Tragedy strikes a man who loves his car and two anime porn game girls.
Itasha get their name by combining ita and sha, which respectively mean “painful” and “car” in Japanese. The idea is that these cars, covered in anime character graphics, are so dorky that they’re painful to look at.
However, Japanese Twitter user Kuronosu’s itasha isn’t just painful to the eyes of non-fans, its story is also a dagger in the heart for anyone who’s ever felt an attachment to an art project they poured their soul into or a vehicle they loved.
On Saturday, February 24, Kuronosu, a resident of Aichi Prefecture’s Toyota City, proudly tweeted that his itasha project was complete, and that the following day he’d be sharing pictures of his Suzuki Swift hatchback decked out with images of Nanami Arihara and Hazuki Nijoin, characters in pornographic computer game Riddle Joker from developer Yuzu Soft. Even the employees of Art Bomb, the shop that prepared and applied the wrapping, were excited, sharing snapshots of the vehicle through its official Twitter account.
On Sunday, Kuronosu’s first full day with his Nanami-and-Hazuki-themed itasha, he drove 50 minutes from his home to Mikawawan Skyline, one of Aichi’s most popular mountain roads for motoring enthusiasts.
As he shared pics online, friends and acquaintances chimed in, with Kuronosu promising to give them prior notice next time he was headed to Mikawawan Skyline so that they could meet up and see his new itasha in person. Even the local police seemed to be enjoying his rolling porn game tribute, with a patrol officer Kuronosu chatted with suggesting “If you’re going to go that far, you might as well add a character with his dick showing…I think you might be able to get around public indecency laws as long as it’s an illustrated dick.”
▼ We wouldn’t recommend pushing the envelope of public indecency laws, though.
On Monday night, he stopped by a branch of discount retailer Don Quiojote…
…and swapped out his wheels and tires for a lighter-weight, higher-grip combo in preparation for a track day on February 26.
So far this all sounds pretty great. Having your car look just the way you want it, going for a drive through a twisty mountain pass, and having enough time in your schedule to let lose on a closed track on a Tuesday is pretty much a car enthusiast’s dream come true. Kuronosu showed up at the track bright and early Monday morning, but his fun day was cut short when, before it was even 10:30, this happened.
Approaching a bend in the course at about 100 kilometers per hour (62 miles per hour), Kuronosu discovered he was trying to carry too much speed through the corner. From the angle his car ended up at, it looks like the front-wheel-drive Swift lost traction to its front wheels and understeered right into the outside guard rail, striking it with enough force to get halfway over it.
Thankfully, Kuronosu escaped with no greater injuries than whiplash and a few non-life-threatening cuts to his head. With the obvious devotion he has to the Nanami and Hazuki, you might expect him to already be in the process of repairing the car, but unfortunately he says that the impact was so powerful that the engine is beyond salvaging, and that it would cost more than it’s worth to get his Swift running again.
▼ No, that will not buff out.
And so Kuronosu’s itasha is officially totaled, after just four days in its Riddle Joker-saluting form. But hey, if Kuronosu isn’t going to bother fixing it, maybe he can at least pull one of the body panels off and hang it up in his home as the world’s most unique anime poster.
Sources: Hachima Kiko, Twitter/@ARTBOMB2
Follow Casey on Twitter, where he looks forward to reuniting with his car and letting it know how much he missed it by revving it to redline.