BODY: Japan's most-loved anxious little creatures are about to take over your neighborhood convenience store. Seven-Eleven Japan is rolling out a nationwide collaboration fair with the hit film Movie Chiikawa: Secret of the Mermaid Island, and it lands July 21.
The campaign carries the very Chiikawa-sounding name "Chiikawa and the Island Memories, Let's Create Them!" and leans hard into the film's tropical setting. Ten limited-edition food items headline the launch, including island curry with clam soup, a tuna-broth island ramen, takoyaki, okonomiyaki, kebab chicken, a passion-fruit smoothie, and a fruit parfait. Prices run from ¥257 to ¥753, with staggered drops between July 18 and 20.
The real fan magnet is the "Enimai Kuji" lottery, launching July 25 at ¥950 per draw with no losing tickets. Every pull nets something — diorama figures, wind chimes, clear pouches, retro-style cups, summery plushies, and chopstick sets — while the grand prize is a character-decorated nagashi somen noodle-slide machine. Ice-bar-styled towel sets (¥1,760) follow on July 31.
Beyond the register, Seven-Eleven is stacking on point-based receipt raffles (July 21–August 3) offering room lights, aloha shirts, and QUO Card Pay, plus a LINE stamp rally, daily app login bonuses, and an X quote-post giveaway of 50 cushion sets.
The insider take
Chiikawa has quietly become one of the most bankable IPs in Japan, and convenience-store tie-ups like this are where its commercial muscle really shows. In Tokyo, "kuji" lottery counters at 7-Eleven regularly sell out within hours of restock, and resale listings for the grand-prize somen machine will almost certainly surface on Mercari before the fair even hits its second week. The staggered food drops are no accident either — they're engineered to pull fans back into stores day after day, turning a movie promo into a two-week foot-traffic engine.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).