Demon Slayer is spreading its influence by collaborating with the teams in Japan’s Professional Baseball, Football and Basketball Leagues.
The hit manga and anime series is no stranger to marketing and licensing deals, appearing on just about any product in Japan. Now, Demon Slayer is taking it one step further by collaborating with the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league, the Japan Professional Football League (J.League), and the Japan Professional Basketball League (B.League) in a collaboration titled Sports 2021 x Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.
As you can see from the key visual above, there are a lot of sports team logos next to series’ protagonist Tanjiro Kamado as he uses his Water Breathing style to wave the collab flag. There are 105 teams in the image above, 12 NPB teams, 57 J.League teams and 36 B.League teams.
The anime studio behind Demon Slayer, ufotable, also created illustrations for the collaboration, as seen in the image above. The studio will also reveal more illustrations for all the 105 teams in the future, where they will be featured on the collaboration merchandise that will be sold in different periods according to the leagues.
The periods are as such:
- NPB: August 13 to October 21
- J.League: September 10 to December 5
- B.League: October 2 to December 26
Fans of the respective sports can visit the team’s stadiums and collect digital stamps by scanning QR codes during their matches. These stamps are used to redeem collaboration merchandise. Note that those who wish to participate in the collab will need to pay a fee of 500 yen (4.55 USD) on the collaboration website beforehand.
For more information, check out the Twitter account set up for this collab.