Haruhi Girls Star in Surprise Lotte Gum TV Commercial

A new TV commercial for giant candy conglomerate Lotte’s new Acuo chewing gum is attracting attention amongst fans of 2D for its striking premise – the gum makes one’s breath so fresh that it transforms pedestrian, everyday Japanese women into 2D beauties such as Haruhi and Mikuru, or even a trio of stray cats into a harem of nekomimi Nagato.

The date and time of the first details of the CM appeared on March 31st at Oricon, making some question whether or not it might be a early April Fool’s gag, but the full 15-second commercial appeared during a news report along with an announced broadcast date of April 5.

Player 1

Following the CM, the news report takes over and helpfully identifies the girls for the program’s non-otaku audience as “popular characters of the iconic Haruhi Suzumiya series.”

In case you might not be familiar with Japanese male idols, the handsome fellow happens to be celebrity talent 生田斗真 / Toma Ikuta, employed to Johhny’s, the mega-talent agency responsible for several of Japan’s male idol acts such as SMAP or V6.

To preserve the images for posterity, below is nearly every key frame of the CM with the 2D Haruhi cast present:

What the 3D girls are saying isn’t of much importance, but Mikuru’s cute phrase goes:

“You have such wonderful breath!”

The Haruhi segment comes next.

The newly transformed Haruhi here exclaims:

“You’re really great, aren’t ya?!”

Their voices are perfect, and since a TV CM essentially has to be fully licensed by all concerned rights-holders, it should be easy to assume that the seiyuu trio of Gotou, Hirano and Chihara were involved.

Making the above portion of the CM with Mikuru and Haruhi inside a store might have been a mistake, given how much better the outdoors shot with Nagato further below looks in comparison, as shown below.

“Nyaaa~n!”

Ah!

A question that most otaku would be hard-pressed to answer is exactly why Ikuta is so intent on running away from all these wonders…

An update describing the CM is available at the official Haruhi site, Lotte’s Acuo product page is viewable here.