Starting from character plushies and stickers in the 1980s, Itasha (痛車) has become more and more popular with bigger, bolder stickers and paint schemes. It involves decoration the bodies of cars by otakus with fictional characters of anime, manga or video games (especially bishōjo game or eroge). Most of the time moe moe and kawaii characters are used and these cars can be commonly seen in places in Japan like Akihibara in Tokyo, Nipponbashi in Osaka, Ōsu in Nagoya. Inferring from the word, ita deriving from the word itai (痛い), which means pain, and sha (車), which means car, itasha (痛車) is 'painful' to the wallet as it's rather costly.
Some images of itasha (痛車):
Some eroge ones:
And the super cool one:
More in Gigazine, The Mainichi Daily News.
The itasha style of design can also be found on motorcycles (痛単車), bicycles (痛チャリ), aircrafts, computer cases, and many many other items. Some of the in-vehicular electronics, such as GPS, are reported to have been customized to character voices (similar to the Nanami-theme introduced along with the Japanese version of Windows 7).
And look! There's even a life-sized Saber to keep you company!
And look! There's even a life-sized Saber to keep you company!
I guess I have to save up in order to own my very own 痛車 in the future. As for now, I can only try to find a nice skin for my laptop or get a bicycle and create a 痛チャリ!
Credits of some information and images to Wikipedia, Animesuki forum thread, dannychoo.com and those that I did not mention.
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