Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dear Friend vending machine posters

Ito En and Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dear Friend are running a vending-machine collaboration, the film's official site confirmed on 30 September. Original collaboration posters go up from early October, ahead of the film's Japanese release on 16 October.

1,000 machines across five regions

The campaign covers roughly 1,000 vending machines. Tokyo gets 330, concentrated around Akihabara, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ikebukuro, Yoyogi and Ueno. Kanagawa accounts for 250: 120 around Fujisawa, Katase-kaigan, Enoshima and Kugenuma, 70 in Yokohama, 30 in Kawasaki and 30 in Kamakura. Nagoya adds 40 around Meieki, Osu and Monzenmachi, Osaka adds 40 around Nipponbashi and Namba, and Fukuoka adds 40 around Hakata.

Repost to win a poster

A giveaway runs from 1 to 14 October. Twenty people who repost the campaign post from Ito En's official X account will be drawn at random to receive the collaboration poster.

One stop on a long promotional run

The tie-in sits inside a dense run of local promotions for the film. The official site has already confirmed collaborations with Enoshima Electric Railway, the Fujisawa Enoshima fireworks festival, Yokohama City, Bic Camera, Chubu Centrair International Airport and Japan Post, plus a live event on the eve of release.

Our opinion

Vending machines are an unusually good fit for this particular film. The series has always been built around small, ordinary places in Fujisawa and Yokohama, and the poster run puts the characters back on the streets that the story keeps returning to rather than on a billboard above them. It is also a reminder of how much of an anime film's marketing now happens in convenience-store and station geography long before a trailer lands.