The Internet Just Rediscovered That a Japanese Politician Chisato Morishita Once Played Samus

A Japanese politician, Chisato Morishita, has gone viral after the internet rediscovered her surprising past as the live-action Samus Aran in ads for Metroid: Zero Mission back in the early 2000s.

It is not hard to see why this story has captured so much attention online. The idea of someone who once wore the iconic Zero Suit costume now serving as a serious government official is the kind of unexpected crossover that the internet cannot help but obsess over. So who exactly is Morishita, and what is the story behind those memorable ads?

Chisato Morishita currently serves as Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Environment within the Prime Minister's cabinet and holds a seat in the House of Councillors.

Before stepping into the political spotlight in 2019, she had a well-established career as a gravure idol and actress. For those unfamiliar with the term, a gravure idol is a model who primarily appears in advertisements and magazines catered toward male audiences. Throughout the 2000s, Morishita appeared in a variety of TV shows, movies, and commercial campaigns.

Her most memorable role from that era, as it turns out, was portraying Zero Suit Samus in a series of print and filmed advertisements for Metroid: Zero Mission, a Game Boy Advance remake that released in 2004.

In the commercial, Morishita wears the sleek Zero Suit and crawls through a series of vents while exchanging shots with unseen enemies before eventually transforming into Samus' powerful Varia Suit.

What makes this story even more fascinating is the reason she was cast in the first place. According to an interview Morishita gave to Famitsu Weekly back in 2013, she was personally handpicked by Metroid co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto to portray Samus. Sakamoto reportedly felt that her intense stare perfectly captured the strength and conviction of the character. Despite her long black hair being quite different from Samus' signature blonde look, Morishita's portrayal quickly became iconic thanks to the commercial's distinctive visual style.

Her involvement with Metroid did not stop at the ads, either. Morishita also wrote a Play Diary for the official Metroid: Zero Mission website, which surprisingly still functions to this day. A sweepstakes campaign was even tied to her appearance, offering fans signed prizes, including t-shirts and cardboard standees of Morishita as Samus, to whichever players submitted the fastest completion times.