Omdat er waarschijnlijk maar weinig mensen zijn die geïnteresseerd zijn in beide onderwerpen, doe ik deze post (en mogelijke opvolgende posts) in het Engrish.
For a while I’ve been seeing Japanese trains advertising for anime. Of course this is not really a surprise, as it’s usually just advertising as happens anywhere in the world. But sometimes it goes a bit further than just some stickers.
First I have to say that I have made some posts concerning anime and trains before, but because I didn’t have much time on my hands, I didn’t make many.
Also notice that I have not been in Japan yet, unfortunately, so everything is extracted from internet sources. If you notice errors or have any comments, all is welcome.
The outside and stickers
To start with, the most commonly and often not even noticed way of promoting anime on trains I have seen on the internet is putting stickers on the train. The easiest solution is like they’ve done on the following Yamanote Line E231 EMU (Electric Multiple Unit), as pictured below, promoting a K-ON! Roadshow.
A bit more interesting are the stickers used whole trains. The first example is for promoting (again) the K-ON! Roadshow, it is an 600 series train from the Ishiyama Sakamoto Line from Keihan Railway Company. The one on the right is an NT200 railcar from the Nanao Line in Hanasaku Iroha livery, but this is quite a special case, on which more below here.
The inside
So, now that we saw some examples of the outside, let’s move on to the inside of the trains. The K-ON train you saw above here didn’t only get a nice treatment from the outside, but also on the inside: do you want to get off through the Azusa or Mio door? In the mentioned Hanasaku Iroha train they hang up a lot of posters.
The case of Hanasaku Iroha and the trains
If you watched Hanasaku Iroha and read a bit on it you probably already knew that the anime actually takes place in the town of Nishigishi, only renamed to ‘Yunosagi’ in the anime. The train featured in Hanasaku Iroha is actually based of those NT200 trains which also stop at the station of Nishigishi. Let’s start with looking at the following two screenshots from the anime, the left one being taken at the end of the station where the switch is and the right one next to the platform.
If you then take a look at the following picture you’re sure to see many resemblances:
As you can see both the train and the station are the same. Also note that the picture of the NT200 train in Hanasaku Iroha livery is also taken at this place and that both are the same type of train, also this all was the reason why the train got the Hanasaku Iroha livery.
But this is not everything related to Hanasaku Iroha. They also made a (fake) sign saying “Yunosagi” and placed it on the platforms to create more of a feeling of the anime, and is really awesome.
And we’re not done yet, there’s even more awesome things. The voice actresses of the main characters voiced the announcements in the trains on the Nanao Line. Take a look, or rather, listen with your ears, to the following video:
And no, we’re still not done. The last thing I found out was that the music video of the second opening of the anime featured the station of Nishigishi and it’s trains, so let’s take a look at that:
I also read something about all those otaku visiting Nichigishi leasing to an increasing amount of passengers in the trains, so all this even is a profit for the village and the railway company!
And with that we’re done with looking at the Hanasaku Iroha case, so far I know.
I also recommend you to take a look at this page where they compared some pictures of the anime and the real station and maybe take a look at this page where they have some pictures of the inside of the station building which has some Hanasaku Iroha posters and a notebook where you can leave a message, dunno what happens with it though, probably not much.
Here are some links with even more pictures:
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/shilwi/20120325
http://tetsuokina.blogspot.com/2012/03/blog-post_5779.html
http://tangerine.sweetstyle.jp/?eid=910919
Other random stuff
At Shiroiri station at the Keikyu Main Line the announcements for coming up trains and other nonsense is done by the voice actress of the main character of the Tamayura anime.
Sources: the sources for the pictures are the links provided when you click on them. My text source being myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=431433 which actually refers to another Japanese source which doesn’t work. Other stuff is from Wikipedia and probably other websites which you can reach by clicking many of the links in this post.
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