Honda Teams Up With Naruto, Goku For New Commercial

If you are in the market for a new car and happen to love anime, you may want to give Honda a cursory glance. Sure, you shouldn’t buy a vehicle based on your otaku leanings, but the manufacturer is showing its anime stripes these days. After all, a new commercial for the company does go out of its way to combined one of its cars with Son Goko and Naruto Uzumaki.

As you can see above, Honda teamed up with Weekly Shonen Jump to promote one of its standard cars. The company wanted to promote its Fit model by using some rather fit shonen heroes, and you would be crazy to call Gon Freecs anything but fit.

Seriously, the kid may be a young teen, but he has abs that would make Vegeta feel a tad envious.

The special commercial is being aired in Japan right now as Honda digs in for new sales. The partnership also highlights an anniversary for Weekly Shonen Jump as the title turns 50 this year. Published by Shueisha, Weekly Shonen Jump is recognized as one of the most popular manga anthologies to date, and it is responsible for birthing some truly iconic series.

No, really — if there is a popular manga out there, Weekly Shonen Jump probably published it. The magazine has pushed forward everything from Naruto to One Piece and Bleach. Naruto, Gintama, Hunter x Hunter, and more are also part of its family.

You may think this car advert is strange, but this is not the first time a manufacturer has used anime to boost sales. In the past, Toyota got in on the anime game with a whacky Japanese commercial for the Prius. The ad turned each part of the Prius into adorable anime girls, and there were a lot of them. Ford has also dabbled with anime as the company famously did commercial overdubs for several cars with Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball.

So, which car do you think Goku would drive? What about Killua? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics, k-pop, and anime!