This cute character from Studio Ghibli gets up to mischief in the kitchen, nails it with a frightening result.

While its total box-office earnings may have been surpassed recently by the smash hit anime Your Name, Howl’s Moving Castle still has something that the former doesn’t: a range of character-branded cookware. Still, the jury’s out on whether the items in the collection have the same charm as the original characters in the Studio Ghibli-produced movie, particularly after this cooking incident was shared on Twitter recently.

▼ “My 4-year-old was sick but still full of energy, so we made pancakes to pass the time. We used this Calcifer frypan, which we’d received as a birthday present.”

The frypan, which can be purchased for 1,944 yen (US$17.84) from retailers such as Studio Ghibli specialty store Donguri Kyowakoku, isn’t a fancy product, but its appeal lies in the fact that it imparts the shape of Calcifer, the fire demon from Howl’s Moving Castle, onto pancakes when batter is fried on its surface. Seeing as Calcifer lives in the hearth of Howl’s home in the animated movie, the frypan is a perfect marketing idea for a collaborative product, with people loving the idea of being able to ingest the flame spirit once his face appears on an adorable pancake. Well, that’s the theory anyway, because this Twitter user shows what the end result can actually end up looking like.

▼ “It turned out to be a little different from what I’d imagined.”

Calcifer must have been angry that day, because the pancake they made ended up having a frightening facial expression. After @poyoyome shared the cooking fail on Twitter, commenters chimed in with their ideas of what the pancake face looked like.

“This is like one of those kaiju monsters from Ultraman!”
“It reminds me of the character Bero from the ’60s anime series ‘Yōkai Ningen Bem’.”
“I think it looks more like Edvard Munch’s painting, The Scream.”
“It’s like something from a horror film!”

“You’ve just created some stunning food art – pancake burn mark art.”

It’s true that pancake art does actually exist, even without the use of a specially made frypan, as we’ve seen some amazing animals, anime characters and even edible works of art featuring the likes of Super Mario and Pikachu. Let’s just hope @poyoyome reduces the heat on the batter next time, so they can please that demon spirit and go from pancake nightmare to pancake masterpiece!

Source: Togech
Featured image: Twitter/@poyoyome