Alinamin V (アリナミンV)

 

Today's drink is the Alinamin V from the Takeda Pharmaceutical Company. The first thing you might notice with this is that it's very small. There's only 50ml of this compared to 100ml which is what you would find in a normal energy drink in Japan. However, the amount of vitamins and god-knows-what does not differ much which means that it's that concentrated.
The drink contains Fursultiamine, a derivative of thiamine(Vitamin B1) which was developed in Japan by Takeda Pharmaceutical Company in the 1960s and is incorporated into most, if not all Alinamin products.

Taste:
The taste is bitter and sweet at the same time. This is one of the most bitter energy drinks I've done a review on. However, it's not disgustingly bitter, it's just slightly bitter which is actually quite nice. However, you might need a little time to get used to it. As for me, I still haven't gotten used to this taste.....definitely not my favorite.

Price:
about 150yen

Effect:
The effects of this are normal. When I say the effects of an energy drink is "normal", I mean that it is in the same range as the normal Tivovita, S-CUP, Lipovitan-D, etc which are all about 150yen.

Dekavita C (デカビタC)

Ok here's our first carbonated drink on this blog. It is the "Dekavita C" from a company called Suntory. This drink is not medicinal so you are able to drink this more than once a day and even if you're less than 15 years old. There's 0.67mg of vitamin B1, 0.76mg of vitamin B2, 1mg of vitamin B6, 1.4micrograms of vitamin B12, 95mg of vitamin C, 8.6mg of niacin(B3), 0.9-3.7mg of pantothenic acid, and 1.2mg of vitamin P(flavonoid) in 100ml of this.
"Deka" means "big" in Japanese and "vita" stands for "vitamins", and the "C" stands for vitamin C, hence the name "Dekavita C". There's 210ml of liquid in this thing so it is quite large if you compare it to medicinal energy drinks which are usually 100ml.

Taste:
The carbonation gives the drink a nice kick to it, unlike most energy drinks in Japan. The taste is not fruity and tastes similar to Oronamin C. There's nothing too special about it except for the slight honey-like taste, most likely due to the royal jelly.

Price:
about 120yen

Effects:
Well, you can't compare this to medicinal energy drinks, just a small boost in energy.

Lipovitan D Super (リポビタンDスーパー)

This is the Lipovitan D Super energy drink from the Taisho Pharmaceutical Company.
First of all, this is different from the original, blue Lipovitan D energy drink and all the other baseline energy drinks from the fact that it has 2000mg of taurine in it. If you want to know what taurine is, check out my S-CUP post. Other than that this has 5mg each of vitamins B2(riboflavin) and B6, 10mg of vitamin B1(Thiamine), 20mg of Niacin(B3), 130mg of Ginseng extract(A type of traditional Chinese medicine), 10mg of vitamin E, 300mg of arginine hydrochloride, 50mg of caffeine, and 100mg of inositol. 


Taste:
The taste is very sweet and has a peach-like flavor to it. 

Price:
about 260yen(expensive)


Effect：
The effect is phenomenal compared to all the other baseline products.  I drank it and immediately, I began to feel the effects of the drink. It's like you took a Lipovitan D and multiplied the effects x2. On the other hand, I would have been disappointed if I didn't get this much of an energy boost with this 260-yen product.

Tiovita (チオビタ)

Today's energy drink is Tiovita! It is the flagship energy drink of the Taiho Pharmaceutical Company. The ingredients in this power pack is similar to all the flagship(baseline) energy drinks in Japan; 1000mg taurine, 5mg each of Vitamins B1, B2, and B6, etc.

Taste:

The taste of this is very sweet and has a medicine flavor to it.  Definitely not my favorite. The sweetness does not have any fruitiness to it, it's just plain sweet....period. And the medicine taste doesn't help much either.

Price:

about 150 yen

Effect:

So I drank one of these and I became recharged quite quickly. Nothing special. Just as what you'd expect from a 150 yen energy drink in Japan......which means Tiovita=S-Cup=Lipovitan D=Arinamin=etc....