Adidas Uses Anime-Style Imagery for Mundial Campaign With Clot
Legacy athletic brands are commissioning original anime-style work instead of licensing existing properties, a shift made possible by a consumer base that increasingly accepts Japanese-inspired animation produced outside Japan.
Reporting from 1 sources: Animenomics.
Adidas launched the Mundial apparel and footwear collection with anime-style visuals created by digital artist Annie Choi. The campaign, developed with Hong Kong fashion brand Clot and its founder Edison Chen, features Brazilian footballer Raphinha and Colombia's Luis Díaz. Chen told Animenomics the animation allowed him to portray ideas that do not exist in real life. The work is part of a two-year collaboration between Adidas and Clot.
The artist behind the campaign, California-based Annie Choi, built a following of more than 600,000 on Instagram with short-form anime-aesthetic work for luxury fashion houses. Adidas brought that style to Mundial through Edison Chen's Hong Kong label Clot, the latest case of an athletic brand using anime visuals to reach younger audiences.
The campaign puts two footballers at its center: Brazil's Raphinha and Colombia's Luis Diaz. It is one piece of a two-year collaboration between Adidas and Clot, and it follows a Chinese New Year collection earlier this year that also used anime-style assets.
Adidas Japan ran a separate anime campaign for the 2026 World Cup kit launch, turning national team players into animated characters. Taken together, the projects show the brand treating anime aesthetics as a recurring marketing channel rather than a one-off.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.
Sources
- Animenomics Adidas tries out a sports–anime crossover