Final Fantasy VII's Sephiroth Has Taken Up Brewing

Video games featuring marketing tie-ins with food and beverages is certainly nothing new--especially in Japan, where beloved game characters have been hawking things like ramen seasoning for decades. However, this latest campaign--a tie-up between famed international beverage-maker Asahi and Square-Enix's Final Fantasy VII Rebirth--is deliciously strange in all the right ways.

Asahi introduced a canned alcoholic chu-hai beverage in Japan called Mirai no Lemon Sour (Future Lemon Sour) in 2024, with distribution spreading across Japan in 2025. Chu-hai's been growing in popularity in recent years, and Asahi set out to differentiate itself from the competition with a unique gimmick: an actual lemon slice miraculously crammed into every can. Pop the lid open, and the lemon slice floats up to the surface to flavor up your drinking experience. A strange gimmick, but one that seems to have been successful in the market.

So what does Final Fantasy and Sephiroth have to do with any of this? Well, Sephiroth's famous ultra-long sword, the Masamune--you know, the one that's killed Aerith and also skewered Mario that one time--would certainly be useful for chopping up those floating lemon slices in Mirai no Lemon Sours, right? And that's exactly what our beautiful boy does, hacking a lemon into thin slices before savoring his handiwork by taking a refreshing sip of his new favorite adult beverage.