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 of this show. His favorite character in this show is Paya-tan. He looks like a cute mascot from any magical girl anime shows, but is 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 Dai Mahou Touge
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 have faces, can talk and are very serious. It was just sooo dramatic that it was hilarious.

The night before, I decided that I want to make the curry scene with Paya-tan, 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 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 of 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.

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 there. 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-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.

Tagged as: broccoli, carrot, curry, dai mahou touge, kamaboko, konnyaku, paya-tan, plush toy, potato