bento#49 patapon

I’ve been pretty busy with work for past couple of weeks. I work for an online card game called Alteil, which my company brought to the U.S. from Japan 2 years ago. We just released a new set of cards, so I’ve been translating, checking for bugs, writing emails to Japanese staff for days and nights, working at work and from home until past midnight most nights. So I’ve been itching to make a new bento!

Anyway, my boyfriend treated himself with a PSP with his tax refund a couple of months ago. The reason he wanted a PSP was basically for this game.

Bento #49: Patapon bento!
Created and eaten on: 5/19/2009

Patapon is a rhythm game for PSP. You push the buttons to make the Patapons march, attack and defend from enemy. The game seems very addictive. I’ve only watched my boyfriend play it, and I haven’t played it yet. He puts his headphones on when he plays it at home because he doesn’t want to bother me with the sound, but I feel like Patapon stole my boyfriend from me. 😛 I don’t mind it at all. Besides, it’s fun to watch him play, bobbing his head to the rhythm.

The design of the game is very simple. The Patapon look like huge black and white eyeballs. The enemies are also mainly black and white. The background color changes a bit, but still it’s very simple and 2-dimensional. I’ve been wanting to make Patapon bento ever since he bought the game, but since it’s so simple and lacks color, I couldn’t think of how I’d make them with food.

I didn’t even have a drawing when I woke up in the morning. On top of that I woke up very late, but I really wanted to make a bento before we leave for another convention this weekend. I sat down, looked at several screenshots of the game, drew some Yaripon (a very basic form of Patapon), one of the enemies in the sketchbook and went to the kitchen.

First I put sauteed renkon (lotus root) at the bottom of the bento. For the orange background, I made fried rice with onion and ketchup. I took out beef soboro (see “how to make soboro” ) I had made before from the freezer, microwaved it, and put it at the bottom of the bento box to create the ground. In the game, it’s just black, but I thought a little bit of color wouldn’t hurt.

I put boiled broccoli between the rice and soboro, cut boiled snow peas with a cookie cutter, and put it on the rice.

PATA PATA PATA PON! (repeat 9834751 times)

I cut seaweed for the body (head? eye?) first, put it on cheese, and cut the cheese around it. I cut kamaboko (fish cake) into a smaller circular shape, and put it on the body. Then I cut seaweed out with a hole puncher and put it on the kamaboko. This process was so tedious… I had to make eight of them one by one. T_T

Looks so simple yet a huge pain in the butt...

For the enemy (rhino looking thing), I cut seaweed into the shape of its body, put it on cheese and cut the cheese around it. I cut out snow pea skin using a straw for the green pattern on its back. Then I cut out cheese with a straw for its eyes and put black sesame seeds on it.

When you hit the right buttons with the right timing in the game, you get this red long worm thing on the left top corner that says “FEVER!!” which increases the Patapons’ attack power. Since I didn’t have anything else to put in this bento and I had red pepper in the fridge, I cut it to make this “FEVER!!” worm. Then I cut out cheese to make the letter fors “FEVER!!” and put it on the red pepper. Then I cut out cheese using a straw and put black sesame seeds for its pupils. Actually I put the pupils on at the very end. I couldn’t find my tweezers, and I was sooo frustrated while I was trying to put the sesame seeds on the cheese by hand…

At this point, I was running very late, and the bento looked very… FAIL. T_T But I said to myself, “If I’m gonna be late for work, I might as well as finish this…” I cut seaweed for the flag, put it on cheese, and cut the cheese around it. Cut out kamaboko, put it on the flag, and cut seaweed out, and put it on the kamaboko. The top right area was especially empty, so I cut cheese to make “cloud-like streak things” in the sky like in the game.

Seaweed is getting all wrinkly... T_T

When my boyfriend started taking pictures, I remember I had a seaweed cutter for ” -> ” so I used it to cut out the three lines on Yaripon’s head. By the time the bento was finished, the seaweed had absorbed moisture from the cheese, and started to get wrinkly. I couldn’t make arms and legs for Yaripons, spears or any weapons for them.

Seaweed is getting curled up... T_T

I’m not happy how this turned out. Especially when this is my boyfriend most favorite game right now. >_<
Maybe I’ll actually play the game someday and make a Patapon bento again!

Patapon (Yaripon), flag:
– seaweed on cheese and kamaboko

The enemy
– seaweed on cheese, and snow peas

FEVER!!:
– red pepper, cheese and black sesame seed

Other food:
– renkon
– fried rice with onion and ketchup
– beef soboro
– broccoli
– snow peas

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