BODY: Even slimes, it turns out, have guilty pleasures. Suntory Beverage & Food has announced a tie-up between its breakout carbonated drink "Guilty Soda NOPE" and Square Enix's Dragon Quest Monsters 4: Bianca and Flora of the Land of Withered Trees, launching with four newly illustrated labels on sale for a limited run from late November.
The first wave splits across two formats. The 600ml PET bottle gets two designs: "Dara-dara Guilty," in which fan favorites Gigantes and Drackey sprawl out in full laze-about mode, and "Wanpaku Guilty," where a Ghost and a Man-Eater Chest get up to mischief. The 340ml can, aimed at vending machines, carries two higher-impact designs of a Metal Slime and a Metal Hunter bursting out of the packaging. Pricing holds at the standard line rate: ¥220 before tax for the bottle, ¥160 before tax for the can.
The theme is the point. NOPE launched on 24 March 2026 built explicitly around "guilty consumption" — the sweet, dense, faintly shameful treat you reach for anyway — with a recipe Suntory pitches as blending more than 99 fruit and spice flavors to hit all five basic tastes at once. The collaboration art simply transfers that idea onto monsters, catching them sleeping, eating, and goofing off rather than battling.
Timing is no accident. Dragon Quest Monsters 4 arrives 3 December 2026 on Switch 2, Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, so the labels hit shelves roughly a week ahead of launch. Suntory is calling this the first phase, which leaves room for further designs or campaigns closer to release.
The insider take
Drink-label collaborations are standard-issue marketing in Japan, but the pairing here is sharper than most. NOPE shipped 100 million units in its first 150 days — the fastest start for any Suntory beverage launch of the Reiwa era — so this is a hit brand lending reach to a game, not a game propping up a drink. The vending-machine cans matter more than they look: Japan's roughly 2.2 million drink machines are a daily impulse surface that no game trailer can buy, and a Metal Slime bursting out of a can at a station platform is pre-launch advertising disguised as a ¥160 afternoon treat. Expect convenience-store shelves to clear fast on the bottle designs; expect resale listings even faster.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).