the port district of Tokyo on weekdays until March 28. A video of its construction will be uploaded on YouTube on February 10.
As a bonus, Junichi Suwabe, Atobe's voice actor, left this message in the Morinaga lobby.
It says, "Be awed at the sight of Morinaga's prowess. Dars... Dars is a good chocolate."
Whether this show of support will affect Atobe's ultimate ranking remains to be seen.
The three flavors of Dars chocolate
[Via Hachima Kikou and Tennipri; Images from Twitter and Logoz Store]
