Nipponbashi Street Fest 2010 – Otaku Itasha Galore

The recent Nipponbashi Street Fest 2010 provided many Kansai-area otaku a chance to celebrate their true colors in Osaka’s own version of Akihabara, an opportunity that can sometimes be quite rare for those living out of reach of Tokyo.

The metallic masses of itasha were one of the most visible signs of otaku presence, and a few dozen of the inspiring vehicles can be seen below…

The event only lasts for one day, and yesterday’s was the 6th annual holding of the festival.

The main theme of the event is merely the “pop culture” Nipponbashi is known for, just as its bigger brother Akihabara is, but in practice the event is mainly dominated by otaku of varying degrees – some of the individual event names read “Maid Parade” and “Cosplay Parade”.

Nipponbashi incidentally also happens to have its own mascot character, shown on the itasha in the second image above and in this picture below:

A clearer image of the oh-so-moe 音々ちゃん / Neon-chan:

The wonderful art is of course by gifted artist Noizi Ito, best known for illustrating the Haruhi and Shana light novels.

Neon-chan’s personal profile page at the Nipponbashi Project website can be seen here.

Now, back to the lovely itasha:

The one above is a Little Busters! itasha featuring Kudo on its side.

An itasha advertising Mosaic.wav, the former eroge music band known for their genki pop style as heard in the OPs for Kyouran Kazoku Nikki and other shows.

A cleverly disguised Kuroko itasha, looking like a normal car from the sides…

Another Neon-chan itasha.

This somewhat confusing itasha is actually quite fun to read – the top reads 炉利魂ワークス (Loli Soul Works) with “loli” written in kanji selected purely for their sound.

The rest is a show of support for works of loli ero art.

This itasha above is of an eroge, Koiiro Soramoyou (official website).

“Utawarerumono.”

Luckily for Akaneiro’s Minato, the sentiment means much more than precisely correct spelling!

It’s hard to tell without taking a good look, but this blue one is an Ef itasha.

This one is decorated with work from August, the eroge company behind Fortune Arterial.

Another cute K-ON! themed itasha.

And, another well-done Haruhi one.

The rest of the itasha photographed can be seen at the always interesting source, Senaka Blog.

Behold just one more photo from the event, also from Senaka, this time of a dog cosplaying Chopper: