Sushi Monsters

Submission 25,302

Part of a series on Mukbang / Eatcast. [View Related Entries]

Featured Episode

About

Sushi Monsters, also known as sushimonsters or sushi.monsters, refers to a Ukrainian mukbang and ASMR channel on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram featuring two guys who eat predominantly sushi. The duo grew a large following in early 2023, leading to Sushi Monsters memes, specifically ones on TikTok that used their catchphrase "Black Pencil," among other pencil-related phrases, that they'd use to describe long pieces of food when eating it. The men saying "Amerima," as in, a mispronunciation of the word "America," also became a meme.

Online History

The Sushi Monsters duo consists of two Ukrainian men named Vlad and Pavlusha, whose respective Instagram accounts are @v.katsuba^[1] and @pavlusha_shs.^[2]

Sushi Monsters uploaded their first, still-accessible video to YouTube^[3] and TikTok^[4] on August 31st, 2022. On YouTube, the short gained roughly 5.7 million views and 172,000 likes in nine months. On TikTok, it gained roughly 7.1 million plays and 306,800 likes in eight months (shown below). The video featured Vlad eating sushi, which ultimately became their mukbang channel's primary food.

Going into early 2023, the Sushi Monsters became increasingly viral on both Instagram and YouTube as they started to develop certain patterns in their content. For instance, their videos predominantly began with them blindfolded, choosing between two options which were most often countries. This resulted in memes from their content based on how they pronounced the countries.

Following

As of May 12th, 2023, Sushi Monsters had gained roughly 3 million followers on TikTok,^[10] roughly 1.67 million subscribers on YouTube^[11] and roughly 45,600 followers on Instagram.^[12]

Amerima

The first meme based on their channel was how Vlad pronounced "America," which first happened on March 9th, 2023, in a TikTok^[7] where Vlad chose between "Amerima" and Italy, gaining roughly 475,100 likes in two months (shown below).

Black Pencil

On March 6th, 2023, Sushi Monsters posted a TikTok^[5] and, towards the end of the video, Vlad was seen holding a sausage and swaying it back and forth, calling it a "black pencil." The video gained roughly 13.1 million plays and 749,600 likes in two months (shown below, left). On April 21st, 2023, Sushi Monsters posted another black pencil-related TikTok^[6] in which Vlad had to choose between China and Nigeria while blindfolded. He chose Nigeria, resulting in him saying the catchphrase, gaining roughly 11.7 million plays and 863,800 likes in three weeks (shown below, right).

Vlad saying "black pencil" soon became a meme. For instance, the earliest known variant usage was uploaded by TikToker^[8] @.mihuil on March 25th, 2023, gaining roughly 386,300 plays and 18,400 likes in two months (shown below, left). On April 23rd, 2023, TikToker^[9] @sushi.monsters posted a compilation of all the "black pencil" moments using the 2019 2020 2021 2022 CapCut Template, gaining roughly 1 million plays and 28,900 likes in four weeks (shown below, right).