I love it when foreign words officially enter the English dictionary. It shows that language is a fluid, ever-evolving thing, and considering today’s word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary as recently as 2021, it shows that, barring an Idiocracy-style collapse of civilization, that’s not likely to stop anytime soon…even if the probability of that collapse seems to be increasing every year. Anyway, onto today’s word.

mukbang, noun – a livestreamed video wherein the host eats a large quantity of food and chats with viewers

Learned from: Goddess of Victory: Nikke (PC, mobile)

Developed by Shift Up

Published by Level Infinite (2022)

Contrary to some of the other gacha games I’ve featured on here, Nikke is much more par for the course for the genre: You form a team of whatever scantily-clad anime girls the random number generator deems fit to give you, and then set off on a quest to save the world. Though, Nikke does do a few things that help it stand out.

First, the setting is post-apocalyptic instead of fantasy which, while not unique, is a nice change. Second, the gameplay is actually pretty enjoyable; it’s essentially a rail shooter, where your team of girls blasts away at evil robots using various types of guns with their own strengths and weaknesses, occasionally triggering special abilities, and whatnot. And if you get tired of that, there’s always something else to do: Play a tower defense minigame, or try a surprisingly competent Vampire Survivors clone, or a vertical-scrolling shmup (as in the recent Evangelion crossover event). And lastly, there’s the characters, themselves.

Even when you’re not getting familiar faces as guest stars in the crossover events, the girls you can recruit are generally fun and quirky. There’s the “core” group that moves the story along: Rapi, Anis, and Neon, a straight-laced soldier, a jaded tomboy, and an adorkable self-proclaimed spy, respectively. But the side characters can be a lot of fun, too. There’s Drake, the far-too-nice one who wants to be a supervillain; Ether, the mad scientist who just might actually be a supervillain; the gamer trio of Exia, Elegg, and Trony; and Belorta, the foodie who’s fond of playing pranks on people. And more, of course, but it’s Belorta that gives us today’s word.

Your troops will chat with you sometimes, and in one text message I got from Belorta, she tried to set up a mukbang with my character and her friend, Mica. At the time, I thought it was more of an eating competition, but it turns out mukbangs were (and possibly still are?) bizarrely popular spectator events in South Korea. Who knew?