Nissin Cup Noodle's Hungry Days commercial series of anime shorts focuses on taking beloved anime such as Studio Ghibli's Kiki's Delivery Service and long-running Sazae-san and re-imagining their characters as real life Japanese high school students, with a theme of youthful energy and hunger (for noodles) during one's halcyon days.

Their latest commercial is titled "One Piece: Aoharu", with "aoharu" meaning the springtime or heyday of one's youth, and shows us just what the high school life of the cast of mega-popular anime and manga series One Piece might look like. It's filled with fan pleasing cameos of pirates and marines, but the focus of this episode is on the Straw Hat crew's swordsman, Zoro.

Of course, Zoro is in the kendo club

The commercial starts out with Zoro suffering a crushing defeat (this time in a kendo match) to Mihawk (a callback to their famous duel in the anime), with Mihawk telling Zoro to become stronger.

Zoro narrates, "My name is Zoro, and I'm 17 years old. I'm going to become the number one swordsman in the world."

Perona, Cavendish, and Moria don't seem to be much for studying

Zoro can't help but practice three-swords-style in class

The crew seems to be hanging out together, and Blackbeard and Whitebeard are unusually chummy

He continues, saying "I don't need youth. I made a promise."

After collapsing, he declares that he'll never lose again, as he did after being defeat by Mihawk in the series.

A snickering Luffy overhears this, and approaches him, telling him he's cool. Zoro tells him to shut up, and it's a take their first meeting as crewmates--er, classmates.

The Bump of Chicken soundtrack and artwork by manga artist Eisaku Kubonouchi (“Tsurumoku Dokushin Ryo”, “Watanabe” and “Chocolat”) make for a much different atmosphere in the world of One Piece, but somehow comes together for a beautifully done commercial with a feel of nostalgia for one's high school days to it--and maybe even some Cup Noodle to power through it.


By - Big Neko.