Wish Upon the Pleiades

Wish Upon the Pleiades was originally released in 2011 as a four-part original net animation series, created as a collaborative promotional project between the Japanese automobile manufacturer Subaru and the animation studio Gainax. The series was designed to showcase Subaru’s brand identity through the lens of a magical girl narrative, centered on a group of young girls who assist an alien in collecting engine fragments to repair his spacecraft, which happens to resemble a Subaru vehicle.

The character designs and animation direction were handled with a focus on ethereal, dreamlike aesthetics, moving away from Gainax's more industrial roots toward a softer, fantasy-oriented style. While it began as a targeted marketing initiative to highlight Subaru’s corporate image and the Pleiades star cluster referenced in the company's logo, the series was well-received for its unique blending of automotive engineering motifs with the magical girl genre, eventually leading to a full-length television series adaptation in 2015.