Recently, opening limited-time cafes to celebrate certain events has been popular in Japan. There was a Pokemon cafe, a Love Live cafe, a Kirby cafe, a Sailor Moon cafe, a Rilakuma cafe, a Mario cafe, a Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen cafe… all serving food based on the properties, naturally. Things like Rilakuma-shaped rice relaxing in a pool of curry, a burger with Pikachu’s face and tortilla chip ears, y’know, things fans of the series would be into.
For Sonic the Hedgehog’s twenty-fifth anniversary, Sega decided to open a Sonic cafe. A couple of the menu items are what you would expect: a chili dog with a side of onion rings, a parfait based on that crazy ice cream from Sonic Unleashed… but everything else is just really random and weird.
Case in point, this Shadow burger, with a bun colored black by the addition of bamboo charcoal, which has been a popular trend in Japan the last few years. It’s not the bun that your eyes are drawn to, though. It’s the cheese. The cheese with a character printed on it.
THAT IS SHADOW THE HEDGEHOG CHEESE.
This is not a joke. This is a real thing that Sega has decided to do. There exist in this world slices of American cheese with Shadow the Hedgehog printed on them. I don’t even know how to react to this. The burger costs ten bucks and the menu claims that if you eat it, you might be consumed by dark energies.