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Satsuki Yukino, Aoi Yūki Star in Mentholatum's Thanksgiving Anime Video
posted on by Jennifer Sherman
In addition to coinciding with Thanksgiving in the United States this year, November 23 is Labor Thanksgiving Day in Japan. The national holiday honors labor and invites people to thank each other. Rohto Pharmaceutical, a Japanese company that bought the American health-care product maker Mentholatum in 1988, began streaming a special video in honor of the holiday on Thursday.
In the video, a mother reads a letter from her daughter who is an elementary school student. In the letter, the girl says her mother is always busy. As a big sister, the girl has learned how to do things like eating and changing her clothes by herself. She says she will do her best at school and as a big sister, and she asks her mother also to do her best as a mother. She ends the letter by saying, "But play with me too once in a while. Thank you as always. To Mama who I love."
Although the girl seems annoyed with her mother apparently ignoring her to deal with her younger brother at the beginning of the video, the trio share an embrace at the end. After the girl returns home from school, the mother asks the children if they want to make dinner together. The video ends with the text, "that hand that wraps up precious family."
Satsuki Yukino (Gintama's Tae Shimura, Natsume's Book of Friends) plays the mother in the video, and Aoi Yūki (My Hero Academia's Tsuyu Asui, Aho Girl's Yoshiko Hanabatake) plays the daughter.
The video is part of Mentholatum's "Mama e, Itsumo Arigatō." (To Mama, Thanks as Always.) campaign. The project is also marking November 23 as "Good Letter Day," due to an alternate pronunciation of the numerals in the date.
The campaign is inviting people to post pictures of their children's letters of thanks on Twitter for a chance to win prizes. People who Tweet appropriate pictures with the campaign's two hashtags will be eligible to win one of 35 prizes. The three A Prizes are various Mentholatum products bundled in a tin featuring a child's portrait by the animator of the video. The 30 B Prizes are similar tins of Mentholatum products without the personalized portraits. The campaign is running until December 8.
Source: Animate Times
