If you’ve already got people looking at your ride, you may as well say hi, and this otaku driver has an inventive way to do just that.
As the crossing point of automobiles and animation artwork, itasha are the intersection of two things that have movement as one of their core components. So when you stop and think about it, it’s a little ironic that when you see one of these cars covered with anime images, the characters themselves aren’t moving.
Of course, the reason why is that anime characters “move” because animators continually replace their drawings with ones that are ever-so-slightly different, a technique that just can’t applied to stickers placed on a car. However, it turns out there is a way to add some animation to your itasha, as seen by Japanese Twitter user @mikoto1270.
@mikoto1270, a fan of both cars and anime himself, was out on the road recently when he found himself behind a Mazda Axela (Mazda 3 overseas) hatchback. Plastered across the back window was a sticker of Renge, precocious jokester of the cast from rural life anime Non Non Biyori.
It’s pretty low-key as far as itasha art goes, but this Axela has a surprise in store when the driver turns on the rear window wiper, as Renge waves her outstretched hand in greeting to all the traffic behind her.
The simple yet previously unseen bit of ingenuity quickly earned nods of approval from other anime and automotive enthusiasts online, including one Twitter user who’d previously spotted the same car and photographed it from multiple angles.
So remember, the next time anyone sneers and says turning your car into a shrine to your favorite anime character proves how anti-social you are, you can take heart knowing that an itasha can also be the most outgoing car on the road.
Follow Casey on Twitter, where it’s a pretty sure bet this won’t be the last you hear from him about anime or Mazdas.
Source: Jin, Twitter/@mikoto1270, Twitter/@shionjiyu