bento#36 Penny Arcade robot

If you’re a gamer, you must’ve heard of a site called Penny Arcade. This webcomic focuses on video games and gaming culture, written by Jerry Holkins and illustrated by Mike Krahulik. They’re known to be very honest and blunt about video games and other game reviews, and that’s why gamers love them. They got so big that they have their own convention, called Penny Arcade Expo every year, which I’m probably going for work this year.

The Penny Arcade comic became so huge that they have their own game called “On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness” and released it for Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation 3 and PC last year. So far two episodes have been released. My boyfriend, being the good gamer that he is, checks the site quite often and enjoyed their game, so I decided to make a character from the game.

It’s an adventure/RPG game, and pretty simple and short, yet very entertaining. In the game, you, Tycho and Gabe (characters from the webcomic) go around beating up bad guys, solving mysteries and what not. (awesome description, eh?) Some of these “bad guys” are characters from the webcomic. Since I want to keep my blog family friendly, I will not write his real name on my blog, but there is this robot that is described to be “a small, robotic juicer with an unusual means of extracting juice.”

Bento #36: Penny Arcade robot
Created and eaten on: 1/28/2009

I thought of recreating a scene from the game first, but it would’ve been too hard and robots would’ve been too small. So I decided to use the image from one of their comics as a reference even though it wasn’t from the game.

I put a thin layer of plain rice at the upper part of a bento box and lettuce at the lower part of the bento first. Then I cooked chicken teriyaki and put it on the lettuce. I usually put anything with sauce on lettuce, so the sauce won’t dye the bento box. The robot’s body is gray, so I mixed rice with black sesame seeds and a little bit of salt. I put a plastic wrap over my drawing of the robot and put the rice on and shaped it into the robot. (Well, the robot is shaped like a garbage can, so there wasn’t that much “shaping” involved though. :P) I also made two small balls with this rice for his shoulders, hands and antenna.

After the robot’s body was done, I sliced and sauteed renkon (lotus root), laid several slices on the plain rice, and put the body and the shoulders on top of it. Then I cut seaweed into two thin strips, put a little bit of rice on each sheet, and rolled them to make very skinny rolls to create the robot’s long arms. I placed the arms on the robot and put his hands (rice mixed with black sesame seeds). Then I pushed the rice in around his mouth and his “juice extracting thingy,” and cut seaweed to put it inside. For his fingers, teeth and juice extracting thingy I cut kamaboko (fish cake), and placed them on the robot.

Juice extracting thingy

I cut a seaweed strip and wrapped it around his head and put carrot for his eyes. Then I cut carrot for the tip of the antenna and placed the antenna on the robot. After everything was set in the place, I put broccoli between the robot and chicken teriyaki.

When the bento was done, I realized that I could’ve just made Penny Arcade robot bento, but I really had wanted to make “On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness” bento and already had the logo for the game’s characters (“with a lightning bolt for being awesome!”) cut out of seaweed the night before… so I decided to use it anyway. I placed the seaweed on a slice of cheese and cut the cheese around it.

I sprinkled some sesame seeds on chicken teriyaki at the last minute because “brown cooked chicken bits” didn’t look too appetizing (even though it’s delicious!). I think it looked a lot better with sesame seeds.

Not only this bento was super easy, it came with dessert!

Watch out! He's about to extract juice from the orange!

Penny Arcade Robot:
– rice mixed with black sesame seeds and salt
– seaweed
– kamaboko (fish cake)
– carrot

Lightning bolt icon:
– seaweed on cheese

Other food:
– chicken teriyaki
– lettuce
– broccoli
– rice
– renkon (lotus root)

For more pictures of my bento, visit Bento! set and Bento details! set on my flickr page.