Since its heyday beginnings, Wired has suffered from what my (Japanese) wife characterizes as “yellow fever:” A fetish for Japanese women. Wired’s repeat offender “Japanese Schoolgirl Watch” is legend. Actually, Japanese schoolgirls are not much to look at, unless you are a pedophile and have a yen for plaid skirts and bobby socks. How does a lowly Lambo Gallardo get into Wired? It must look like a Manhattan subway car that was attacked by spray-can-wielding Japanese schoolgirls. This $>200K Gallardo belongs Japanese Age-Soft’s CEO Yoshida. He made the money to acquire the Lambo (and other likewise tagged wheels) with hentai videogames. “Hentai” means “pervert” in Japanese, but according to my wife (bless her heart) in Japan, that can be an honorific. Painting cars with manga characters is a new and somewhat itai (painful) Japanese fad. [Again, Autoblog gets it wrong. They write “In Japan, Otaku are the rabid fans of anime.” No true. Otaku is Japanese for geek. Ota-ku is also a ward in the south of Tokyo. Go figure.]
I love anime, my user name DearS comes from an pervy anime actually. I really do not appreciate the critisism of ecchi (sexual humor/play) anime fans. I have a very healthy relationship with sex, and a big part of my learning has come from artistic expression and illumination in anime. (Sorry if that sounds to good to be true). Considering societies religious shaming and condemning of many things sexual, to guys and girls going to the other extreme and having sex with who ever is willing, I found anime to be my median to some degree. Anime expression offers a much bigger, inclusive, spiritual, free, and kind view of sexual acts and romance than most of society. That is why it keeps growing. Please do not perceive the viewers of anime to be perverts without a life or respect for females. Pervy Anime viewers love to explore any and all possibilities about sex without harming others and without shaming. There is a lot more about Otaku fans than meets the eye, many of the things that seem sick to the world about anime are used only symbolically in anime and by fans. Perverseness ie. people being hound dogs is accepted and explore by Otaku, from all angles, its definitely something I find worth watching and appreciating.
As for cars and anime, I definately want to see cars evolve from being painted a single color, I like to see anime on a car, its not such a serious issue to me whether it looks out of place in a lot ways.
a scene from DearS….
Ahhh…!! My eyes!! They burn…!!!
No criticism involved. We are card carrying hentai. Meet you in Kabukicho!
hmmm can I post a comment from mobile safari or not?
@elloh7: No problem, I do it all the time. However, with Mobile Safari 8.0 on an HTC Cruze I have to kill the cache between TTAC pageviews …. otaku-attack!
“Otaku” is generally considered to come from some the ones written about in the first article to refer to themselves in the third-person. It’s literally something like “your house/family”.
Otaku come in all kinds of flavors. My aunt knew the term before I told her, she had a train otaku in one of her classes back in Cali.
The car is even a bit cool. I mean, it’s a Lambo, it’s supposed to be outrageous. At least they didn’t use art from some “loli” game.
Why did this jackass defile a perfectly fine Lancia Stratos?
I don’t like anime (I’m also pretty ignorant about it, and could conceivably warm up to it if I understood what it was about. Or not), but the colors on the Gallardo, which I do rather like, remind me of the psychedelic VWs of the late ’60s, which I still love.
Mr. Bertel Schmitt fair enough.
This, and this, explain it all. Or not.
[links are SFW]
Hmmm… previous “This” link didn’t work.
Try this
http://www.collegeslackers.com/daily_images/36.jpg
Damn… One more time…
http://unmotivationalposters.com/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=24&g2_serialNumber=2
Tentacle action gave me an entire different outlook upon life.
I still miss my slant-6 and three-on-the-tree, however.
money no object I would still never do this to a gallardo, that being said, I do kind of like it. The palette is quite nice and the anime look fits the gallardo’s shapes. on the other hand, what they did to the stratos is horrible.
When can we expect the Pikachu version of the new Mazda 3 ?.
I would just like to point out that Wired’s comment that “the otaku are rabid fans of anime”, while a generalization, is true. Particularly if you are speaking of the specific group of otaku that Wired would be aiming at. Akihabara, Tokyo’s electronics district, is full of anime shops and “cos play” places. In fact, this subculture is so well known, that there is a term specifically for these people. It’s “Akiba-ke” or Akihabara people.
I’m a huge fan of anime, but not on cars.
I’d rate that as slightly less cool than greasy adolescents wearing brightly coloured DragonballZ shirts. In fact I would expect said adolescent to climb out of that thing, flush with cash from career computer hacking but still unable to comprehend why people avoid talking to him.
I once saw the Pikachu-Beetle driving on the opposite side of the freeway. It was quite neat!
http://www.cjonline.com/images/082798/daypokemonb.jpg
Mekira:
Those Pikachu-Beetle’s are Nintendo’s doing, they had them made up for trade show events like E3 and the like.
It think they look great. Wouldn’t be caught dead driving it though. :)