Ramen Slurp

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A stock Anime visual, when a character eats ramen by slurping it up in a single long, flowing mass. If interrupted during this process, they'll often stop mid-slurp and turn to look at whatever distracted them, resulting in a waterfall of noodles overflowing out of their mouth and down over their chin (this is usually their cue to realize what they've done and suck the hanging ramen into their mouth). Since this is hardly the most dignified of things to do, it usually helps emphasize the character's immaturity or childishness. If they're slurping from a styrofoam instant noodles cup, it carries an air of patheticness as well.

In many Korean Series, it is used to show the difference between commoners and the rich.

In certain Asian countries, this is actually considered good etiquette—if you were really enjoying the food, you would get ahead of yourself and get sloppy, right? In Japan itself there are some older folk who hold that slurping makes the ramen taste better, similar to the 'bubbling' of wine tasting.

Examples of Ramen Slurp include:


Anime

  • Dr. Layon from Zoids: New Century Zero does this more than once. It's definitely to help show how childish he actually is, despite his almost painful attempts at securing his dignity. The similarly-pathetic Tigers Team does it at one point as well.
  • Domeki, the Teenage Gadgeteer Genius of Dai-Guard, usually does this while hunched over in her Hacker Cave, analysing the newest Heterodyne or designing parts for Dai-Guard.
  • In the Pokémon anime, May is seen doing this (with nearly 30 bowls no less!) in her Image Song ending.
  • Hideki, Mako, Ichiro, and Yukika of Nerima Daikon Brothers do this as part of a song, including singing the sound of slurping.
  • Lupin III: Inspector Zenigata does this from time to time, seeing as he mostly eats that stuff due to his lengthy chase after the titular character not allowing for enough time for a full-course meal.

Film

  • Tampopo has a scene in which Japanese people are supposed to be learning how to eat spaghetti properly. Slurping ensues.

Live Action TV

Video Games

  • In Disgaea, the preview of episode 3 features Etna slurping a bowl of ramen.
  • Persona 3 and Persona 4 have really loud bits whenever the characters are in ramen shops.

Webcomics

  • In Great, ramen is a major plot point, so this type of slurping shows up a lot.

Western Animation

  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Pakku does this while training Aang in "The Waterbending Master". For an added bonus, he seems to be slurping not just noodles, but some sort of squid as well.