Shopping Guide
For otaku who like anime, manga, and games, their home, in particular their bedroom, is a private space where they can showcase the full extent of their fandom through a carefully selected and arranged collection of figures, manga, games, and other otaku goods. Now, there are items that, like magic, allow otaku to completely change the atmosphere of their room to an otaku mood. These items are ita-curtains.
Ita-curtains are curtains with characters from anime and games printed on them. You can think of them as the itasha of curtains. Ita-curtains were first created by a company called Curtain Damashii. Sold by the company Key-th, Curtain Damashii’s ita-curtains are currently permeating into otaku culture as a popular otaku product.
Curtain Damashii created the first curtains with a character printed on them in May 2010. They created original curtains based on the popular Japanese game series Ys and The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky and sold them for a limited one-month period. However, at that time they were not yet referred to as ita-curtains. This name was introduced in August of that year when they released curtains based on goods of Kud Wafter, a spin-off of Little Busters. After this, the name stuck.
The cool thing about ita-curtains is that, unlike posters and cards, the illustrations are printed on soft fabric. In order to create high-quality products, it was necessary to make them made-to-order. This means that the cloth is cut, printed, and sewed one at a time. The cost for the technology and manufacturing process is quite high, so they can’t be easily made. This puts pioneers Curtain Damashii in a unique position of being the only company in the world that creates made-to-order ita-curtains.
In the past, Curtain Damashii had many products for popular male-oriented anime and games like Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Sword Art Online, so the main demographic who bought ita-curtains was males. However, in recent years orders placed by females have increased due to the arrival of curtains with characters that appeal to both genders, like Rilakkuma and the characters of One Piece. Also becoming popular are curtains with original characters created specifically for use as ita-curtains by famous illustrators and manga artists such as Twinkle (illustrator of the light novel Ro-Kyu-Bu!).
There has been a sudden rise in the popularity of ita-curtains overseas thanks to ita-curtains of the hugely popular browser game Kantai Collection - Kan Colle that were on sale at last year’s Comic Market 85. The day may not be too far away when Curtain Damashii’s ita-curtains are loved by otaku the world over.
This is a Tokyo Otaku Mode original article.
