Term · Anime fandom
Itasha
A car with an anime character printed across the door, named for the pain of looking at it.
In Otakana the clue reads: Car wrapped in character decals
- Type
- Term
- Series
- Anime fandom
- Letters
- 6 · Hard
Itasha is a vehicle wrapped in character artwork, usually printed on vinyl and laid over the paint. Owners commission the layouts, match the wheels and interior to the colour scheme, and treat the whole car as one large piece of merchandise that happens to drive. The scene has its own meets, its own photographers, and a heavy presence in the Comic Market car park.
The name is a pun with two layers. Itai means painful and sha means car, so an itasha is a painful car: painful to look at, and painful to the wallet once the wrap has been paid for. It also plays on itasha as a short form of Italian car, a nickname imported enthusiasts had already been using among themselves.
The look now covers anything with wheels. Itansha for motorcycles, itachari for bicycles, and there are aircraft and boats wearing the same treatment for promotional campaigns. Some are corporate tie-ins with a budget behind them. Most are one person, one favourite character, and an invoice from a wrap shop they would rather not discuss at length.
Spelling ITASHA
ITASHA is six letters and three beats, i-ta-sha. The last one is the trap: the kanji 車 alone reads kuruma, but inside a compound it reads sha, which is why the word ends in nothing resembling car. SH is the only consonant pair in the row, so once you find it the rest is vowels.