Last month, the global McDonald’s YouTube channel got an anime-styled makeover to promote its Savory Chili WcDonald’s Sauce. The entire thing was an outlandish but loving tribute to anime, down to the reference of “WcDonald’s” which is a parody name typically used in anime to avoid copyright infringement.
McDonald’s published a total of four anime shorts, each one referencing a popular genre of anime. The first episode was Shounen themed with an epic Dragon Ball reference, the second episode was Shoujo themed, the third episode was Tokusatsu themed, and the fourth episode was Isekai themed.
All four episodes were animated by Studio Pierrot, a Japanese animation studio best known for animating Naruto, Bleach, Tokyo Ghoul, Yu Yu Hakusho, Black Clover, and many more. For added authenticity, they also uploaded a subbed and dubbed version for each episode.
And if that wasn’t enough, McDonald’s went the extra mile and created an original Anime Music Video (AMV) for their animated shorts. The AMV features an original song titled WANT U LUV IT by Reol, a Japanese singer-songwriter best known for performing viral Vocaloid songs on Nico Nico Douga and YouTube.
The music video features a collage of scenes from the animated shorts, edited in a familiar AMV style. Although the video is only 1-minute long which is similar to the length of most anime openings, you can listen to the full song on Reol’s YouTube channel.
Although we probably won’t be getting the Savory Chili WcDonald’s Sauce in Malaysia any time soon, McDonald’s Malaysia is running a Yu-Gi-Oh and Sanrio collaboration for its Happy Meal toys. Here’s to hoping that WcDonald’s sauce also comes down to Southeast Asia sometime in the future.