The Summit of the Year!

Kumamon in the middle flanked by the runner ups

Yesterday, one of the hottest news was the "Yuru-Kyara" event where image characters from all over Japan gather together for a few days of an intense "summit". It's not really clear exactly what is discussed between the characters at the summit and it seems mostly to consist of said characters prancing around and trying to get elected as the most adorable mascot of the year.

Apparently it was a really intense election where the mascot of Kumamoto prefecture ; "Kumamon" managed to win first place, followed by the chicken-like character of Aichi prefecture "Bari-san" and in third place the distinctively creepy mascot of the Kokubunji area of Tokyo "Nishiko-kun".

I hate him so much...

Actually, I find this kinda amusing and among the herd of image characters (around a hundred) that gathered for the summit, there were very few distinctively creepy and/or disturbing characters. I do find it disturbing though that the Kyoto character "Sento-kun" still seems to be around and about as I had hoped that someone would have put him out of his misery by now. To add insult to injury, it looks even more hideous as a costume than the illustration...

There you have it, the most up to date and exciting information on current events in Japan, presented as always by your favorite Salaryman!

The one and only Anpanman!

I think it comes as no surprise that the Japanese in general are very fond of cartoon characters (in case there is any doubt you can take a look at my previous investigations into the subject here).

The country is full of these more or less crappy characters, most of which are very local in nature and of limited interest, but there are a category of more popular characters. Without any form of survey, investigation or real knowledge behind it, I would go as far as to say that the leading characters in Japan are (in no order of importance):

• Hello Kitty


• Pooh
  
• Doraemon


• Anpanman


• Miffy


• Doraemon


• Pokemon

Common for all of the above is that they are all more than just a merchandising decoration even if their origin differs (e.g. Doraemon was a comic from the start, Hello Kitty was invented as a "cute" mascot, Pokemon started in the video game series). But you can find everything from toys, cartoons, comics and video games featuring these popular mascots these days.

Although you could likely segment most of the above according to popularity in age, boys vs. girls, tweens, "grown" people etc. there is one of these who have a unique position in the Japanese market. Of course I'm talking about the one and only Anpanman. Anpanman and his stooges completely dominate the character market for the younger ages (say 2~5 year old toddlers). I find the character disturbing in many ways and for a grown person it is hard to see the appeal this surreal character and his buddies hold for the toddler, but his grip is extremely strong. In fact, on of our neighbors have a daughter around a year old, who has yet started to speak except for one word; "Anpanman!", which came before "mommy" or "daddy".

I fear for the time when Anpanman will casts his spell on Baby Sunshine...

The good characters!

In this series of post, dissecting the (ab)use of image characters here in Japan, I have focused on some of the worst that this country has to offer. But to give a fair and balanced view to this, I thought I should also highlight some characters that I actually think work reasonable well in context.

The role model of uniquely developed image characters here should be the Japanese Railways company JR, they are divided up into sections according to region but have adopted regional systems for paperless electronical tickets (touch and go pre-loaded cards) and have adopted use of image characters to promote these and illustrate the use of the tickets in advertisements and commercials. East JR with the SUICA card utilizes a penguin, West JR with the similar ICOCA card uses a platypus and Central JR with the TOICA card uses a happy little chicken.

In addition, they seem to have had some sense and reason in coordinating these characters to match and work together (although in the Tokyo region we basically just see the Penguin). But I should raise a red flag here; there are other railway companies that utilizes a similar and compatible system as JR but who have much, much worse taste in picking their mascots and that is perhaps the target of an in-depth investigation at a later stage...

Shock and Awe Japanese Style - The Character Mascots of the Armed Forces

I have previously skimmed the surface of the Japanese tendency to apply cute character mascots, with varying degrees of success, to organizations and events. I previously did a ranking of the worst three characters in Japan (here) and also looked into the character mascots in use by the Japanese police department and the host of image characters in use there (here).

Obviously, the Japanese armed forces felt that they should not to be one-upped by such measly institutions such as the Okinawa PD, historical capital Nara and also have adopted a few mascots of their own. I am pleased to introduce you to the image characters used by the Japanese Self-Defense Forces; the adorable "Pickles" and "Parsley"! I feel that they fully serve their purpose in making the military a bit more warmer and welcoming. They might look a big cute and cuddly, but mess with them and as representative of one of the top ten countries in the world in terms of military expenditure, they can bomb your ass back to the stone age. The Japanese Ministry of War (or whatever they call themselves these days) must be very pleased with themselves indeed!

Then we also have "Adsuma-kun", the image character of the army branch of the military. He might not be as cute and cuddly but compensates for it by carrying a rifle about three times the size of a conventional assault rifle; you don't want to mess with him. I have also received a highly secret picture that I have been told was part of the picture set taken in the Abu Ghraib Baghdad central prison but which was withheld to the media due to the sensitivity surrounding the dispatching of Japanese forces overseas...

But that's not enough, we also have the happy little lad "Mamoru-kun" in the local Osaka branch of the military. He might look like a happy little camper, but rest assured that he can take you on; in the air, on the ground or on the sea.

Now I just need to find the image characters for the different Yakuza families, motorcycle gangs, murderous cults and such, I'm sure that you're not really a real organization unless you have your own character!

Here's my card, give me a call if you have any information about the murder and yeah, isn't Pipo-kun cute?

As a follow-up to my previous posts on the incompetency in terms on use of cute mascot characters in the Japanese police department (here and here), the other day I was watching the news on Japanese TV. I didn't follow the details much, but it was about a murder investigation with ties to the US (I believe the suspect had visited the US at some point that was of interest to the investigation). So the Japanese TV team were interviewing some American shop owner who had had some interaction with the suspect previously.

The TV team showed pictures of the suspect and the guy said that he knew of the Japanese suspect and also that the Japanese police had spoken to him about it a few days earlier, and he brought out a business card he had received from the Japanese detectives. So far, so good, but then I saw that, in full color and pretty large, the Japanese Tokyo Metropolitan PD apparently have Piipo-kun printed on their cards!

I can see how Japanese people can ignore the character during interactions with the police, but I wonder if anyone considered what kind of impression it does in other countries to have a bizarre looking orange character printed on the cards when you might need to look like a tough hardened cop...?

(Since I unfortunately have very little interaction with the police and a good picture was hard to find the very very blurry picture here is the best I could find of that of how their cards look)

No, let me tell you what the real scandal is - Criminal use of mascot characters!

Recently the Japanese police department has been shook by a minor scandal involving a high ranking police officer (Hiroshi Nakai in case you are wondering) and his relationship to a hostess girl and how he had given her the card key access to his offices. Now, this scandal in itself is pretty dull and nothing that really raised any real interest from my side.

However, during the press conferences held, Nakai was talking in front of a board filled with a horde of bizarre mascot characters (in case you want to see, you can find it here on youtube, around 20 sec in the fun starts) obviously the clash of cute Japanese mascot characters and a womanizing scandal is bizarre in itself, but this triggered me to go to the bottom of this sordid incident... Some quick and dirty journalistic research yielded these findings; all the mascot characters used by central and local Japanese police departments...

That the tax payers money (i.e. mine!) is diverted into developing mascot characters might be justified in some cases since it can help create interest and awareness of the police and such among the kids and people into that kinda thing in Japan. But a quick glance shows that there is considerable differences in quality in these mascots...

The real horror though is the Okinawa Police mascot and it could be briefly seen during the press conference behind Nakai and completely stole my interest away from anything that he had to say. It is with great pride, mixed with disgust, that I present to you, the only real contender to Sentokun that I have discovered here in Japan; Shiizaa-kun:

The face of this "cute character" seem to be decorated with something that unmistakeably look like turds... What the police really need to go to the bottom with is who developed this mascot and make sure that they get punished to the full extent of the law!

And if it's not criminal as it looks now, the law seriously needs some revisions to criminalize use of mascot characters like this!

Jobs on the side for the Tokyo Tower Noppon brothers

I managed to get hold of this actual documentation of a conversation between the Tokyo Tower image characters the "Noppon Brothers" who someone mentioned in my previous review of image characters in Japan (here and here). Click on it for bigger and better quality!

I just feel sorry for these guys, as the Tokyo Tower is not getting the attention as it used to back in the day, the two Noppon brothers have been forced to taking on additional work to make ends meet. It is really sad to see two such great characters being forced to use their creator given form for services that most of use would like to avoid... I really hope these guys can get back to being full time characters really really soon again...

Keisei Panda revealed...

Ok, first, take a look at this picture and think about what it is you see going on.

The picture was an actual part of an advertisement for the new Keisei Skyliner train that will connect the Ueno station to the Narita airport within 30 minutes and some form of guided tours were offered in conjunction with this. But I'm not sure if it's only my mind that did not see this as a pleasant sightseeing tour. This is what I thought the picture showed:

I also particularly like the disclaimer at the bottom stating that the actual tour will differ from the picture, but hey, you can never be too ensured against complaints!

In case the text is hard to read in the picture is hard to read; to me it looks like the Panda and his latest ho are caught by the Panda police after a gruesome rape-murder in the train and while they are kept at gun-point the Panda forensics are taking the pictures of the scene... This is what you thought too, right?

I suspected as much...

Found this little piece of information in the form of a picture earlier and I must say that I should have known as much...

When I listed the 3 worst image characters of Japan earlier, I suspected that there was more maliciousness to these characters than I could uncover...

The image characters we rely on for protection

As I previously, tongue-in-cheek, did the ranking of the top 3 worst image characters in Japan (here) I didn't really think much about it and aimed for a entertaining slant for the post. However, as I the other day noticed the official image character of the Japan fire department, I figured it is time that some serious critical journalism takes a good look at some of these characters that represent official authorities that we depend on in our daily lives. I think it is fair to say that, as a Japanese tax-payer, I should be able to put much higher expectations on such characters than those developed for commercial purposes. If you are a faithful reader you already know that I am unreliable and extremely slow in following up on earlier promises, but it is my intention to follow up other areas and investigate their characters further on as well.

The characters that are the focus of my investigation this time are Kyuuta, representing the Tokyo Fire department, and Piipo-kun, representing the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, very important tasks as you can easily understand.

Kyuuta - Protecting you from fires

This is the official character of the Tokyo Fire department and information about who he/she is and what its objectives are is very difficult find which raises the questions "what is it Kyuuta doesn't want us to know?". But yeah, after the whole Keisei Panda backstory mess, it can be a relief to have a character without a ridiculous backstory. In fact, the whole Kyuuta feels a bit amateurish and underdeveloped actually, the name comes from the final "9" ("kyuu" in Japanese) in the Japanese "911 number"; 119, and the red color of his clothes shows that he's a firefighter and the color of the helmet is for water, to extinguish the fires. The antenna can apparently flash when he needs to go extinguish a fire, but he doesn't seem to have any other biological means of making noise than his/hers mouth. I do find it pretty cowardly that they haven't assigned Kyuuta a sex, call it a boy or girl and then live with it.

(Also, introducing here for the first time the "character rating scale 1-10, 10 is the best")

Cuteness: 2

Freaky backstory: 1

Educational: 4

Creepiness: 6

Total Verdict: 3 - All in all a pretty lame character and it's pretty obvious that it was primarily made to get kids to remember the 119 number, but that's no excuse to make a half assed attempt. I would advise them to hire Sanrio and have a proper character assigned to the job, it is hard times and we can't afford to keep lame characters afloat just for the sake of it. That he has his own theme song that is extremely lame doesn't really help his case either (listen here).

Piipo-kun - Protecting the streets

Unfortunately the Tokyo PD saw the lead of the fire department and decided that they could not let themselves be seen as sloppy and not dedicated, and they created their own character. The official explanation to the design was "we took some cute characteristics of animals and used them when we created the character". One of the better things with this character is that he, as well, do not have a bizarre backstory. He does have a family however, but they are not much featured and are just serving as props in his adventures. The basic concept of Piipo-kun can be summarized in one word: "surveillance". His ears are large so he can hear what you are talking about, he has an antenna so he can react quickly to any of your sudden movements and his eyes are large so he can see what you are doing. The name is an amalgam of the English words "People" and "Police".

Cuteness: 4
Freaky backstory: 1
Educational: 3
Creepiness: 4
Total Verdict: 4 - I find this character slightly more likeable than Kyuuta, but not by much. The main redeeming feature of this Piipo-kun is that he at least is slightly cute and even if he is surveying my every move, he doesn't seem like he would pose much of a fight if it came to that.

Addition: After some more research, unfortunately I found out that Piipo-kun as well happens to have his own theme song... Not sure which one is worst, but I think this one is slightly better than that of Kyuuta since the katakana Japanese-English at least makes it amusing. Subject yourself to the song at your own risk here (click the link next to the flash icon)

Worst Image Character of Japan - Top 3 2009

Before I kick this epic post off properly into it's full glory, my own personal stance to the topic in question should probably be clarified.

As many of my readers probably know, "Image Characters" are very popular here in Japan. Plenty of companies and institutions have these characters to "soften" the message and to help illustrate whatever the message is in a cute way. Personally I don't have any problems with this approach although I know quite a few foreigners here in Japan, and a few Japanese as well I should add for good measure, who thinks these image characters are stupid and the concept in itself is for children and not for grown men.

However, sometimes these character really don't hit the mark... The larger companies go with surefire characters, homegrown such as Hello Kitty, Doraemon, Atom Boy or imported ones such as Snoopy, Moomin, Miffy or similar. The cuteness of those well established character brands is well established so there is little risk of missing the mark. Even if you can't afford to get the actual Hello Kitty license, you can at least try to get the Keroppi license...

With that lengthy and cumbersome disclaimer out of the way, let's get the real post on the road! As you might understand, this post deals with those characters that weren't... well... maybe that well thought out? Characters that fail to evoke that feeling of affection and just plain miss the mark, by far.

Worst Characters of Japan

Number 3 - The Keisei Panda

Well, this character just makes me uncomfortable... You would think that it's hard to use a panda and not get the "cute" right, but this Panda is anything but cute, I'm not sure but I think it's the mouth that gives it a slightly creepy look. The Panda is the official character of the Keisei Railways credit cards and to it's credit it has to be said that it's thankfully not very well known among the general public and I have a feeling it never well. Let's just not mention the weird backstory about how he came to earth from the rich and bountiful "Panda Planet", sent by his father to save the earth...

Number 2 - Kuutan, the Narita Airport Character

This one just feel so off the mark in so many ways... In a bid to improve the image of the Narita airport this character was created a few years ago. You would think that a better way to increase the image of the airport would be to make it more accessible and customer friendly instead of paying some stupid agency tons of money to come up with this lame design... To it's credit, the backstory is hardly there at all and Kuutan keeps a very low profile these days...

Number 1 - Sentokun, the Nara Prefecture Character

The worst of the worst, the image character of the ancient capital of Japan and home of the free roaming deers and beautiful buddist temples; Nara. I've been to Nara quite a few times and it's really an amazing place that I would recommend people to visit even if in Japan with limited time. It's less hectic than Kyoto but contains many impressive temples in a calm and nice environment. But then... this character? I believe that a mix of buddism and deers was the general concept for this one, but what they came up with was just plain... .... disturbing... His favorite foods are stated to be "tasty things from Nara", that is just a pretty obvious sign of "character creating block"... Sentokun is the well deserved winner of the "worst character of Japan 2009"!

(I'm sure that there are plenty of other bad seeds out there, so if you have any other really bad characters in your mind, please drop a line in the comments and I might follow this one up with a full top 10, I'm sure the material is out there...)