The archive · Content & Film · Marketing decision · 2017–2020
Nissin's Hungry Days ages anime icons into teens — Cup Noodle as the snack of youth
Nissin's 'Hungry Days' films reimagine Kiki, Heidi and One Piece's Luffy as modern high-schoolers, hiding its Cup Noodle until each story's emotional peak
Nissin Foods (日清食品)
What it had to solve
Cup Noodle, launched in 1971, needed adults to feel nostalgia for instant ramen instead of embarrassment. Nissin decided the product would only ever appear as 'the snack of youth' — once per film, in a teenager's hands at the story's most emotional moment.
How it works
In June 2017 Nissin launched a Cup Noodle campaign built on a single 'what if': what if Kiki, the 13-year-old witch of Studio Ghibli's Kiki's Delivery Service, were a 17-year-old high school girl in present-day Japan? The first 30-second film showed Kiki in a sailor uniform, commuting on a broom, confessing her feelings to a drone-building modern Tombo. Nissin described the series itself as a campaign themed on 'youth', with the product appearing exactly once per film, in a teenager's hands at the moment of peak emotion.
The 'Hungry Days' series then walked through the most loved characters in Japanese animation: Heidi of the Alps (September 2017), Sazae-san — Japan's oldest cartoon family — as high school classmates (November 2017), and finally One Piece (2019–2020), which remade the Straw Hat Pirates as students of an ordinary Japanese high school: Zoro as the kendo kid who drags a nautical anchor in training, Nami as the hungry overachiever, Vivi and Nami's friendship, and a sports-festival battle where familiar rivals appeared as fellow students.
Production values treated each spot as cinema: teenage character designs by manga artist Eisaku Kubonouchi, theme song 'Kinen Satsuei' by rock band BUMP OF CHICKEN, narration by legendary voice actress Megumi Hayashibara, and free premiere on Nissin's official YouTube channel. Nissin hid easter eggs in the animation (an alien-invasion subplot in the 2017 films' backgrounds) and tied the run to a giant anime mural at Shibuya Station.
The One Piece chapter turned release scheduling into suspense: Zoro, Nami and Vivi got their stories while franchise hero Luffy stayed teasingly off-screen, his face hidden for almost a year, until the February 2020 finale — confirmed by Nissin as the last of the series — finally showed a 'surprisingly normal-looking' teenage Luffy. Global anime press covered each episode with real emotion, and the reveal became the campaign's final viral moment.
Why it lands
- Nostalgia is the product: aging beloved characters into teens mirrors the audience's own past, so the ad feels like revisiting your memories — press covered it as cinema.
- Star power beats media budget: Ghibli-calibre design, BUMP OF CHICKEN and famous voice actors gave the spots film production value; fans shared them instead of skipping.
- Restraint brands the moment: the Cup Noodle appears once, at the emotional peak — an ad that refuses to sell feels more honest, and the brand seeps in through the story rather than the pitch.
- Serialisation builds appointment viewing: hiding Luffy's face across four films for almost a year turned a commercial series into a fandom event that millions had to watch.
What it did
Every entry drew breathless coverage from global anime press, the Luffy face reveal became a fandom event, Nissin extended the series across three years, and the run tied into a giant anime mural at Shibuya Station.
What you can take
Advertise memories, not features: borrow childhood heroes, age them to mirror your customer, hide the product till the peak — restraint makes the brand true.
Since then
The February 2020 finale — a school sports-festival 'chicken fight' where the One Piece cast battles amid collapsing buildings and teenage Luffy delivers a miso Cup Noodle 'punch' — was announced by Nissin as the end of the series, and SoraNews24 mourned it: 'we're pretty bummed to see this cool commercial series come to an end'. The films remain watchable on Nissin's official YouTube channel, and the campaign is remembered as a benchmark for branded anime nostalgia — proof that a food brand's most valuable raw material can be its customers' childhoods.
Sources
- 「もし、魔女のキキが17才の女子高校生だったら」カップヌードルの新CM公開 キキととんぼの恋模様を描く
- Gorgeous anime shorts reimagine One Piece's Straw Hat Pirates as high school teens【Videos】
- One Piece's Vivi Stars In New Nissin "Hungry Days" Cup Noodle Commercial
- Final episode of Cup Noodle commercial Hungry Days featuring One Piece finally shows Luffy's face
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