Early on in Saki's run, I would often find myself craving the heavily touted Mexican food tube ubiquitous among the series' energetic Rie Kugimiya-voiced Yuuki Kataoka. And then I thought of the above equation and asked myself: why didn't it happen?

The lengths of anime advertising are notoriously well-known. From the early positioning of Tezuka character's imposed onto snack goods to the most recent examples of moe marketing, character goods have always moved stock in Japan. Fast food anime marketing, however, is more recent in the land of the rising sun. Younger generations of Japanese are less hesitant to pony up and order a #4 at their local McDonald's than their soba-noodle slurping forefathers. Resultantly, Japanese fast food has been growing larger and larger in recent years. The biggest presence is split among McDonald's, Pizza Hut, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Interestingly, the latter two franchises are owned by the same parent company, Yum! Brands, so its fairly safe to say that Yum! is milking the Japanese with batter-fried chicken and pseudo-Italian pies.

Beginning around 2006, the Pizza Hut chain dove head first into the TV anime market with their sponsorship of Sunrise's Code Geass. So successful was this campaign featuring in-animation product placement and Code Geass-themed pizza boxes that it left Pizza Hut hungry for more. In September 2007, Pizza Hut changed its focus to another mecha-giant when it launched an Evangelion 1.0 promotional campaign. In years following, the fast food giant also touched the Kannagi and Maria-sama ga Miteru series to comprise an opus of pizza-centric anime. With all this money changing hands, you'd think McDonald's or one of Yum!'s other arms would be trying to get in on the action. But besides McDonald's offering of anime-based trinkets in their Happy Meals and Colonel Sanders cameos in Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, there has been little fast food presence in otaku subculture besides Pizza Hut. Maybe these giants are just showing their gentle sides, not purposely shortening the already limited life expectancy of otaku, the majority of whom don't exactly hit the gym every day.

All joking aside, why not? Otaku have been known to endorse even the most far flung and subliminal tie-ins (think Washinomiya Shrine and Lucky Star) with beautifully infinite passion. While I'm sure there are some very solid reasons, probably based in numbers and theorems that simply can't be elucidated to in this post, the complete absence of a number of fast food companies in Japan left me wondering why some don't even choose to enter the Japanese market. Taco Bell for example. The Bell is also owned by Yum! Brands so a foot in the (sliding) door isn't completely far-fetched. After some research, I've found the Taco Bell did, at one time, have a presence in Japan... but then fell off the face of the earth, except for a location that may or may not still exist in an American army base. It turns out most Japanese would be more likely to associate a taco with seafood than any notion of Mexican cuisine. Maybe then Yum! was right in not actively seeking out Gonzo for endorsement of the Saki anime and the Taco-centric Yuuki therein whose outright love for Mexican cuisine goes beyond all rational conceptions of neurotic attraction. Though the customer base for Saki-inspired tacos was well established about half way through the series when a mysterious van peddling the greasy cylinders pulled up in Akihabara and took a page out of antiquity with a sermon on the mount, feeding the innumerable faithful.

That's not to say we won't see any more fast food inspired meddling in anime but, at this point, it seems that Pizza Hut has a relative monopoly. That or Japanese have pretty poor taste in pizza.