Throughout all of the Chicago Butcher’s existence, the branding has often been considered contentious. Inspired by Chicago’s meatpacking industry, the team was named the butchers to reflect on that time and show that same gruesomeness on the field. As such, the logo featured a steady hand wielding a blood stained cleaver with the Chicago Star prominently featured on its flag. However, not everyone was amazed by the logo and its slight gorey features or the Butcher branding, while others considered it their favorite and was the most intense/hardcore in the league.

Unfortunately, combined with the branding being contentious, the primary motivation behind a rebrand is because we do not have full rights to our current logo, making us the only team to not have team merchandise on the ISFL store. We felt like this was a good opportunity to discuss as a team whether we wanted to just redesign the logo or go with a full rebrand. After much deliberation and many failed attempts at making a redesigned Butcher’s logo that everyone on the team could rally behind, the team decided we wanted to start fresh and relocate! After a team vote, the branding of the Osaka Kaiju was the favorite!

As the ISFL, we felt it was appropriate to leave the borders of the USA and make the ISFL live up to the “international” in its name. The continents of North America, Africa, and Europe are represented in the league so we wanted to settle on a location in Asia or South America. While it may not be as popular as countries like Germany, the following of American football in Japan has been growing with its own professional and college league. Osaka specifically, is home to two professional X-league teams and six colleges who sport a team in the Kansai league so there will be plenty of American football fans excited to start cheering for a local ISFL team. Locals will also have home favorites to cheer for. Former MVP-winner Nakiri Ayame, Crasher Wake, and Silence Suzuka are just a few household ISFL names born in Japan.

Cherry blossoms, Mt. Fuji, Samurai, Ninjas are probably some of the first things that come to mind when people think of Japan. But thanks to the popularity of Godzilla, the idea of Kaiju has been spread around the world. We decided on using King Ghidorah as the base design of the logo to incorporate the design of the Osaka prefecture flag and its stylized three “O”s stemming from a single base.

Likewise, we chose the primary and secondary colors to be the same blue and white as the main two colors from the prefecture’s flag to directly integrate the design with the city. The Kaiju is also shaped in a similar orientation as the prefecture’s insignia and when combined with the mountain tops of the surrounding region, the insignia mimics that of a Kaiju’s footprint. Finally, to pay homage to Chicago, the tertiary color was chosen to be the Butcher’s red both to to contrast and highlight the blue and white.

When considering our field design, we wanted to include some iconic features of Osaka as part of the background. A silhouette of Osaka and its major points of interest, such as the Tempozan Ferris Wheel, Shitennoji Temple, Tsutenkaku Tower, and Osaka Castle, is displayed along the bottom sideline of the field accompanied by our towering Kaiju. Each end zone contains the Osaka prefecture symbol stylized as a Kaiju footprint opposite of gashing claw marks. You will also find our Kaiju’s Electric Storm crackling across each end zone, adding further excitement to touchdowns scored! To pay homage to the man who helped pioneer the Kaiju genre of cinema, we decided it was fitting to name our new stadium after Eiji Tsuburaya. Called the “Master of Monsters,” Tsuburaya was a Japanese special effects director, filmmaker, and cinematographer credited with being the co-creator of the Godzilla and Ultraman franchises. He is considered one of the most important and influential figures in the history of cinema and we are pleased to name our field “Tsuburaya Stadium'' in his honor.

Osaka Field, credit to @IceBear32