Style combination · Contrasts

Itasha × Superflat

Superflat lifts otaku characters into the gallery as art-world theory; itasha keeps them in the car park as fan practice, so use Superflat for an ironic, flattened all-over field and itasha for a single beloved character at vehicle scale.

From the research on Itasha (Anime Character Car Graphics)

Mix them and make something Itasha Superflat

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Superflat, their arrangement from Itasha, the finish from Itasha. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Itasha (Anime Character Car Graphics) Superflat

Type from Itasha: Ornamented display
Eclectic mixing
Colour from Superflat: Full polychrome
Flat fields
Form from Superflat: Stylised figuration
Distortion & exaggeration
Composition from Itasha: Extreme scale contrast
Full bleed
Surface from Itasha: Gloss & highlights

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Itasha

Sure.

Bangers, standing in for Series title logos reproduced as decals from the anime's or game's own artwork, such as the 'HARUHI ISM' logo of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, the most common design among the itasha at Comic Market 71 (ASCII.jp, 3 January 2007)

Text · Superflat

The flat, saturated, cartoon-crowded look that Takashi Murakami named in his exhibition and manifesto Superflat (Tokyo, 2000; US tour 2001). It draws a line from Edo painting and prints to postwar anime and manga, and flattens high and low, art and merchandise into one plane. Smiling flowers, many-eyed characters and anime figures come in unshaded polychrome, smooth and glossy, cute and grotesque at once, sold as handbags and album covers as well as paintings. This entry follows the drawn core of Murakami and his Kaikai Kiki circle; the shows also held photography, video and sculpture.

Zen Maru Gothic; Superflat used Letters drawn into the character and Many-coloured repeated monogram

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Superflat, with a counter-accent from Itasha. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Itasha (Anime Character Car Graphics) Superflat

#fbfaf5 ground · 36%
#1a1a1a ink · 14%
#ffd900 accent · 18%
#ffd84a accent · 14%
#00a0e9 accent · 10%
#2f6fde accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #fbfaf5;
  --ink: #1a1a1a;
  --accent-1: #ffd900;
  --accent-2: #ffd84a;
  --accent-3: #00a0e9;
  --accent-4: #2f6fde;
  --font-display: "Bangers", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Maru Gothic", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Itasha (Anime Character Car Graphics): Itasha is a living fan community, and its own self-mocking name is not an invitation to sneer at owners, whose cars have been vandalised (the Japanese Wikipedia records 'itasha-gari', itasha hunting) and who have courted goodwill with tidy meets and even traffic-safety prayers at Kawasaki Daishi (Web Japan, 2019). The characters belong to publishers and studios: the Japanese Wikipedia notes that most itasha are made without licences and tolerated rather than approved, and AUTOCAR Japan (2020) reports that very few makers hold official permission, while a specialist shop reports more than 150 officially licensed works and calls licensing standard practice for reputable makers (Kuruma News, 2018), so design original characters or secure the rights rather than copying key art. Some itasha carry characters from adult (eroge) games (English Wikipedia), and the Japanese Wikipedia notes that such wraps may breach youth-protection ordinances, while local outdoor-advertising and landscape ordinances can apply to any vehicle wrap; stickers on the windscreen can break road traffic law and fail inspection (Kuruma News, 2019).

Superflat: Some canonical works use explicit otaku sexual imagery, such as Murakami's My Lonesome Cowboy (1998), and associated artists engage with lolicon art: Mr. describes himself as a lolicon and Henmaru Machino parodies it; never sexualise childlike figures. The mushroom-cloud skulls of Murakami's Time Bokan works and the title Little Boy, the name of the Hiroshima bomb, refer to the atomic bombings, and critics such as Dong-Yeon Koh argue that this victim narrative obscures Japanese aggression in China and Korea; do not use mushroom clouds or skulls as cute decoration. Handle borrowed Buddhist iconography and phrases, such as Kannon, with respect, and draw original characters and flowers: Mr. DOB, the smiling flowers and the Louis Vuitton monogram are owned designs.