The Acura Anime

Is it any good?!?! (And what a Car company making an Anime means for the Industry.)

Acura making an Anime (Watch Here) represents a win for everyone. You read that correctly. The car company, Acura released “Type S: Chiaki’s Journey”, a promo advertisement/short video series produced in Japan on January 20th, 2022. This is not the first time a car company has dabbled in anime, with Toyota making a commercial with a driver racing the AE86 from Initial D. So how is it, and why does this matter.

Acura’s Anime kinda sucks. As of January 20th, a singular episode has been released on the Acura YouTube page, lasting a whopping 1 minute. The animation is crisp and very fluid, but all other aspects of the “show” are lacking. The character design, dialogue, and character movement all feel off, and the first episode comes across as sitting in the uncanny valley between genuine creativity and one too many board meetings. The show feels overproduced, but that doesn't stop it from giving some insights as to the anime market as a whole.

Anime and Weebs have been at the cultural fringe for years, with Statista pegging the percentage of adults who view anime favorably between 18 and 40%. The is a significant improvement from the early 2000s when Anime viewership dipped into the mid-teens among some demographics. Still, a majority of people dislike anime, but with ever-growing expansion and Anime being viewed on a larger scale, projects like Toyotas have a larger impact, and that is

Money. The number of dollars put into Anime as a whole increasing means that fans will be more likely to see their favorite manga turned into a show, and whole new concepts or even studios popping up in the future. This might be the golden years for anime, as the wide variety of releases coupled with the democratization of streaming platforms (or the ease of use for pirating means that) Weebs worldwide have unfettered access to great content.

While “Type S: Chiaki’s Journey” might not be the radical olive branch of Anime Cultural exchange, it does signal a move in the right direction.