In what is the most bizarre cross-cultural phenomenon we've seen in ages, a Japanese adult videogame publisher has combined his love of attractive women, exotic Italian cars and eroge into ultra-exclusive itasha — the Japanese fad of painting cars with comic and videogame characters.

Age Soft chairman Yoshida-san made a fortune designing and selling hentai and eroge games such as Muv-Luv. Some of that money obviously went into his itasha Lamborghini Gallardo and Lancia Stratos, decorated with characters from the games created by his company. Francesco Fondi, our gaming gearhead amico at blog.gamersweb.it sent along some pix and commentary. "Probably the purists will be disgusted at the sight of cars like these covered with characters from manga, but we like them a lot," he told us.

We're told that itasha is a Japanese portmanteau that combines the words itai (painful) and shai (vehicle) and sounds like the word meaning "Italian car" (Itaria-sha). While it's exciting to see some manga fans have great taste in cars that are often painful to own, we must admit it's a little painful to see the otherworldly Bertone-designed Lancia Stratos — fewer than 500 were made — covered in half-naked cartoon characters. More photos and video after the jump.