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Moyashimon Manga Ale Beer for Sale in Japan
posted on by Egan Loo
Not-So-Daily Link of the Day: Manga creator Masayuki Ishikawa is collaborating with Utsunomiya-based craft brewery Preston Ale to produce a limited run of Moyashimon Ale. Each of the 1,000 gift-box sets comes with three Moyashimon (Moyasimon) Ale bottles, one pale Preston Ale bottle, one brown Preston Ale bottle, two original Moyashimon beer glasses, and four Moyashimon coasters. (800 sets will be available online in Japan starting on May 21, and 200 more will only be available in two retail stores starting on June 4.)
Preston Ale makes the beer from 100% domestic sun-dried, organic malt from the Kaminokawa Organic Farming Association. According to the brewery, Ishikawa personally came to its distilling facility and chose this traditional hand-brewed premium beer for its fresh yet bitter "original taste."
Ishikawa designed the caps and labels on the Moyashimon Ale bottles. The beer glasses are also laser-printed with the fictional agricultural university's logo from Moyashimon, and the coasters feature drawings of four different microbes in Ishikawa's signature style. The beer won the gold medal in the 2009 Japan Craft Beer Selection, and the Moyashimon Ale label proclaims the beer as "gold that can only be made with germs."
The manga has been running in Evening magazine since 2004, and Del Rey Manga will publish the second of the manga's eight current volumes in North America next month. The story follows a college student who discovers that he can see and communicate with the germs all around him — germs that appear as super-deformed characters. Director Yūichirō Yano and Shirogumi Inc. animated the story for television in 2007, and Yūichi Nakamura will star in a live-action television adaptation, which will launch in Japan this July.
Source: Comic Natalie
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