McDonald's Anime Recruitment Video

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About

The McDonald's Anime Recruitment Video refers to an anime-style promotional video made to attract job applicants for McDonald's restaurants in Japan. Following its release in late March 2016, the video widely circulated across the web, with many praising its animation and production quality.

Origin

On March 15th, 2016, the マクドナルド公式（McDonald’s）YouTube channel posted a video titled "Mirai no Watashi" ("The Future Me" in English), featuring the young girl Sumire Hibino who is trained by a senior McDonald's staff member (named Ikumi Hoshino) to be calm and confident in her work at the fast food restaurant. The ad directs viewers to the Japanese McDonald's website for further details on hiring and staff positions. The website showcases five characters (including Sumire and Ikumi), who belong to different age groups, each describing why they started working in McDonald's and their satisfaction with their new job. It has been announced that 4 more commercials will be released for the campaign, presumably starring the remaining four characters from the webpage.^[1]

[This video has been removed]

Spread

On March 18th, Reddit user Julliant submitted the video to /r/anime,^[2] where it gathered upwards of 1,600 votes (98% upvoted) and 370 comments. On March 20th, the AnimeBird YouTube channel uploaded a version of the video with English subtitles (shown bellow). Meanwhile, Anime News Network^[4] reported that there were several different variations of the ad for each region of Japan, featuring voices of the Japanese pop group AKB48.

Also on March 18th, The Verge^[5] published an article titled "McDonald's Anime Ad Needs Five Seasons and a Movie." The following day, the advertising news blog Co.Create^[3] published an article about the recruitment video. On March 21st, Tumblr^[7] user Ahndang posted an illustration inspired by the ad, referring to the protagonists as "McLesbians" (shown below). Within 24 hours, the post garnered upwards of 2,100 notes. On March 22nd, ComicBookResources^[6] published an article about the ad by writer Kevin Melrose, who described the video as "lovely and heartwarming."