Yo-Kai Watch strikes Hawaii before the US mainland landing

Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau cooperated with Japanese popular game/anime Yo-Kai Watch(妖怪ウォッチ) and appointed this to kids goodwill ambassador. A collaboration enforcement period is two years.

Yokai Watch is a series of role-playing games for Nintendo 3DS developed and published by Level-5. It is released from 2013, then TV anime was broadcasted, manga was published, and various goods were released and got explosive popularity. This is more popular than Pokemon now in Japan.

Hawaii cooperates with Yokai Watch and publicizes Hawaii to Japanese families and overseas travel beginner. Unfortunately the overseas travel number of Japanese people decreases year by year. Therefore Hawaii cooperates with Yokai Watch, and appeal to Japanese people that Hawaii is safe and convenient place. They have already opened a tie-up site. Furthermore, they will hold a stamp rally event, sell Hawaiian limited original goods, produce a Hawaiian original short story anime, and plan Yo-Kai Watch Hawaii tour.

This tie-up is very effective for Level-5. Because they start US expansion of Yo-Kai Watch in 2016 in earnest. Naturally Hawaiian will see this tie-up, and may be interested in it. This is promotion of Yo-Kai Watct  for Hawaiian, too.

Minecraft PlayStation version attract the Japanese primary schoolchildren

Sony computer entertainment Japan Asia announced that the number of the sale of Minecraft for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita passed 500,000 in Japan. 200,000 of them is PlayStation Vita version. These gained popularity from primary schoolchildren from summer of 2014. The reason is promotion.

At first, "CoroCoro Comic" a monthly manga magazine published by Shogakukan placed op-ed pages of Minecraft every month from September issue, 2014.

Next, a children's TV show "Oha Suta" introduced Minecraft as new hobby of children in October, 2014 and broadcasted Minecraft section after it every week.

By these, the primary schoolchild of the novelty hunter became crazy about Minecraft. Furthermore, Shogakukan made Minecraft booth in hobby show for children "Next-generation world hobby fair 2015 Winter". Then children stood in line immediately there, and the trial-play wait lines exceeded 150 minutes. Sony interviewed them and showed the data.

Q. Are there friends playing Minecraft in your class of the school?

Yes - 70%
No - 30%

Q. How many friends playing in Minecraft in your class are there?

Q. What is the device that you play Minecraft?

PlayStation Vita approaches the smartphone of the first place.

Q. What kind of element of Minecraft do you like?

"I can play freely", "Adventure is fun", "I can play for a long time without getting tired", "Manufacturing is fun", "I can play together", "I like world area", "I like character designs"... Japanese primary schoolchildren seem to like high flexibility of Minecraft. Probably, this becomes the long hit.

Sea fight game Kan Colle cooperated with the delivery pizza chain Pizza Hut

I wrote about Japanese sea fight game Kantai Collection -Kan Colle-(艦隊これくしょん -艦これ-) which personified battleships of the Japanese empire navy of WW II to cute girls.

See also:
"Kan Colle" --- simulation game that personified battleships of the Japanese empire navy as girls
Is Japanese sea fight simulation game Kan Colle a militaristic outcome?

Even if it passed more than one year from release, it is still extreme popularity, players continue increasing, and the server reinforcement is not enough. Magazines, comics, various goods, figures, and  TV anime of Kan Colle overflow in Japan now. At last, they started the tie-up with the fast food companies. The first example is delivery pizza Pizza Hut.

Campaign page: https://kancolle.pzh.jp/

During a tie-up period, pizza package of the Kan Colle version and a clear file are presented to customers who ordered a medium size pizza. Furthermore, Pizza Hut Kanda shop and Delivery motorcycles becomes the Kan Colle specifications, and A postcard is presented to takeout customers.

The tie-up campaign is from February 23 - April 5.

Japanese tech news site ITmedia reports Pizza Hut Kanda shop of February 23. It is Awesome!

More photos are here.

Supercell broadcasts new TV CM of Clash of Clans in Japan

Supercell broadcasts original TV CM of Clash of Clans in Japan from May, 2014.

See also:
[From Finland to Japan] Supercell starts advertising Clash of Clans on Japanese TV

Furthermore, they broadcast three new TV CM from February 23. Japanese actress Kō Shibasaki(柴咲コウ) and actor Yūya Yagira(柳楽優弥) appear in these and they are shown earlier in Youtube.




In British residence, downtown of France, office of the United States, Italian cafe, Thai stand, Indian Taj Mahal, players of the world play Clash of Clans, and Kō Shibasaki and Yūya Yagira talk that Clash of Clans is loved all over the world. advertising agency Dentsu and Gunsrock produced these.

In addition, Supercell performs large-scale advertisement development in JR Yamanote Line(Tokyo), Shibuya(Tokyo) and Umeda(Osaka) from March 1.

Japanese artisans made Ingress candy and got permission from Google

Japanese Ingress players do various creative activity.

See also:
The chef of the soba restaurant of Okinawa cooked dessert of Ingress
Ingress players of Hiroshima prayed for peace and drew paper crane on the map
Ingress players draw phoenix on Kobe to celebrate the 20th anniversary of revival from quake

Candy artisans made a cool masterpiece this time. Handmade candy maker Maiame Kōbō(まいあめ工房: mean "My candy studio" in Japanese) from Nagoya, Aichi made Ingress candy. It is made with the manufacturing method of the Japanese traditional candy called Kumiame(組み飴).

今日はGoogle Japanへ行ってエージェントの皆さんが気軽に使えるようお願いしてきます。応援のリツイートよろしくですｗ　#イングレス飴　#Ingress pic.twitter.com/tGzUSeNtVs
— まいあめ工房　中村 (@myame) February 4, 2015

Videos of processes are here and here. (Google+ of Maiame Kōbō CEO Takao Nakamura)

Difficult technique is used for Kumiame, the candy of various colors are put together by hands of artisans, made slender, and cut finely. It is difficult to make a hexagonal design in Kumiame, but Maiame Kōbō accomplished it wonderfully. It was introduced in Ingress official Google+ page.

They distributed this in Ingress events in Japan until now. However, they visited Google Japan to use this more cheerfully and asked for licensing. As a result, they got sale permission of the Ingress candy from Google.

They open EC site at once and accept mail order of Ingress candy. In commemoration of sale permission from Google, they sell it for 50pieces/2,000yen(about 16usd) until February 28. Furthermore, they start the production of the Enlightened version candy.