Today, 11:30 AM EST. Four Slim Wallets.
Two of these are Ilustrata designs graduating from the Micro to the wide format. One is a Japanese macaque with a towel on its head. One is Hokusai, and the good part is on the inside.
Toku Samurai
A silver-faced hero with a fin on his head and yellow almond eyes, the kind you know from Sunday morning tokusatsu, except he's wearing a kimono and drawing a katana over his shoulder. Big blue brushed kanji fills the background behind him. Ilustrata's stamp sits in the corner. It's Ultraman-adjacent without being Ultraman, and it's wearing a haori.
Open it and the camera drops to the ground. You're looking at his feet. Orange-striped hakama, blue-and-white cuffs, a pair of sandals planted in puddles on cream. And standing between those sandals, about the height of his ankle, a tiny figure in a straw hat holding a red umbrella, looking up.
That's the whole kaiju-genre joke in one fold. Outside is the hero shot. Inside is what it's like to be the person on the street when he arrives.
The Magic Frog
A round green frog in a teal wizard hat covered in gold stars, holding a wand, with a sunflower and a big pale blade shape crowding into the frame around it. Heavy halftone dots, green and gold and near-black. The frog's expression is the best thing in it: pure unblinking confidence in an animal that has clearly never cast a successful spell.
Inside, the title arrives in fat graffiti bubble letters, THE MAGIC FROG, with a CROAK! speech bubble and the sunflower again. It's a poster you fold up and put in your pocket.
Both Ilustrata designs came out on the Micro in April. The Slim gives them the width they were drawn for, and gives the hakama gag the room it needs.
Who Ilustrata Is
A studio, not a person. Brazilian illustration and design house based in Limeira, founded 2013, three illustrators: Bruno Rodrigues, David Faraum and Victor Kahn. They do artwork for products, apparel, packaging and character design, in a retro style that mixes detailed illustration with type and graphic elements. They're open about the source material: Japanese culture, retro arts, anime, manga, cats and food. Which is exactly what a tokusatsu hero in a kimono and a wizard frog are.
They also release collectibles through Mighty Jaxx, so the toy-collector sensibility in these isn't borrowed.
Monkey Business
A Japanese macaque leaning on the wooden counter of a sento, the neighborhood bathhouse, with a folded towel on its head and its arms crossed. Behind it, the noren curtains with the single character ゆ, hot water, which is how you know a bathhouse from the street. Stacked yellow wash buckets on the floor. A crate of milk bottles by the register, because a cold bottle of milk after the bath is a ritual with a hundred years behind it.
Open it and you're in the washing room. Teal tile, a row of taps and shower heads, yellow stools and buckets lined up at each station, a steaming tub with ripples on the surface, a drain in the floor, and a doorway out to the changing room on the right. The monkey's off duty. The bath is ready.
Snow monkeys soaking in hot springs is one of the most photographed things in Japan. This one runs the place. In-house design, and one of the better ones.
The Great Wave
Hokusai's wave across the full width of the Slim, which is the format that suits it. The Micro compresses it. The Slim lets the claw of foam reach all the way across and Fuji sit small in the trough where it belongs.
The interior is a different Hokusai entirely. Two fishing boats climbing a striated blue swell, crews bent over their oars, spray drawn as a scatter of white dots. It's from his later ocean series, the fishing pictures, and it's the one almost nobody outside a museum shop has seen. Famous print outside, deep cut inside.
Format
All four are Slim Wallets. About 3mm thin, 12 to 16 cards plus folded cash. RFID-blocking, like everything we make apart from the coin pouch. Tyvek, waterproof at the fiber level and tear-resistant, which for a wallet with a bathhouse on it feels correct.
Who's Copping This
Ilustrata people who bought the Micros in April and want the wide versions. Both designs are better at this size.
Tokusatsu and kaiju heads. The interior of Toku Samurai is drawn for you.
Anyone who's been to a sento or an onsen and knows exactly why there's milk by the register.
Slim carriers who want the Wave with more surface and a second print inside instead of a logo.
Drop
Today, 11:30 AM EST. Toku Samurai, The Magic Frog, Monkey Business and The Great Wave all land in the Slim Wallet collection. Limited runs, no restock, no reprint. The full collection has the rest.
