斑鳩 - Ikaruga

I bought this shirt for myself in Japan when I went last year. I had to spend the last of my money on it but it was so worth it.
To actually discover this shirt Moke and I had to explore the nerdy depths of Akihabara. As we were exploring on our second day of Akihabara, we stumbled upon a tiny hole-in-the-wall electronics shop. Initially, I saw this place as we were walking by and I was looking for an iPhone 4 case. After we went inside, the store revealed itself to be more than a parts shop. It was more like an entire Internet culture gift-shop. They had Touhou doujins, soundtracks, and merchandise, also a little bit of Japanese Internet subculture accessories. Tucked in the back we found a variable treasure trove of gaming and Japanese culture tshirts; ones we had never seen before at any other shop. Seriously though, I wanted to buy like all of their shirts but I couldn't afford them. After much deliberation I made an executive decision on this one and another that you'll see later.
From the moment we walked into that place we could tell that it was a fan driven establishment. All of the items in there were from people who had spent a lot of their time in arcades and online -probably on 2ch by the looks of it-. Because of this, the shirts were kind of low quality. The designs were funny and awesome but the ink they used and the screening technique that they had to choose was really cheap. You can see that the back is a little muddled and unclear. In Japan I'm a "large" so I chose a large, it fits me quite well even after a wash. I have a few other Japanese shirts but I like this one and wouldn't mind more.
In prominent kanji on the from it says "斑鳩" and below that, in English, "IKARUGA". It is all done in white with little other design. This is just how it is written in the game and on the box, except that in those formats the background is usually a bit more dynamic. On the back is basically a screenshot from the game. The scene is really hard to make out, they used a whole bunch of ink in several passes and layered it all up. I do like that ambiguity though, because if you have no idea what this is about you can't really fake your way though it. The level in particular is the last boss of the game. It also has a whole bunch of text -in English all around the picture. At the top it says "IDEAL TRIAL FAITH REALITY SAMSARA" the names of each of the chapters in the game. In a big brick of text at the bottom it reads :
"Several years ago in the small island nation of Horai, the leader of the nation, Tenro Horai, discovered the Ubusunagami Okinokai—the Power of the Gods. This energy emanated from an object she dug up from deep underground and granted her unimaginable powers. Soon after, Tenro and her followers, who called themselves "The Divine Ones", began conquering nations one after another. "The Chosen People" carried out these conquests in "the name of peace"."
This is supposed to be the almost nonexistent plot of the game and I'd like to believe that the designer set it there just to make a nice contrast. The game that this shirt represents is an overhead shooter like 1943 or Raiden but is actually the spiritual successor -sequel- to another game called Raident Silvergun. Made by the legendary Japanese game developer Treasure, it was released originally in arcades across Japan and was eventually ported to Dreamcast, GameCube and XBOX Live Arcade.
This is one of my favorite shirts that I own. The design is based on one of my top 5 games of all time and is super duper rare. I am sure that I will never see another one of these shirts again in my life. I mean, I don't think I could even discover that same shop again if I tried. This is a shirt I would put in my suitcase if I went back to Japan. I feel that this shirt is so rare that I would even get props in its country of origin. I would also wear this when going to a "hardcore" console or arcade gaming event. Something like a tournament at a convention or just Arcade Infinity in Rowland Heights. I would not want to waste this shirt on some trivial day, with this poor quality of ink the shirt only has a few washes total.

There is only one other time that I have worn this shirt. When Moke and I want to Japan I packed only a certain number of shirts. I had factored in one or two laundry trips on the duration of the trip. As time went on I guess I picked up enough shirts as souvenirs so I never ran out of clean ones. The last few days were all new Japanese shirts, and they were all awesome because I had just bought them -still had that new shopping aura-. The day I wore it was the day that we visited Nara, the spiritual area with the bowing deer. As we were just leaving we stopped and ordered some green tea mochi from one of the quaint little street vendors. Only a hundred or so yen, warm and delicious. As we exchanged money the cook pointed at my shirt, giggled and gave an approving nod. It threw me off a bit because the woman was in her 40s or so and I could tell she didn't get the video game reference. The word Ikaruga is also the name of a bird and a town where it lives. It happens to be in the Nara prefecture. I can only assume she thought I was a savvy tourist or ornithologist. I was excited though to get a reaction on the first day of wearing this amazing new shirt. I just didn't realize I was wearing an Ikaruga shirt to Ikaruga -what are the odds?-.