The YouTubers behind the channel Kamiwaza are living every toy-loving kid’s dream.
“I think I have about 200 Nerf guns at home,” co-founder Tomohiro says. The 30-year-old creator remembers playing with the toy guns — which shoot felt darts topped off by a suction cup-like top — since junior high school.
This enduring infatuation with plastic blasters manifests itself in Kamiwaza's videos, which offer a fever-dream interpretation of childhood imagination. The channel’s Nerf-centric works recreate video game madness in the real world. Adopting a first-person viewpoint, the uploads feature a main character shooting baddies in animal masks and going on various missions — “secure the sushi,” “eliminate all hostiles” — set in hot spring hotels, trampoline gyms and all kinds of places where kids might imagine holding epic battles with their friends.