I don't know exactly why some kind of Sengoku-era craze is sweeping Glorious Nippon, or for that matter if it's particularly new, but I'm more than happy to blame Sengoku Basara for these awesome-looking bento meals.

Fully microwaveable, these "Ikusa Bento" ("War Lunch") are aimed at 20-somethings and salarymen, the boxes are reusable and decorated with the emblems of the samurai they represent. The meals inside are also themed.

The best-looking one is the meal representing samurai warlord Naoe Kanetsugu. The character "Ai" (love), which was printed on his soldiers' banners, fully adorns the rice, inflaming the soul with manly power and energy. Other meals are themed around the newly minted icons Date Masamune and Sanada Yukimura.

Gigazine theorizes that were these bento made prior to the Sengoku Basara phenomenon, the meals would instead be centered around more traditionally remembered figures of the era such as Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Ieyasu Tokugawa. I'm inclined to agree, though a Nobunaga-themed meal would have to be quite demonic and poisonous to achieve the full pop-culture association.