Some people even claim that the “pain” part is due to the emotional suffering caused by an ita-bagger’s love of a particular character. They’re known as “painful” bags for several reasons: they inflict pain upon your wallet (a lot of anime/manga merch can be very expensive, and buying “doubles” of merchandise is common with ita bags), they inflict pain upon your eyes (they’re incredibly busy to look at!) and some can even be physically painful to hold/carry, weighed down with dozens of metal pins and badges. They’re not a specific brand or type of bag (though most come equipped with a transparent plastic window that both protects merchandise and allows others to see it), they’re simply the name given to a bag used to express devotion to a particular character, series or theme by being covered in merchandise. “Ita” bags (literally: “painful” bags) have been a trend in Japan for the past few years, but have only recently started gaining widespread recognition in the West. “It’s for your Disney pins,” my friend said to me just before Christmas, handing me a small black backpack with a heart shaped see-through window on its front, “it’s a Japanese thing, you can pin things onto the flap inside and they’ll show through.” Little did she know that she’d unleashed a merchandise-collecting monster that dwelled deep within my nerdy soul.
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