What's The Deal With Anime Characters On Cars?

You're mindlessly scrolling Instagram on the toilet, paying only half attention at best to the various cars the algorithm has decided you'll see, when you notice something that stands out from the bunch. A car, probably Japanese, covered bumper to bumper in graphics commemorating a single character. Maybe that character is someone you recognize, like Renault Alpine-driving Misato Katsuragi or Zero Two of "Darling in the FRANXX" fame, or maybe you have to Google who the hell Gawr Gura or Inugami Korone are. What you've just seen is itasha, and you've likely been seeing it more and more. 

Itasha comes from the Japanese "itai," meaning painful, and "sha," meaning car. They're "painful cars," or "cringe cars," so named for both their garish looks and for the people who drive them. In Japan those drivers would be called "otaku," though in the U.S. you're more likely to hear them called a "weeaboo" — a particular subgenre of sweaty nerd with a focus on Japanese culture. But from those inauspicious origins, itasha has risen to become a popular form of automotive self-expression. Unlike wild camber or aero-heavy widebody builds, itasha aren't aping their style from purpose-built drift or track cars. Instead, they're all about unapologetically shouting about a thing their driver likes. 

Itasha have been around for decades, but recent years have shown an uptick in their popularity online. This uptick coincides with a deviation from the traditional itasha form: Rather than dedicating a car to a specific anime character, more and more itasha are dedicated to vtubers — virtual YouTubers and Twitch streamers, whose expressive 2D or 3D models are synced up to their actor's voice and movement. 

Vtubers are some of the biggest personalities on Twitch and YouTube, and they're getting increasingly common as the subjects of itasha. Personalities like Ironmouse, Korone, and the now-graduated Gawr Gura are gracing the panels of more and more cars. Is vtuber itasha bordering on weirdly parasocial? Sure, absolutely. Only bordering, though.

Itasha is a great style of car modification because it's impossible to take it too seriously. The cringe, the pain, is right there in the name — there's a level of self-awareness that doesn't show up in track-inspired builds that pretend they're all about objective downforce metrics. Itasha is fun, it's a little bit silly, and it's a neat way to merge automotive and non-automotive interests in a unique manner.