The sun hadn’t set when we arrived at the restaurant. As my brother pulled into the parking lot, the sporty black sedan stood out. It had an unusual custom paint job, with colorful Anime characters displayed on the side of the car. My eagle eyes expected the car to be a Japanese model, but I didn’t recognize it. I also couldn’t make out the characters from the back seat window.
If you live off the grid and never heard of it, Anime is the Japanese name for “animation”. And if you’re old enough, you might have seen the cartoon Astro Boy on TV during the mid-1960’s. It was one of the first Anime productions shown in the USA. As a kid, I preferred Superman to the stop-motion Astro Boy. That was then.
This is now. There are a lot of popular Japanese Anime movies and TV shows. Anime cartoons are characterized by stark colors, dazzling characters, and action-filled plots. My kids always liked Anime movies, like Spirited Away. Maybe I’ll recognize one of the characters, I thought.
Back to the car…I knew anyone driving this car must want it to be seen. So, always looking for a good car story, I walked over to get a closer look and take a few car photos.
Hmm…how to describe what happened next? Well, the comic characters turned out to be more Playboy-like than Little Mermaid. Awkward! Didn’t mean to look! It felt like I had innocently clicked the wrong button and my computer screen jumped to a porn site! My pulse quickened.
But we’re out in public and obviously, the car is street legal, I reminded myself. It was just my over-reaction to seeing something I didn’t expect to see. I studied the characters from up close. Most of them were scantily clad young women posed provocatively against the faded black paint. There seemed to be a common theme. They all had big, round eyes, narrow waists, and chests that Dolly Parton would be envious of. If I was 13 years old, I would have traded my rarest Mickey Mantle baseball card for one of those decals, if only I had that card. The New York Times reported Mickey’s rookie card recently sold for $12.6M.
The characters weren’t painted on. They were decals. The car, which I didn’t recognize, was a BMW 3 series. I once had a black 325i similar to this, and yet, the decals camouflaged it to the point where I didn’t recognize my own car! Like I’ve said before, I’m not very observant at times…
Then I noticed how the word “Waifu” shows up in different places on the car. A Waifu, in the Anime world, is the ideal imaginary girlfriend, representing beauty, character, skills, sense of humor, and intelligence.
My immediate thought, after viewing the car up close was, “Who did this and what were they thinking?” It’s not for me to judge, but inquiring minds like to know.
I was perplexed. What’s the real story behind the car? Is the car supposed to be a chick magnet? Is the owner a Video Gamer living in a Virtual World surrounded by imaginary girlfriends? Or did a crazy friend cover the faded paint job with stickers when the owner wasn’t looking?
A quick Google identified a Japanese car culture built around Anime movie characters. Each character has a unique super power and personality. Check out Japan Insider to see a video tour of a car show featuring sports cars wrapped in different Anime themes. Also, Itasha Racing is known for their Anime-wrapped drift cars.
I’ll never know the car owner or what their motivation was for covering their car with Anime decals. But after learning more about Japanese drift cars, maybe the owner races his car on weekends or displays it at car shows. it doesn’t really matter why he decorated his ride this way. The car is unique and it’s better to leave the answer to this Car Story question to your own imagination!
Decorative Rear Window