UNIQLO has announced the “Mamoru Hosoda Animation Works UT” collaboration series, which is meant to celebrate the upcoming release of the anime director’s Belle (The Dragon and the Freckled Princess in Japanese) movie in Japan.
The “Mamoru Hosoda Animation Works UT” series consists of six T-shirts. Two of the T-shirts feature graphics of Belle, while another two are based on 2009’s Summer Wars. The remaining two T-shirts sport designs related to 2015’s The Boy and the Beast and 2006’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time respectively.
UNIQLO notes that the T-shirts featuring Hosoda’s past works share the theme of featuring their respective protagonists’ ability to overcome adversity and how they strive in life. For instance, the T-shirt for The Girl Who Leapt Through Time depicts an impressionable image of heroine Makoto Konno in a dash as she tries to save someone important to her. The T-shirt’s left sleeve displays the digits “01” to denote the remaining number of time leaps she can make.
Meanwhile, one of the Summer Wars T-shirt’s motif is based on the moment where its protagonist averts a crisis by unlocking a password, while the back of the T-shirt for The Boy and the Beast shows images of protagonist Ren undergoing sword training. The other Summer Wars T-shirt features King Kazma, the anthropomorphic rabbit avatar used by one of the movie’s supporting protagonists, on its back.
For the Belle T-shirts, one features an image of the virtual world of “U,” while another features the movie’s mysterious dragon avatar.
UNIQLO also said that virtual versions of the T-shirts will be distributed for free on avatar camera app V-Roid, with more details to come later.
UNIQLO previously released a collaboration line with supernatural action anime JUJUTSU KAISEN.
Sources: UNIQLO Japan press release, Uniqlo Japan store, Mantan Web
