A “weeping face” icon is spreading across Japanese Twitter due to one mobile game’s PR campaign

The icon of a mysterious weeping man’s face that suddenly filled Twitter has become a hot topic in Japan. Many people are puzzled, but this is actually a “crying campaign” to celebrate the 5th anniversary of DeNA’s smartphone RPG, Megido 72. The campaign changes the Twitter icons of users who participated in the campaign to the face of a game character crying passionately.

Weeping is kind of a trademark symbol of Megido 72. Since the early days of the service, one of the key visuals has been an illustration of the protagonist Solomon and the heroine shedding tears with a grim expression, and the idea that “weeping = Megido 72” has become familiar to fans due to the image’s strong impact. However, the idea of hijacking an icon to change it to a “weepy face” is puzzling even to fans.

In addition, such campaigns usually include the game’s title and other information, as they also serve PR purposes. However, this time, the only thing written on the icon was “5th anniversary of crying,” and to those outside the campaign who were not familiar with Megido 72, the only thing they could see was a large number of icons of a man’s face crying, which caused a wave of confusion.

Megido 72 has been involved in many strange projects in the past, in which even the fans were not sure if they were aiming for popularity or not. For example, the company once sold “Megi Dorayaki,” a dorayaki (Japanese red bean pancake) with an illustration of the weeping Solomon burned into the surface of it. Other than Megido ending in the phonetic “do” and dorayaki beginning with this sound, there is no other link between the two, and the use of the face seems rather bold.

The depth of the battle system and the grandiose and delicate storyline continue to attract fans of Megido 72, which is also the reason for its long service of five years. The mismatch of the seriousness of the game and these bizarre, non sequitur PR moves could be said to be a real plus for the franchise. However, for those who do not know anything about the background of the game, it is likely to be more puzzling than amusing.

Written by. Connor Lawless based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-12-07 14:53 JST)