Odoroki-man Chocolate (オドロキマン チョコ, Odorokiman Choco) is a snack featured in AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES and the Lemniscate YouTube series.
They are a line of wafer snacks produced by SUPACHOCO, and a fan-favorite snack amongst elementary students, coming in both milk chocolate and dark chocolate. Each bag comes with a collectable sticker of a unique mascot, including the super rare Tsundere Robo Bear. In total, there are 30 different mascot stickers.
Their competing brand is Momonoki-man Chocolate, which is similar in concept and design and tends to confuse various customers, such as Mayumi Matsushita.
History[]
At around 2004, a young Ota Matsushita became a fan of Odoroki-man Chocolate, and became the #1-2 collector of the collectable stickers within his elementary school class. He collected so many that he would stick his duplicates of Tsundere Robo Bear, Gentleman Crow, Bubble, and Lady Gang Leader onto the side of a shelf within the diner. One particular incident occurred near April or early May, when Ota's mother, Mayumi, accidentally bought Momonoki-man Chocolates from the store, causing Ota yell at her in a fit of rage. Mayumi went to buy the correct chocolates and encountered her husband, Takero, on the way home. This memory stuck close to both Ota and Mayumi over time, but eventually this lead to Mayumi receiving her special apron and knife from Takero and Ota for Mother's Day that year.
In 2015, soon after Kaname Date took in 8 year-old Mizuki Okiura to his home, he began attempting to cheer her up by buying her Odoroki-man Chocolates. She began collecting the stickers, and soon enough the grown-adult Date began taking an interest in the stickers and began collecting them himself. Eventually Mizuki and Date's fascination with the stickers faded, albeit Date's lasted much longer than Mizuki's.
During her childhood, Iris Sagan also began purchasing the chocolates and collecting the different Odoroki-man stickers. It's unclear when her interest in these sweets began, but they have persisted into 2019, when she described them as her favorite brand of snacks early in her career as the net idol A-set.
In addition, Lien Twining also liked this kind of chocolate since he was a child. He received some as a reward from an older colleague when he worked as a janitor at the Horadori Institute of Genetics.[1]
Mascot List[]
Only 5 out of the 30 stickers are known from the game itself. The 4 mascots are:
- Tsundere Robo Bear (メカクマ, Mechakuma)
- Gentleman Crow (カラス紳士, Karasu Shinshi)
- Bubble (バブル, Baburu)
- Lady Gang Leader (乙女番長, Otome Bancho)
- Lagomorph III
Odoroki-man Collectors[]
These are the known people who have collected Odoroki-man in the past:
- Ota Matsushita (circa 2004)
- Iris Sagan (present)
- Mizuki Okiura (in 2015)
- Kaname Date (in 2015)
Trivia[]
- The Odoroki-man Chocolate is based on the real world Bikkuriman Chocolate (ビックリマン チョコ, Bikkuriman Choco, lit. Surprised Man Chocolate), produced by the company Lotte. Yusuke Kozaki, the character designer for AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES, shared with his American fans the 2019 brand of Bikkuriman Chocolate, which had a collection of 36 mascots, similar to Odoroki-man's 30 mascots.[2][3]
- Ironically enough, no character named "Odoroki-man" is featured among the mascots for this brand, yet Momonoki-man Chocolate has its own "Momonoki-man", despite only ever appearing in one Somnium.
- On Steam, the badges that players can collect categorized for AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES, when exchanging the Steam trading cards, are based around the mascot characters from the Odoroki-man Chocolate lineup.[4] These run in contrast with the singular Foil Badge, which features Momonoki-man instead.
- One of the Odoroki-man mascots is named "Lagomorph III," based around the character "Zero the III" from the game Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, which was developed by Spike Chunsoft and directed/written by Kotaro Uchikoshi, writer and director of AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES. This seemingly implies that Lagomorph III is part of the Odoroki-man lineup.
[]
References[]
- ↑ Novel Ingress
- ↑ Wikipedia page for Bikkuriman
- ↑ Yusuke Kozaki (Google translated): "I am a man who came to tell America about Bikkuriman culture. Of course it was very popular." (Nov 18th)
- ↑ Steam Card Exchange page for AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES