From Nana to Paradise Kiss: Ai Yazawa's Iconic Manga Are Coming to Uniqlo
Nana
,
Paradise Kiss, Gokinjo Monogatari
(Neighborhood Story), and
Tenshi Nanka Ja Nai
(I'm Not an Angel).
List of Contents:
A Milestone Collaboration
Collection Highlights
Collection Details
Yazawa's Cultural Impact
Related Posts
A Milestone Collaboration
Four Decades of Manga Brilliance
This Uniqlo UT collection marks a significant milestone in Ai Yazawa's illustrious career. Since her debut 40 years ago, Yazawa has captivated readers with her distinctive art style and compelling storytelling, particularly focusing on fashion, music, and the complexities of relationships. Her works have not only defined generations of manga fans but have also influenced Japanese fashion and pop culture at large.
Exclusive Designs for Devoted Fans
What makes this Nana Uniqlo collab particularly special is a brand-new illustration created exclusively for the collection. The design features Nana Osaki (one of the two protagonists from
Nana
) wearing her signature leather jacket over a t-shirt bearing an image of Nana 'Hachi' Komatsu, the series' other protagonist. This meta design symbolizes the enduring connection between the two characters, offering fans a unique piece of Yazawa artistry unavailable anywhere else.
Collection Highlights
Nana: A Cult Classic Reimagined
The
Nana
t-shirt designs include a dark gray option featuring a collage of the members of Nana's band 'Black Stones' (BLAST), designed to resemble a vintage band t-shirt. This piece perfectly encapsulates the rock-and-roll aesthetic that made 'Nana' a cultural phenomenon when it debuted in 2000.
Paradise Kiss: Fashion-Forward Tribute
The
Paradise Kiss
design comes in blue, drawing inspiration from the fashion show that serves as a pivotal plot point in the story. It features butterfly motifs and the brand logo embroidered on the chest—a fitting tribute to a manga that revolves around fashion design students creating their own clothing line.
the back text reads, "gokinjo monogatari, ai yazawa"
Gokinjo Monogatari: Iconic Streetwear
For
Gokinjo Monogatari
(Neighborhood Story) fans, Uniqlo offers a white t-shirt featuring iconic motifs inspired by the fictional fashion brand that appears in the series. The back of the shirt showcases a design quoted from page 8 of the first volume of the manga's paperback edition, making it a collector's item for devoted fans.
Tenshi Nanka Ja Nai: Vintage Aesthetic
The
Tenshi Nanka Ja Nai
(I'm Not an Angel) design comes in natural color and features an illustration from the inside cover of the sixth volume of the Cobalt Bunko edition. Uniqlo has carefully reproduced the hand-drawn quality of Yazawa's original artwork, preserving her distinctive style in the print.
Collection Details
Pricing, Sizing and Availability
All t-shirts in the Ai Yazawa UT collection will be priced at ¥1,500 each and will be available in sizes ranging from XS to 3XL, with XS and XXL-3XL sizes exclusive to Uniqlo's online store. The collection will launch in early July 2025 at all Uniqlo stores across Japan and on the Uniqlo online store.
Yazawa's Cultural Impact
Revolutionary Manga Storytelling
Ai Yazawa's work stands out in the manga landscape for its nuanced exploration of youth culture, relationships, and artistic pursuits.
Nana
in particular has achieved cult status for its raw portrayal of friendship, ambition, and the music scene in early 2000s Japan. Similarly,
Paradise Kiss
revolutionized the way fashion was depicted in manga, with meticulous attention to clothing design and the fashion industry.
Fashion Meets Manga
What makes this collaboration particularly fitting is that Yazawa's manga has always had a strong focus on fashion. Her characters are consistently well-dressed in carefully designed outfits that often reflect real fashion trends or create new ones. The intersection of manga and fashion that Yazawa pioneered makes this Uniqlo partnership feel like a natural extension of her artistic vision.
The Ai Yazawa x Uniqlo UT collection will be available in early July 2025. For more information and updates, visit the
official collection page
.
Related Posts
Say Yes to This Nana Wedding Dress Collection
New Senate Bill Could Criminalize Anime, Manga and Games Featuring Underage Characters
Berserk, Parasyte and Uzumaki Manga Collections Are Coming to Uniqlo
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
SoraNews24
14-07-2025
- SoraNews24
Uniqlo's Disney T-shirts feature art by manga divinity and royalty【Photos】
The god of manga's artwork is featured in the Magic for All UT line. Uniqlo and Disney have been friends for a long time. This summer, they're celebrating the 10th anniversary of the start of their Magic for All T-shirt collaborations, and with Disney's multifaceted media productions in the modern era, that means that not just characters from the Disney animated canon are featured, but also the stars of Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars too. Sometimes Magic for All's designs even include a touch of magic from some of the most celebrated manga artists of all time. Coming soon are a pair of redesigned Magic for All T-shirts using illustrations from Osamu Tezuka and the production company of Fujio Akatsuka. Tezuka was such a prolific artist that he's known as 'the god of manga.' Most famous for creating Tetsuwan Atom/Astro Boy, Tezuka was also the artist and writer of such other landmark works as Jungle Emperor/Kimba the White Lion, Princess Knight, Phoenix, and Black Jack. Uniqlo's Tezuka Magic for All shirt features an illustration by the artist of Mickey Mouse dashing across the front, with 'pyoon' (the Japanese sound effect for 'whoosh') written in katakana script. Though not referred to as being manga divinity, Fujio Akatsuka nonetheless has an impressive nickname, 'the king of gag manga.' Akatsuka's greatest claim to fame is Osomatsu-kun, a manga series about the zany Osomatsu sextuplets which originally ran from 1962 to 1969 and has been adapted to anime multiple times, including a phenomenally popular reboot in 2015 titled Osomatsu-san/Mr. Osomatsu. Other highlights of Akatsuka's resume include gag series Tensai Bakabon and Moretsu Ataro, and also Himitsu no Akko-chan, one of the first major magical girl manga/anime franchises. The Fujio Productions shirt has Mickey, Donald, and Goofy all drawn in the, well, goofy sort of aesthetics that helped fuel Akatsuka's success. ▼ The 'ranrara～n' written in katakana is a sort of silly, joyous singing, sort of a Japanese equivalent of 'lalala.' In addition to Tezuka and Akatsuka, the Uniqlo Magic for All collection also has takes on Disney characters from James Jarvis, Danny Sangra… …Nuts Art Works, and Ester Kim. And then, of course, there are all the designs that come direct from the archives of Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars, many with a retro vibe. Uniqlo's Disney Magic for All T-shirts are priced at 1,990 yen (US$13.75) each and go on sale at Uniqlo stores and through the Uniqlo online shop here August 4. Source: Uniqlo, PR Times Top image: PR Times Insert images: PR Times, Uniqlo (1, 2) ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
SoraNews24
04-06-2025
- SoraNews24
New Studio Ghibli Uniqlo T-shirt line coming to the U.S., Japan left out once again【Photos】
Eight Ghibli anime movies inspire new collection of tees and sweatshirts. Uniqlo has announced some pretty big-name collaborations with the anime/manga world this summer, including new partnerships with Pokémon and Ai Yazawa. But the casual clothing chain isn't done adding anime flare to fans' wardrobes yet, as they've now announced a brand-new line of Studio Ghibli apparel. However, as has become oddly the norm for Uniqlo Ghibli collections, once again these items won't be offered in Japan. Instead, they appear to be exclusive (at least for now) to Uniqlo U.S.A. As with the previous Uniqlo Ghibli items, these designs were created by Thai artist Kanyada Phatan, who contributes photography and poetry to Neppu, a monthly magazine published by Studio Ghibli. The new collection consists of both short-sleeved T-shirts and long-sleeved sweatshirts, featuring characters from eight Ghibli anime films, including, of course, My Neighbor Totoro, with the Catbus hanging out near the nape of your neck on this shirt. While some of the designs take their illustrations directly from their source anime, others are original creations, like on the Totoro sweatshirt, which has some Soot Sprites congregating near the left cuff. The Howl's Moving Castle design uses pretty much the entire front of the shirt as a canvas for the titular mobile architecture… …and there's no missing No Face, blazingly emblazoned in triplicate across the front of the Spirited Away sweatshirt, which also bears the film's Japanese title, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi. ▼ This time there's a Radish Spirit hanging out on the sleeve. Some of the designs are double-sided, with graphics on both the front and back, like with the Princess Mononoke sweatshirt. Set in a forest green field on the front is monster princess San, accompanied with raised text of the film's promotional poster tagline in Japan, 'Ikiro' ('Live' or 'Survive'). San appears on the back as well, underneath Ashitaka, with the movie's Japanese-text title, Mononoke-hime, overlapping them. There's more princess-related attire with the The Tale of the Princess Kaguya T-shirt… …and another Ghibli anime that doesn't get a lot of merchandising attention, Pom Poko, is here too. Along with the movie's Japanese title and the kanji character for tanuki (狸), the text on the back identifies the wearer as a member of the human-observing tanuki research team, while the front graphic is, as far as our analysis can tell, the first-ever depiction of testicles on a Uniqlo T-shirt. ▼ Though these are culturally relevant testicles. A less ballsy option is this Kiki's Delivery Service sweatshirt, which is both dual-sided and bilingual. Rounding out the single-movie designs, The Boy and the Heron gets two pieces, a T-shirt with the Gray Heron unnervingly saying 'My Dear' on the front while the back reminds you of who made the movie as the scene-stealing Warawara remind you of just how adorable the little marshmallow-like creatures are. The sweatshirt flips their positions around, with the Warawara on the front and the Gray Heron on the back. And finally, rounding out the adult-sized collection is an overarching Studio Ghibli T-shirt, with illustrations of Porco Rosso's protagonist, Nausicaa, Ponyo, Castle in the Sky's Dola, and The Wind Rise's Ka-14 aircraft, which would eventually evolve into the Imperial Japanese Navy's World War II Zero fighter plane. The T-shirts are all priced at US$24.90, and the sweatshirts at US$39.90. The entire collection will be available on July 10 at Uniqlo stores in the U.S. and through the chain's U.S. online shop here. Source: Uniqlo via Yahoo! Japan News via Game Watch Top image: Uniqlo Insert images: Uniqlo (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11) ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
SoraNews24
25-05-2025
- SoraNews24
Uniqlo releasing first-ever Pokémon T-shirts inspired by Trading Card Game artwork【Photos】
Collaboration features big Pokémon's stars and lesser-known species too. Uniqlo has announced that they've got a new line of Pokémon T-shirts on the way, and while the casual clothing chain and multimedia entertainment franchise have teamed up a few times before, there's something unique about this collaboration. That's because while previous designs have taken their inspiration from how the Pocket Monsters look in the franchise's anime and video games, this new Uniqlo line will be the first one ever based on the art of the Pokémon Trading Card Game. Starting things off is Pikachu, who, as you can probably guess, has been the subject of a whole lot of Pokémon cards created by different illustrators. The shirt can be considered a greatest-hits compilation, with several dozen cards arranged in the shape of the Pokémon franchise mascot himself. The rest of the line narrows things down to a single image per species, each coming from a specific card, such as the Mega Symphonia Mega Gardevoir ex-version of Gardevoir. ▼ Hmm…would this shirt fit on that life-size Gardevoir plushie? High-profile fan favorites Slowpoke and Magikarp also show up, the former based on the Fossil-expansion artwork… …and the latter on the Paldea Evolved card. ▼ Because if you're only ever going to do one thing, you'd better be expert-level at doing it. It's not all ultra-famous faces, though, as the new line features a shirt for Omanyte, depicting the Rock/Water-type as it appears in the 151 expansion. ▼ The white text makes it a little hard to read, but the shirt even includes a helpful explanation of how to create an Omanyte using the Helix Fossil. Joining the five T-shirts are four Pokémon Trading Card Game sweatshirts. The SVP Black Star Promo Snorlax one is great for those looking to match the cozy garment with a Pokémon that's as skilled at relaxing as Magikarp is at splashing. ▼ Snorlax is even doing the Lazy Press. The next one is a bit of a trivia challenge, at least when viewed from the front, which informs you that its star 'Evolves from No. 0093…' …meaning that it's Gengar. This version of Gengar, the Genetic Apex Gengar ex, actually hails from Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, a.k.a. Pokémon Pocket, the digital version of the Pokémon Trading Card Game which launched last fall. That's also the case for the the Genetic Apex Mewtwo ex-card sweatshirt. And finally, we come to another Pokémon who, like Omanyte, doesn't always get much time in the spotlight: Unown, in Silver Tempest VSTAR form. As a cool little hat tip/deck tap to card gamers, the designs all feature little Pokémon cards near the hem. The T-shirts are priced at 1,500 yen (US$10.35) and the sweatshirts at 2,990 yen, both offered in adult men's cuts. They're scheduled to go on sale in mid-August and will be available through the Uniqlo online store here. Source: Uniqlo Top image: Twitter/@Pokemon_cojp Insert images: Uniqlo (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
