My Hero Academia Itasha Car
In the last couple of months across the United States and throughout the many pages of the Internet, a little black My Hero Academia car has been making appearances more frequently and has become quite recognizable. I have always wanted to create an anime car of my own but spent several years just brainstorming the idea. For those of you unknown with the term "itasha", it pretty much translates to "painful car", which is quite accurate considering how much of a pain it costs or how cringeworthy it can be to the general public. With that said, I have spent many years trying to research a good character, series, and theme to go with the design that I wanted for a vehicle, but for some reason, I was never able to bond with any concept I went for. Itasha cars, for the most part, focus on the typical waifu plastered on the hood or the sides of the vehicle. While I respect the idea of other male drivers putting their waifus on their cars, that was something that wasn't for me. As a gay man, I have no reason to put a waifu in the vehicle art so I wanted to be different. I began trying out with Vocaloid since my car was part of the ToyotaxHatsuneMiku collaboration, but seeing that there are too many Miku cars around, I threw that idea out the window. Then I went and tried Nightwing, the DC Comics character. While I do love Dick Grayson in all his forms, I felt that a Japanese vehicle wouldn't be the best theme so I had to divorce myself from the idea. Then Yuri on Ice came and went and while the series left a huge impact on me, it was unfortunately cut short due to its short stay and of course I just wasn't happy with the design in the end. As soon as Yuri on Ice came to an end, I began watching an anime based on a superhero world named My Hero Academia.
I learned through word of mouth that watching this would be something that I would definitely enjoy and possibly care to continue watching. Upon watching the first couple of episodes, I immediately got hooked into this series and fell in love with a little green-haired boy named Izuku Midoriya. Izuku started out as a weakling who was always being the target of bullying and growing up as someone who was always bullied, I related to him in that regard. While I began to wonder how to incorporate Izuku or Deku as he is commonly called into my design, I also wondered how the design itself should come about. The character and the series were pretty much set in stone already, so the next step was thinking of how the final product will look. My vehicle design underwent major overhauls (ha! Overhaul), including color scheme changes, complete character edits or removals, to minor tweaks like what fonts to use and how to arrange the layouts. I stuck around with my boring stock Corolla since it's what I already had and just like Deku, the car was pretty much nothing special, nothing to stick out of the crowd, and just plain ordinary. That was another huge contributor toward the character selection, the mere fact that I saw so many similarities in both that it would be a sin to pass up on this character. Just when I thought I had the perfect design and went to the print shop, the installer recommended I change up the colors from vibrant reds and blues to sticking with black as the primary background. I took his creative criticism and went ahead with it.
After much trial and error, my designs were coming together. I had always made small design projects that ultimately ended up hidden in my hard drive or would be going to my employers with no fun in them as its all business-related, this was something new to me. I had never designed anything for a vehicle or anything at a large scale for that matter, so to me, this was a first for a lot of things. After almost two years of designing, and the extended time in the installation of the wrap, the itasha was coming to life.
Since its creation, I have been to multiple conventions across the United States, many of them have invited me as a guest to their convention. I've joined a group of itasha drivers known as East Coast Itasha, and from there I was able to grow more into this community. My vehicle has also made the rounds on Funimation's social media and became officially recognized by them. I now have an open door invitation to the studio whenever I am in the area so that is definitely a kind gesture on their behalf. Many of the cast involved in the series either knows of the car or has actually been around it in person. Some of the actors involved in the anime have become fans of the vehicle as well. Recently, the car was admired by the Japanese band Brian the Sun who is known for performing the first ending theme and they absolutely loved it. My car has also made the rounds on Reddit multiple times and every time it has appeared, the fans seem to love it. Part of my Deku car also includes my friend who also doubles as my very own Deku model. He's a relatively new cosplayer but his cosplay has indeed made me super happy and I welcomed him on board. Wherever I travel to cons, he also comes along as part of the adventure.
The itasha car has definitely made more of an impact than I expected and has since been the inspiration for other people to start on this hobby as well and honestly can't be any more grateful for the overwhelming love and support that the My Hero Community has given me and my car. For that, I say thank you to each and every one of you who have been behind me every step of the way.
