Acura Takes Road less Traveled with Anime Product Integration

Acura is taking the “road less traveled”d by venturing into product integration with its new Anime series promoting its luxury performance cars and the reborn Type S badge. On January 20th of this year, the brand launched Chiaki’s Journey, a four-part anime series that follows an up-and-coming driver named Chiaki and her wise uncle Noboru. All the while Acura’s lineup of present and future cars are taking center stage in this anime world of car racing.

The NSX, TLX and MDX Type S model vehicles are literally placed in the series as if they were real models, and viewers can catch the upcoming 2023 Integra in plenty of instances, as well. Chiaki’s scenes often include glimpses of a past Acura hero, too: a DC2-generation Integra Type R. With fast cars easily accessible to her, Chiaki faces her nemesis Erich Kang at the local race track, who appears to drive some sort of unbranded car that appears to be a Mercedes. The competitor of course has to be unbranded because the advertising can’t appear to be hostile towards other car makers.

Acura believes that employing this type of unconventional advertising will help draw a younger generation of car buyers into their brand. According to Jon Ikeda, vice president and Acura brand officer. Anime continues to be a popular form of entertainment in the US, and Acura clearly sees an opportunity to capture an audience. But is anime really popular in the US? Especially anime that is centered around racing and not fighting or some fantasy world. Well, the global market for anime is around $23.6 billion as of 2020.

The four-part Acura anime series “Chiaki’s Journey” debuted at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and all four episodes are available here.