Long before Initial D was a thing, Japan already had The Circuit Wolf… a manga with all the street racer and car culture tropes laid out in action packed drawings. I’d actually encountered it previously when I obtained the hero’s original car, the Lotus Europa, when I was planning my photos of the ‘Japan x Europe red-striped’ pairing.
The Circuit Wolf’s line-up of real world vehicles and fiery rivalries would go on to inspire Japan’s Supercar Craze in the late seventies. And amongst these, one stood out as a crossover from dreamlike prototypical reality into pure reimagined hyper coolness. The Ferrari Dino 206 Competizione was one of Pininfarina’s curviest designs, and its distinctive form served as the basis for the manga’s ultimate car, the Yatabe RS. Although the artist exaggerated the flares and lengthened the nose, it was pretty unmistakable where the inspiration came from.
And this made me think of a parallel in the world of pens and mechanical pencils: in 2013, Pilot launched the FriXion Point Knock Biz, a premium metal-bodied pen for their innovative erasable ink line-up. The ‘Biz’ had a streamlined silhouette, and a gleaming clip-knock to deploy its writing tip. Why use the clip? Because Pilot needed the tail end to house the special eraser. I think Tombow probably took a lot of notes for their own popular MONO graph pencil!
A year later, upmarket stationery store ITOYA would commission a special version of the ‘Biz’ for their exclusive sale: the ITOYA 110 series. Sporting an 85% level of design similarity to the ‘Biz’, the 110 would feature a sleeker front end taper, a sportier rear end that deleted the ugly bump for the eraser (i.e. FriXion eraser sold separately), and clad the clip-knock in matte black. Design-wise, it was like going from a sedan to a hot hatch.
More amazingly, while Pilot only produced the ‘Biz’ as a pen, ITOYA included a mechanical pencil, AND got Pilot to make it as a shaker as well! That took the cake for me, perhaps moreso than the Yatabe RS upping the style stakes on the 206. If you’re a fan of Pilot’s ‘2020’ shaker technology, even if for nostalgia’s sake, you should definitely give the ITOYA 110 a chance.
As a final note, there is an actual Circuit Wolf car museum located in Ibaraki prefecture, Japan. It houses actual supercars like the Countach, Miura, Europa… and of course, a custom built, drivable Yatabe RS.