About

The Pocky Game is a Japanese game where two players gnaw at the two ends of a Pocky biscuit, drawing them closer together so that they might accidentally end up kissing. It has inspired many fan arts for its romantic implications, and was also the theme of challenge videos.

Origin

The Pocky Game first appeared during Japanese student parties called konpa.^[1] The rules are as follows: the two players must each grab an extremity of the same Pocky stick, and start gnawing their way towards the middle of it. The game is won by reaching the middle of the stick first or by the other player letting go of the biscuit. The two players reaching the middle at the same time will result in an accidental kiss and a draw. This last particularity made this game particularly popular in the context of seduction.

References In Media

The popularity of this game in Japan, as well as the fact that the Pocky is a Japanese biscuit, led to its appearance in several manga and anime ^[2], especially as a Japanese equivalent to the Spaghetti Kiss trope. The most famous instance is from the anime Ga-Rei: Zero, as the two main protagonists end up just kissing mid-game.

Fan Art

Due to the romantic setting of people accidentally kissing during a game, the Pocky Game has inspired many online artists, especially shippers, to draw their OTPs performing this game, and often focusing on the resulting "Pocky kiss." Artists also draw a character with one end of Pocky in their mouth as if they wanted to engage in a Pocky Game with another character or an off-screen one.

A good amount of fan art subverts the usual scenario, usually by having one of the characters focus only on either the kiss or eating the Pocky.

Challenge Videos

As far as 2008, many internet users have uploaded videos of "Pocky Game" or "Pocky Challenge" which follow a similar pattern: a Pocky Game held between two players who are also cosplaying, most of the time as an OTP couple from a manga or an anime, and often featuring a homosexual pairing. Although they were at first documenting such games spontaneously happening during anime conventions, as time went on, those videos were more often staged, specifically to narrate a shipping storyline akin to a fanfiction. The most viewed video of this kind on YouTube is inspired by Miraculous Ladybug and cumulated more than 3.2 million views since its upload on April 9th, 2018.

The Pocky Game also gained a lot of traction on Vine. A Vine compilation of homosexual Pocky Games was uploaded on Youtube on May 13th, 2016, gaining more than 1.9 million views.

Search Interest

External References