Cars and anime are a time-honored pair. They go collectively like chocolate and peanut butter, as generations of exhibits from Speed Racer to MF Ghost have demonstrated, so it’s solely pure that studios maintain making stunning exhibits about racing. Now, although, a brand new pattern is cropping up time and again: Anime automobile adverts.
In the previous few years, we’ve seen three main automakers soar into the anime promoting market. Some have been a pure match, whereas others are simply downright unusual — main everybody to query what precisely the deal is. Why are so many automakers promoting to us with anime?
Toyota could have been the one to kick off the present pattern, immediately tying the then-new GT86 (or FR-S, relying in your area) to the AE86 because it appeared in Initial D. Toyota UK put out a live-action spot that includes a GT86 in Fujiwara Tofu Shop livery (primarily based off the unique automobile’s Fifth Stage look, judging by the hood) and some accompanying manga photoshops.
Then, for the launch of the second-generation 86, Toyota went even tougher with the now-dead FasterClass marketing campaign. A hybrid anime-live motion advert put Keiichi Tsuchiya behind the wheel of an 86, chasing down Takumi Fujiwara on a mountain cross.
From that hybrid, we went full anime, with Acura growing two “seasons” (a mixed eight minutes of footage) of Chiaki’s Journey to advertise the Type S suite. The present could have overpromised on the entire “being a show” factor, however Acura did collaborate with an animation studio to provide the entire thing — no live-action bits right here. Also, the character designs nonetheless slap.
Then, out of left discipline, Nissan obtained in on the pattern. Its implementation is a bit completely different, taking an angle that’s clearly impressed by Lo-Fi Girl, but it surely’s shut sufficient to the pattern that I’ll rely it. This one can be distinctive for being the one anime advert not to characteristic a efficiency automobile, as an alternative selling the Ariya as a peaceable driving expertise. I suppose the Z continues to be Brie Larson’s turf.
Then, simply days in the past, Toyota got here again once more. GRIP, a present seemingly centered round a nefarious self-driving automobile plot that should be unraveled by Toyota efficiency automobile drivers, dropped its first episode on YouTube earlier this week. GRIP clearly has some actual animation price range behind it, visually surpassing that of Chiaki’s Journey or the Lo-Fi Nissan, which all is sensible if you notice it comes from Korean studio DR Movie — sure, the studio with credit on tasks like One Punch Man, Your Name, and Diamond is Unbreakable, the unimpeachable greatest JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure anime arc. The studio labored on Evangelion for chrissakes.
Automakers have clearly determined that anime sells, and at the moment are placing actual money and time into tasks that use the medium to advertise their vehicles. The query is, why? Do these actually do any higher than stay motion, or Western animation, or 3D CGI? What is the cope with all these anime adverts?
Source: jalopnik.com