50-100 prank calls a day wipes out reservations

Masaya Obi, the original lead actor for the tokusatsu series Denkō Chōjin Gridman had resorted to Twitter to air his concern about prank callers clogging his restaurant's phone line. Obi says that he had to pull the phone line from his restaurant on January 2 because of a deluge of calls and made the business' location private on tabelog, a restaurant search engine, as well as Facebook.

The restaurant is Obi's figurative bread and butter and he's worried he'll have to close shop due to lack of reservations now that he's limited the location's public info to deter pranksters.

Before these problems began, Obi went on Twitter to connect with SSSS.Gridman anime fans. His popularity grew but he also found himself a target along with his newfound fame. He removed his restaurant's advert from his Twitter banner and wrote in December, "We do not sell Gridman items at the restaurant, and I must turn down fans regarding photos, autographs, or questions regarding the original Gridman."

He went on to say “This is essentially a biker bar, and that's how I like it. I don't want to have a scene where fans overwhelm my regular customers.”

In his last tweet in the series, Obi seems like he doesn't want to take all his woes out on Gridman fans, explaining that “blocking fans is easy, but I don't want to do that.” He plans to stay off the social media platform for now and has since deleted his account.

Studio Trigger's SSSS.Gridman anime series is loosely based on the 1990s Denkō Chōjin Gridman live-action show. It was also the basis of DiC's American television edit Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad .

Source: Masaya Obi's Twitter (now deleted) via Yara-on!