bento#38 Paya-tan from Dai Mahou Touge

“Dai Mahou Touge” aka “Magical Witch Punie-chan”, is an anime show made by and for super anime nerds, yet even if you aren’t an anime nerd, you’ll still enjoy it. My boyfriend likes this show so much that he even did a review on this show before.
His favorite character in this show is Paya-tan. Looks like a cute mascot in any magical girl anime shows, but so NOT.
I’ve always wanted to make a Paya-tan bento, but I couldn’t think of any good way to make it because Paya-tan was the only non-human character in Dai Mahou Touge.

I think I’ve mentioned this before but, there are so many characters I want to make bento of including Paya-tan. Coming up with a character I want to make isn’t that hard, but finding something to go with the main character is. Then I remembered my favorite episode, about curry at a food stand at a school festival. This particular episode was about a school festival, like any other anime. But instead of showing the drama or trouble between students, the majority of the episode was focused on curry at a particular food stand. The curry at the stand was so popular that Punie-chan’s rival and her gang went to find out what the secret was. There they witnessed a horrifying ceremony held by the vegetables for the curry.

Bento #38: Paya-tan from DaiMahouTouge
Created and eaten on: 2/11/2009

In this ceremony, a potato takes a peeler and starts to peel his skin off by himself. It was as if he was committing harakiri. (part of the samurai honor code, it is to die with honor) After he peels himself, he jumps into a pot. All the vegetables had a face and they were talking and all very serious. It was just sooo dramatic that it was hilarious.

I decided that I want to make the curry scene with Paya-tan the night before and asked my boyfriend to cook curry that night. 😛 He didn’t know what I was making for a bento, but I just told him that I wanted to eat curry. (What can I say. His curry is darn good!)

The following morning, I put lettuce down in a bento box and put curry on right side of the bento on top of the lettuce (so it wouldn’t dye the bento box). Then I mixed rice with curry powder and ketchup (see “how to dye rice naturally”), I put a plastic wrap on my drawing, and put the rice over it. Then I shaped Paya-tan’s head and torso using a plastic wrap. After I finished shaping the body and head, I put it on the left side of the bento box. Since the other pieces on Paya-tan involved seaweed, I decided to make the mini-vegetables before putting seaweed on Paya-tan.

I cut potato and baby carrot, broccoli for the mini-vegetables first. Then I cut the pink part and white part of kamaboko (fish cake) and seaweed for their eyes, eyebrows and mouth.

The potato in the center lives by the code of the samurai.

Finally, I cut seaweed for Paya-tan’s eyes and ears, put it on cheese and cut around it. Then I cut seaweed for “Pa” in Japanese and put it on his stomach. I cut cheese for his horn, and I was going to finish it here. But Paya-tan didn’t look like him at all… so I made a knife with konnyaku (yam cake) and kamaboko (fish cake) for the blade and cheese for the handle.

Even though this anime show isn’t mainstream most of our friends have seen it and appreciated the details on the veggies. 😀 I still didn’t think that Paya-tan looked anything like the real Paya-tan at all… I think his head was too big, and his body was too stocky. Some seaweed pieces (Paya-tan’s eye brows and “Pa” letter) shrunk because of the moisture on the rice. I’ve made a plush of Paya-tan for my boyfriend before, and I think it looked so much better than my bento. 😛

PAYA!! (Paya-tan plush I made for my boyfriend. This is the "cute Paya-tan", and the other side is the "serious Paya-tan")

Paya-tan:
– rice mixed with curry powder and ketchup (see “how to dye rice naturally”)
– seaweed on cheese for his eyes and ears
– seaweed for “Pa” on his body and eyebrows
– cheese for his horn
– kamaboko (fish cake)

Potato:
– potato, seaweed and kamaboko

Carrot:
– baby carrot, seaweed, kamaboko and broccoli

Other food:
– chicken curry
– broccoli
– lettuce

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