The day can’t come fast enough for me to continue watching Dr. Stone. That anime has one of the most unique premises I’ve seen in a minute and the execution was pretty strong too. Holy shit I’m ready for the Stone Wars!!! Other people must be ready too, because recently the anime was paired together with Snickers for a commercial in Japan. I guess we are all having some cravings. Then I realized that this was the perfect excuse for me to talk about brand deals with anime and hear some thoughts from you guys. Here’s the commercial if you want to see it for yourself first before reading onward.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against brand deals, collaborations, sponsorships, all that shit. I’m not one of those boys that screams “SHILL SHILL SHILL” when a YouTuber decides to do a Raid Shadow Legends ad read to get some bread. However, that being said I do think there’s a right and wrong way to go about brand collaborations. Personally I actually kinda like them when they advertise a product that overlaps and makes sense for the two partners. For example, if Yowamushi Pedal, a bike racing anime, did an advertisement for Pocari Sweat, a Japanese sports drink, I would find that to be pretty cool. “How do you pedal so damn fast Sensei!?” “That’s easy, I never start a race without drinking my P O C A R I S W E A T”. Make it a bit humorous and I’m totally down. But when it makes NO fucking sense whatever, it does come across as hella forced and corporate. In Dr. Stone, the whole point is they don’t have any modern food or equipment. This would be awesome for a collaboration with a tool company who makes tools only with raw materials or something. Spin it like “Nothing beats true, authentic, time-tested tools. If it worked in the Stone Age, it’ll work today” which doesn't completely work but it's a lot better than a candy. Snickers just makes no damn sense at all and the writing of Dr. Stone is too interesting for me to ignore it. I’m too immersed in the world to let it slide. See, they need to take a page out of onaholes’ book. Onahole companies collaborate all the time with people who draw slutty girls, it fits both partners, and everyone wins!

At least the art is still clean though.

At the end of the day, I just hope some of the money from this collaboration goes into the pockets of people working on the Dr. Stone side of things so they can make the next season even better. It hurts to see characters you like doing things that break immersion, but if that’s what it takes to get money moving then so be it. Do anime brand deals come off as forced to you? Do you care one way or the other? Are you excited for the Stone Wars? Chisel a comment into the rocks below!