Demon Slayer Fans Line Up for 5 Hours for a Popcorn Bucket

The chance to buy some popcorn in a Nezuko-shaped bucket was enough to motivate a crowd of Demon Slayer fans to line-up for five hours or more.

As reported by Sora News 24, fans of Koyoharu Gotouge's popular shonen manga series lined up, outside and in the rain for several hours, just to get their hands on a piece of exclusive Demon Slayer merchandise. The collectible popcorn bucket is molded in the form of Nezuko, emerging from the crate where she sleeps. In the series, Nezuko is series protagonist Tanjiro's younger sister, who lives through the brutal demon attack that kills the rest of their family. While she survives the initial attack, her body has begun the process of transforming into a demon, so she must wear a bamboo muzzle to curb her new urges to bite into humans, and must sleep in a wooden crate to protect herself from sunlight, which now causes her skin to burn. The bucket comes pre-filled with some honey-plum flavored popcorn and retails for 3,700 yen, or roughly $35 USD.

This particular piece of merch is only available at Universal Studios Japan, which is located in Osaka. While the theme park restocks the popcorn buckets everyday, they quickly sell out, and many of the buckets have reappeared on online auction sites such as eBay and Mercari for double and even triple their original price. Demand is so high for the Nezuko-shaped container that Japanese fans have begun standing in hours-long lines just for their chance to buy one, with many fans having to go home empty handed each day after the buckets sell out.

The Nezuko bucket is just one of several Demon Slayer-themed attractions at Universal Studios Japan. A VR-experience and roller coaster themed after the Shonen Jump series opened at the park on Sept. 17. The theme park also opened its latest major expansion, Super Nintendo World, earlier this year. That new section of the studio features rides and other attractions themed after Super Mario Bros. and other video game franchises from Nintendo. Universal Studios is also planning on opening an American version of the Nintendo area in its Orlando park, but the company has not announced any plans to import its Demon Slayer attractions.

While Demon Slayer fans may not be able to visit the theme park or get a Nezuko bucket for themselves, they can still look forward to the second season of the anime, which is still scheduled to premiere sometime before the end of 2021. The new season will adapt the highly regarded Entertainment District arc from Gotouge's original manga, which sees Tanjiro teaming up with the Sound Hashira to investigate a series of possibly demon-related disappearances in a major city. American distributor Funimation will also screen the series first movie, the record-breaking Mugen Train, at this year's New York Comic-Con.

Source: Sora News 24, Twitter