Fictional Japanese Teams

[20_range]

Following up on my fictionalized Korean teams, I'll be using this thread for my versions of Japanese teams. Hopefully, along with tehsugi's comprehensive world and the lbl_brendan thread, this will give people more options to replace the removed league. I'll be trying to avoid straight parody/tribute (well, except for the Dodgers lookalikes), but these teams are supposed to be reminiscent of the real ones.


I have four done so far, and a few half-ideas, and with my kid's sleep schedule it might take quite a while to get to 12. Plus I'm just not going to improve on some of the designs that people have already posted - especially tehsugi's inspired double-cursed Kansai Cubs.


Lastly, as an American, I could easily screw some of these up. Please call me out.


First is the oldest team in this league, founded in 1934 and inspired by one of the great powerhouses of 1920s/early 30s American baseball: the Tokyo Athletics! As a "national" team, they use the sakura flower imagery. There's one in Philly Athletics blue and one in dark brown and pink (a substitute for orange)

[20_range]

Here is sfgiant's elephant in case you want to move the Oakland Athletics to Tokyo, and the wordmarks

[20_range]

Finally, here's the whole thing again but as the Tokyo Blossoms/Sakura, plus one, um, generic, simple Tokyo logo that could fit with any team name

*regarding Imperial Japan's use of the sakura imagery, I think this name still makes sense to show the evolution from a prewar symbol to a postwar one

[20_range]

I drew this! I try to only use public domain images, and already existing logos, but this one I drew (well, traced)


the serow is a goat-antelope

[20_range]

fonts: wardshus and prince of village

[tehsuigi]

These are off to a great start, 20_range! The pink elephants for the Tokyo A's are gorgeous. I can tell there's some [LEAGUE REDACTED] inspiration in the Serows' colour scheme, too.

[darkcloud4579]

Heck yeah love this

[20_range]

thanks darkcloud, I will try to make it to 12 teams

Tehsugi! absolutely love your work, constantly using it as a reference point, I think if you recognized the color scheme of the last one you will recognize this one even more:

The Nagoya Dragonflies!

It's likely that this team would often be known by a shorter version of their name the D-flies??


There is an actual Dragonflies basketball team in Hiroshima.



I did deviate a little bit from the Dodgers template by giving them an off-white background for the circular alternate. The main very-Dodgers logo has white outlines to make it show up better in the game. Font is Catchland which is the top internet recommended result for Dodgers font.

I drew the dragonfly (it's based on the dragonfly in this image -- -- these days I look for everything on wikipedia commons first), but I should also probably try to draw a "worse" one as a tribute to Nagoya's actual team

[20_range]

I prefer this logo, which is not a parody (it's a scan of this Japanese pencil company logo). So we'll think of this one as the team's original or mid-20th century logo.

[ChromEagle]

The Dragonflies logos look amazing!

[20_range]

Q: What's better than a parody? A: almost anything


ok I'll try it again


Q: What's better than a parody? A: A loving tribute


And here is my loving tribute to The Mysterious Fish, a Chiba team that uses the deep-dwelling anglerfish to symbolize its connection to the sea, the Chiba Mysteries



I drew this based on the mascot and anglerfish illustrations! It's probably my favorite logo I've made ever!

[tehsuigi]

HELL. YES. to the Mysteries. Holy crap that is some good logo-making.

And funny you should mention the Tombow pencil company, they actually owned a [LEAGUE REDACTED] franchise called the Unions, who eventually got merged twice into the team now playing in Chiba. Sure enough, they wore the dragonfly on their cap, albeit gold on black.

[20_range]

I made this cheetah for CD (it's a scanned and recolored stamp) and he rejected it. But here it is again as the Saitama Invincibles


This is pretty much another attempt by me to make one of hurricanekevin's type retro/timeless logos. He always finds room to put in lots of text, so I've put the full name "Saitama Prefecture" in there - let me know if that looks too ridiculous in a Japanese setting - certainly the Minnesota State Twins or the Colorado State Rockies would sound terrible to an American.


I kept the color scheme of the [Kanto Big Cats], used their nickname from their golden age, and the flower petals are from the prefectural flag.

edit: I added a floating one with just the team name. Probably there's a better color scheme for this team (I originally had it in basically Padres colors, which I think I am using for the next team). This concept is pretty generic (...like the original team name), so it could be easily modified if anyone wants anything

[20_range]

Originally Posted by tehsuigi

HELL. YES. to the Mysteries. Holy crap that is some good logo-making.

And funny you should mention the Tombow pencil company, they actually owned a [LEAGUE REDACTED] franchise called the Unions, who eventually got merged twice into the team now playing in Chiba. Sure enough, they wore the dragonfly on their cap, albeit gold on black.

True failure on my part to figure this out. I've been reading the histories of the teams looking for ideas - I missed it


Here is that exact... uniquely drawn dragonfly that I wanted for a tribute to the single-curve flat "dragon" that a certain team uses as a logo

[20_range]

I drew this! It's a combination of a youtube tutorial intended for children and the page image on wikipedia

The tutorial calls for little squiggles to suggest the chest feathers so I replaced them with kanji. The owl also has home plate ears

[Carplos]

The home plate ears is a great touch!

[20_range]

An o with the ears


The Fukuoka, um, Kites, the predatory bird, is next. Might be a while before I come up with anything worth doing for Sapporo, Yokohama, Hiroshima, and a second Tokyo team*, so I'm certainly willing to hear suggestions


*previously on this forum I did a Tokyo Octopus and Tokyo City Poppers, but I want to create another new one

[20_range]

I wanted to do one ukiyo-e team, I apologize. This one is by Hiroshige, by way of a crop from a Polish avant garde magazine from 1907. Colors are from the original.



The FK monogram would likely be very popular among Americans. It's my nod to the Tokyo team with the relatively silly name in English, like tehsugi's joke with his Woodpeckers team.

[poiuy]

Originally Posted by 20_range

I wanted to do one ukiyo-e team, I apologize. This one is by Hiroshige, by way of a crop from a Polish avant garde magazine from 1907. Colors are from the original.



The FK monogram would likely be very popular among Americans. It's my nod to the Tokyo team with the relatively silly name in English, like tehsugi's joke with his Woodpeckers team.

If you're up for it, I would love to see what you would do with a Rokkaku dako version of this instead of the bird.

[Ilove_Telin54]

try use town Name Generator (ex. Mizukami, Torioka and Ayamecho)