You Still Don't Know Gumma" Episode 11: Numerous "vending machine stores" remain in Gumma. What is the shocking reason for this!

The short anime "You Still Don't Know Gunma" started this April.
Based on a comic serialized on the web comic distribution site "Kurage Bunch," it is a comedy in which " Gunma" (Gunma Prefecture/people in Gunma Prefecture), which is often disparaged on the Internet, is deformed with exaggerated action scenes with a lot of tension.


This work is so local that only the local commercial TV station, Gunma Television (Gunma Television), broadcasts it, which is a crying shame. However, it is also available on Animax and GYAO! The author, a native of Gunma, will delve into the details of such a super-local work with love and explanation.


The theme of the 11th episode is "vending machine stores. This refers to unmanned stores with only vending machines, which were thought to have existed here and there throughout the country in the past. Younger people may not know this, but "vending machine stores" were unmanned stores that appeared around the 1970s and 1980s and took the world by storm (or so it seems), and many of them were built along busy roads. Many of them were built along busy roads. The main customers were truck drivers passing along the roads at night (hence the name "auto drive-ins"). The vending machines offered not only drinks, but also a wide variety of foods such as udon and soba noodles, hamburgers, and so on. In many cases, the shops also served as game centers, with table-type game machines (e.g., invader games), which were popular at the time. Because of this, many schools forbade healthy children to go near these places, and they are remembered as "naughty places" by the children of that time. Eventually, such "vending machine stores" lost their advantage with the rise of convenience stores, and gradually disappeared.


However, even today, there are still relatively many such "vending machine stores" in our Gumma. Incidentally, I searched the Internet and found a website that specializes in "vending machine stores," and an independent survey there also found that the largest number of "vending machine stores" exist in the Gumma area (*Refer to "Nostalgic Vending Machines: Latest Operation Status & Complete List " #). I didn't expect it to be that far, but surely, if you ask me, that's why it doesn't look too different.


In fact, Gumma is one of the leading wheat-producing prefectures in the Kanto region, where people eat a lot of flour products such as udon, pasta, and bread, and it is also good at making this type of machine because of its history of sericulture and a thriving textile industry that used the raw silk obtained from sericulture until a decade ago. Incidentally, Gumma also has many manufacturers of instant foods, such as Maruka Foods for "Peyoung Sauce Yakisoba" and Sanyo Foods for "Sapporo Ichiban" to name a few.


In the main story of the anime, the main character, Kozuki, visits such "vending machine stores. There, he encounters a vending machine that sells udon and soba noodles, which he has never seen before. While eating the instant udon he bought from the vending machine, he thinks to himself that the store looks somewhat like a shelter. Then a mysterious person appears and tells him a startling fact. The "vending machine store," which was built at the height of the Cold War, is a comprehensive strategic base with food, entertainment facilities (you know, the table game machines), and perfect security!　Gunma has been a politically important base that has produced four prime ministers since the end of World War II, so it is imperative that Gunma be protected!


No, no, no, that's too much of a footnote, uncle. It's not that big a deal (laughs).

(Editorial Department, Kamata)

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