Gatsby Creates Bizarre Manga Featuring a Demonic Body Wipe

Japan

Men’s grooming product maker Gatsby is famous for creating some of the craziest commercials in Japan, at one point even designing seven superheroes based on the smelly armpits of men.

Now, Gatsby’s marketing department has taken a different — yet just as wacky — approach by using manga. And as expected of a company where the word “normal” will never be used to describe their advertisements, their latest work is far from ordinary.

Collaborating with the art team of supernatural anime Gegege no Kitaro, the premise of the story revolves around the Japanese yokai “Ittan Momen,” a flying spirit that resembles a bolt of cloth.

Initially disgruntled at being transformed into a wet wipe, the spirit flashes across a youth’s body and instantly removes sweat and odor, producing a strangled “It feels so good!” from the boy’s lips.

The encounter above features a perspiring foe threatening to force an innocent dog to smell his odor, but Ittan Momen uses its amazing length and cunning to defeat him and save the canine from stinky hell.

The finale sees the spirit’s soul rapidly seeping away, with the previous youth and judo practitioner swearing that they will never forget Ittan Momen’s sweat and odor-vanquishing deeds. Eventually fading from the Gatsby body wipe and expecting to return to its usual cloth form, the spirit then finds itself reincarnated into a face-cleansing sheet.

This is only one in many wacky advertising campaigns Japan is known for, so we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for more of these. Advertisements are often regarded as intrusive and annoying, but unique stuff like these are just too interesting to ignore.