How Does Mercedes Benz Promote Cars in Japan? Why with Anime, That's How.

This story will display in ...Nov 19, 2012 5:30 AM   To help launch the all new A-Class in Japan, Mercedes Benz is releasing an animated short in which the car chases after a noodle truck.

One of the country's biggest studios, Production I. G, carries out the animation duties, while Yoshiyuki Sadamoto of Neon Genesis Evangelion fame does the character designs. Miyuki Sawashiro lends her vocal talents to the project.

The vast majority of Mercedes Benz ads in Japan aren't anime like this and certainly don't seem to be region specific. Instead, they appear to be fairly conservative, recycled commercials from either the U.S. or Europe, but with Japanese voiceovers and text.

However, Mercedes Benz seems to think it can aim the small, fairly reasonably priced A-Class at younger Japanese; hence, a splashier ad campaign. Check out the car's Japanese site. It's an assault on the senses.

The visuals and voice acting are top notch; however, the guitar music is truly awful.

??????????Production I.G! ?????·??????????????????N­EXT A-Class???????? [Kotaku Japan]

Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

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Few Anime Get as Pretentious as This

This story will display in ...Nov 19, 2012 6:50 AM   When the latest Neon Genesis Evangelion flick hit theaters this weekend in Japan, the next Evangelion film was revealed. And at first look, its title appears annoyingly pretentious. It is. But it's also interesting.

The teaser webpage this appears on has the world "final" in the URL. The text says, "Next time, a new Evangelion movie :||" (??? ??·???????????:||).

What the hell is :||, you might be asking! It's a sign in music that can either denote the end of a piece or that the piece repeats. The problem is that if this is actually used in the title, the general public won't know how to say it or what it means. "Evangelion, colon, vertical line and darker vertical line" doesn't sound very cool.

This symbol does make sense because the naming of the recent Eva films, as goofy and pretentious as they are, appear to be based on the traditional three act structure in Japan of jo-ha-kyuu (???), which is often translated to "beginning, break, rapid". This structure is common in Japanese arts.

This structure seems to exist in the new Evangelion movies, which are called Rebuild of Evangelion (or Evangelion: the New Movies) in Japan. In the original Japanese title for Evangelion 1.0, there is a "jo" (?). Before Evangelion 2.0, there is a "ha" (?). However, before the recently released Evangelion 3.0, there is the English letter "Q", a pun for "kyuu" (?).

Those who know Japanese will noticed that the Rebuild of Evangelion movies write Evangelion (????????) slightly different from the way the series was traditional written in Japanese (????????), as a way to mark a distinction—highlight the "rebuild" quality, if you will.

Also, "new" (?? or "shin") is written in Japanese katakana for the just announced Eva as opposed to using the kanji character (?). However, this is assuming "shin" here actually means "new". Since it's being written phonetically, it could stand for, for example, the "shin" (?) kanji character that means "true", "real", or "genuine".

That musical symbol, then, would infer that this is not only an end to the Rebuild trilogy, but a return to the roots of Evangelion—another reboot? Or it could simply be "Evangelion, colon, vertical line and darker vertical line."

?? ??·??????????? [Teaser Site]

Toshi Nakamura contributed to this report.Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

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