September 2017. This is one of the oldest titles still sitting in the Nolimit City catalogue, and the kawaii cartoon styling tells you that immediately. Smiling onigiri rice triangles, a wide-eyed orange salmon nigiri, a Waillon Mayo bottle parody, salt and pepper grinders, a ceramic sake bottle, and a purple-pink daikon radish all bounce around a wooden cutting board reel frame. Behind the grid sits a dim restaurant kitchen with hanging knife, whisk, and bowl silhouettes. The wordmark itself looks like red sauce splattered with a chef cleaver stuck through it.
Four features run the show, and they chain into each other rather than living in separate boxes. Symbols jump into place instead of spinning. Any payline win removes the contributing icons, the rest drop down, fresh ones fall from the top, and the cascade continues. Three consecutive wins on the same drop arm Kamisabi Second Chance, which only fires after the next dead spin. It removes 4 to 6 random symbols from reels 1, 2 and 3 to force another collapse, skips wild positions entirely, and carries no per-spin activation cap. A single triggering chain can keep looping until a no-win round finally lands without wild protection.
Bunshin Wilds occupy reels 2, 3 and 4 in the base game. Each one clones itself and randomly throws two extra copies onto the board, with a stated ceiling of 15 covered positions on a 15-cell grid. The name references Bunshin no Jutsu, the shadow-clone technique from Naruto, which clicks once you spot the blue masked ninja with the small throwing knives across its back.
Free spins skip the usual scatter count and require a specific combination. Hit a paying win on Salmon, Rice and Soy inside the same base spin and 10 Wild Sushi Free Spins drop in. From there a 3-step Sushi Meter takes charge. Three ingredient wins flip every Soy on the reels into a wild. Six steps adds Rice. Nine steps adds Salmon, leaving only the condiments paying anything other than wild substitutions. Conversion is cumulative and locks for the rest of the round.
For a 2017 build, the meter is the genuinely interesting bit. Pre-x-mechanic NLC mostly leaned on respin tiers and stacked wilds, so a layered meter that quietly rewrites the symbol set was ahead of its time. One frustrating quirk: the meter doesn't carry between retriggers, so reaching Level 3 needs one long uninterrupted run rather than patient accumulation.