Feeling Hungry? Try These Video-Game Themed Bento Boxes

There's a certain sense of artistry where food preparation is concerned, a certain touch you can imbue your meals with if you know what you're doing. With the right skills, you can turn a meal from mere sustenance into a whole different experience. This is a trend that's particularly common with a Japanese dish known as Bento.

For the uninitiated, Bento is a type of lunch-time meal which consists of rice, meat, and vegetables, the whole array arranged together in a box. It's a fairly traditional dish, often prepared for school and work lunches; it's also available at most restaurants which serve Japanese food. Those mass-produced meals rather pale in comparison to the stuff I'd like to share with you folks today - calling the ordinary stuff downright inadequate wouldn't be much of a stretch.

Most of the pieces below are a breed of bento known as Kyaraben-literally "Character Bento." This is a type of meal in which the food is shaped to resemble characters from manga, anime, or video games. 

The artist behind each box varies, from a few anonymous chefs to the incredibly talented Anna The Red right up to the fine folks over at Konami; who designed some fantastic Metal Gear Bento in celebration of the franchise's 25th anniversary.  Check out the gallery below, and tell me you wouldn't like to take a bite out of some of those meals. 

Thanks go to reddit user Comrad92 for posting the pics.