Japan is a delightfully strange country where tentacles, schoolgirls, and robots often combine. Don't ask what we mean, just use Google! In any case, we have a new commercial for the Mercedes-Benz A-Class, and the only thing it doesn't have are tentacles.
It made absolutely no sense to us, so we had to ask a specialist in modern Japanese culture to decipher the meaning of the ad. After arriving at the autoevolution office wearing a full spandex suit with a Pokemon on it, he told us the video had something to do with "Vocaloid."
It sounds like a really bad throat disease, but Vocaloid is actually a program where a digitally created girl with teal hair sings what you tell her to. The three anime girls in this Mercedes commercial have similar dance moves and are accompanied by a lovable robot that's put in charge of driving the German hatchback. The self-proclaimed "knower of all things otaku" also mentioned something about... leek that we couldn't understand.
It may surprise some that Mercedes went all weird on its Japanese consumers. But actually, when the A-Class hatchback was launched there three years ago, they also released a fast-paced racing-themed anime.
Even though some small cosmetic tweaks have been made to the car, the range of engines offered to the Japanese A-Class buyers stays the same.
The cheapest is the A 180 equipped with a 1.6-liter turbo gasoline engine pushing 122 PS to the front wheels via a 7-speed automatic cog-swapper. After that, you can either buy the expensive A 250 Sport 4Matic with 218 PS or the ridiculously expensive A 45 AMG.
How expensive? About 7.1 million yen or roughly the same as a Lexus GS 450h. Still, cute robots that can drive and synchronized anime girls don't come cheap.
It sounds like a really bad throat disease, but Vocaloid is actually a program where a digitally created girl with teal hair sings what you tell her to. The three anime girls in this Mercedes commercial have similar dance moves and are accompanied by a lovable robot that's put in charge of driving the German hatchback. The self-proclaimed "knower of all things otaku" also mentioned something about... leek that we couldn't understand.
It may surprise some that Mercedes went all weird on its Japanese consumers. But actually, when the A-Class hatchback was launched there three years ago, they also released a fast-paced racing-themed anime.
Even though some small cosmetic tweaks have been made to the car, the range of engines offered to the Japanese A-Class buyers stays the same.
The cheapest is the A 180 equipped with a 1.6-liter turbo gasoline engine pushing 122 PS to the front wheels via a 7-speed automatic cog-swapper. After that, you can either buy the expensive A 250 Sport 4Matic with 218 PS or the ridiculously expensive A 45 AMG.
How expensive? About 7.1 million yen or roughly the same as a Lexus GS 450h. Still, cute robots that can drive and synchronized anime girls don't come cheap.