This might be surprising if your concept of cartoon characters is based on American models. Sure, all kinds of improbable things exist in American cartoons that we don’t think twice about. Walking, talking animals – that’s so normal it’s boring. Sponges that wear pants, whatever. But not usually a fillet of fish that gets on Twitter and says “Please eat me, I’m delicious.”

But for the last few decades at least, cute characters that are live, walking, sometimes talking, foods, have been totally normal in Japan. And it turns out they have historical precedents that go WAY back.

Anpanman: The Granddaddy Of Modern Food Characters

Anpanman: He’s your classic superhero. He wears a cape, he fights for truth, justice and the Japanese way. And… he’s a bread roll with sweet bean paste inside.

His friends are other types of bread – plain sliced white bread, buns filled with melon or curry – as well as humans who apparently see nothing odd about the situation.

Anpanman apparently never gets stale. After starting as a manga in 1973 and as a TV show in 1988, it aired its 1,000th episode in 2009and its 25th movie in 2013.

Anpanman also set the stage for using these characters for merchandizing, having been used to promote almost every conceivable product including other foods (isn’t that kind of like cannibalism?). I’ve even seen him on boxes of okonomiyaki mix, which isn’t something I imagined was marketed to children.

Perhaps Anpanman’s most direct modern descendent is Kogepan – modernized in part by making him the emo version. Unlike the cheerful, pink-cheeked Anpanman, he’s full of existential angst: Having been left in the oven too long, till he’s burnt, Kogepan is depressed about no one wanting to buy him. Yes, instead of rejoicing that he’ll escape being eaten, he’s miserable that he can’t fulfill his life’s work as a bun. He drowns his sorrows in milk, which makes him drunk.

Like Anpanman, Kogepan’s friends are all different kinds of bread, but his relationships are far more conflicted. He’s jealous of the pretty, unburnt breads, the Kireipan, and I can’t blame him – the cheerful little strawberry breads annoy even me.

But bean paste buns are far from the only walking, talking foods, as we’ll see on the following brief journey through Japanese foods, characters and history.

Beyond the Bun

Traditional sweets like Anpanman have always been big in the food-character market. In another animation from the 1970s, a taiyaki, the fish-shaped pancake filled with beanpaste, comes to life and swims in the ocean:

およげたいやきくん

Later in the 90s, three dango brothers and their tango song had a huge hit:

だんご三兄弟

Nowadays though, almost any food can be made into a character. It’s easy to make fruits and vegetables come to life by giving them faces and arms and legs. From just one company, San-X, there are over a dozen, including Amagurichan, a chestnut who’s impatient to be eaten, Mikan Bouya, a mikan (a citrus fruit like a tangerine), Mamepyon, a family of peas, and Soreike Otamachan!, an onion.

Elsewhere we find an NHK character who is a bitter melon and the incredibly adorable Nameko mushrooms.

Prepared dishes can come alive too. In the picture book and anime Oden-Kun, all the different ingredients of oden are made into creatures: you’ve got your boiled egg, your various fish cakes, and your chunk of daikon radish:

Fusion Food

Food character designers often go beyond giving a fruit or bread a face and limbs, resulting in strange, unnatural chimeras combining food with other creatures. A simple example is Momobuta, who’s a cross between a peach and a pig:

Hokkaido, too, has been all aboard the hybrid food train. The northern prefecture is known for a few main things, one being a bear, the other being various types of food (salmon, melon, onions, to name a few). How do you combine those things? Oh, let me count the ways.

First, let’s start with this melon-higuma mascot mashup.

Okay, so maybe this one’s not as “kawaii”

From there it can go many different directions, including bear+salmon, bear+onion, bear+crab, bear+squid, so on and so forth. Koichi happened to have the bear+crab and bear+squid combinations on hand and took a picture:

My favorite food-creature combination, though, is the San-X characters Nyan Nyan Nyanko. These little cats were presented in various scenarios over the years where they were incorporated and/or transformed into every conceivable dish and type of cuisine.

Their first appearance was a festival theme, where they were various traditional foods you’d buy at festival stalls, like takoyaki:

Next came traditional sweets eaten with green tea, which of course also had a cat in the cup.

Over the years they appeared as dim sum, burgers, onigiri, bubble tea, school lunch, sushi, Western sweets like cream puffs,… just about everything you can think of.

If you think too hard about this, it ought to be incredibly gruesome. Instead, it’s adorable. With every limited edition iteration you could buy stationery, stickers, plushes and what have you, so it is sad but good for my personal budget that the cats appear to have been retired in 2010 after ten years of appearing as various foodstuffs.

Classical Characters

Anthropomorphic food turns out to have some pretty ancient precedents in Japanese art. What’s funny about the early examples is that they also seem to presage another Japanese invention: the TV show food battle.

In the 15th century, a fashion started of illustrated stories of battles between food characters. In the Shoujin Gyorui Monogatari, an army of vegetarian foods, Shoujun, led by the lord Natto, battled against the seafood army led by the lord Salmon. The vegetarian army won, killing the lord Salmon in Nabe Castle.

The picture above is a similar battle from 1859. Although these stories are humorous, this one is said to have a pretty serious historical context: a cholera epidemic. The vegetarian foods won the battle this time too, supposedly symbolizing the fact that they were less likely to spread cholera (presumably because cholera is a water-borne disease).

Other Edo-period anthropomorphized food includes this lovely dancing ear of corn:

There are also precedents to the food-creature chimeras. The famous folktale of Momotaro, the Peach Boy, is about a boy who was born from a large peach floating in a stream. There’s at least one illustration where he is half peach, half boy

Maybe that version didn’t stick because it was too hard to believe that anyone was desperate enough for an heir to raise that creepy creature as their own.

Modern Battle of the Food Characters

With all this as background, it no doubt seemed totally normal for Sanrio to decide to have a new character contest where all twenty of the candidates were some kind of food, or something combined with some kind of food.

Fairly standard sorts of contestants included dog-mochi sweets, panda rice balls, an egg, and my favorite, a long negi onion.

Others were really stretching it, if you ask me, especially some of the food-animal fusions. Yeah, a giraffe’s horns do look a little like mushrooms, but if you have a whole bunch of mushrooms growing out of a giraffe’s head, it just gets creepy:

And I love tanuki like nothing else, but I cannot accept the combination of a tanuki and kiritanpo, a cylinder of pounded rice that a specialty of Akita and Aomori prefectures:

And the public seemed to agree with me that those were overdoing it, because the winner is the one that’s the foodiest of all. Kirimi-chan the salmon fillet has nothing added but tiny dots for eyes and a line for a mouth, and a tiny body. Simple, like Hello Kitty’s expressionless face. In fact, she might not look all that out of place in one of those fifteenth-century battles of the anthropomorphic seafoods.

So although she is brand new, she’s way more old school than anyone probably imagined.

Bonus Wallpapers!

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You already know what I’m talking about: Hello Kitty, Pikachu, Rilakkuma, and Doraemon (to name a few). They are, after all, the characters that have made Japan the “Nation Of Cute.” While these characters are definitely “the mainstream” (so much so that even outside of Japan you probably will recognize them all), there is another group of “cute” characters out there that you probably have not heard of. Does Kobitodukan, Lerch-san, or Gloomy Bear ring any bells?

Kimochi Warui + Kawaii = KimoKawaii

When I was in Japan last summer, I noticed some really strange characters mixed in with the usual flurry of fluffy alpacas and Pokemon. These strange creatures had the outside skins of mushrooms, peaches, and plants, but on the inside they looked like old men in a perpetual state of shock. When I asked my friend about them, she replied that they were called Kobitodukan (こびとづかん) and were really popular, especially among high school girls who think that they’re cute

Cute? Cute?! How can something this strange be considered cute, I thought. “They’re supposed to be gross, and that’s what makes them cute. It’s called kimo-kawaii, or gross-cute,” my friend explained.

At first I was bewildered by the concept, but just as it took me three painful tries to go from hating the fermented soybean dish natto to loving it, the more that I saw Kobitodukan, the more I began to tolerate them. Before I knew it, I had a Kobitodukan pencil case, keychain, card game, guidebook, candy holder, and assorted stickers. Kimo-kawaii had won me over just like it had won over the rest of Japan.

Kobitodukan themselves were created by Toshitaka Nabata in his children’s picture book, Kobitodukan (which translates roughly to “dwarf encyclopedia”). These Kobito dwarves are explained in a poetic fashion, saying that:

“They are the ones who perform the actions that fill us with mystery. They are the ones that make the grass rustle when there is no wind and who fold the edges of toilet paper into triangles.”

But it’s not just the Kobitodukan that are considered kimo-kawaii. There’s a whole slurry of other characters out there that fall within this increasingly popular category.

Nameko – He’s A “Fun Guy!”

Have you ever heard of a mushroom acting as a detective’s assistant? Nameko (marketed in English as “Funghi”), a talking mushroom, started off in a video game and now embellishes many apps, keychains, and folders galore.
In fact, you can hardly walk a block in Japan without walking into a Nameko UFO catcher (most likely Viet will be cursing while putting in another 1000 yen into the machine… “last time… last time…” he’ll mutter under his breath).

Funghi’s official website says “His lovable expressions and unpredictable behavior make him super popular!” If a talking mushroom wasn’t kimochi warui enough, his skin is described as “slippery, soft, and shiny” and instead of talking, he can express emotions by saying “nnf nnf”

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He even has a whole music video about him! There’s nothing like watching a mushroom sing and dance to a catchy tune!

Kimo-Kawaii City Mascots

If you’re traveling in Japan, you’ll see plenty of mascots, and not just for sports teams. In Japan, many cities have their own own mascots, or yuru kyara. There are so many (over a thousand) that they cover a wide spectrum of cute.  A while back, Hashi wrote an article about his favorite mascots, which includes some that are kimo-kawaii (or maybe just kimoi) enough to be mentioned here.

Manbe-kun

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Manbe-kun is the mascot for the town of Oshamanbe located in Hokkaido. His physical mix of sea-creatures that make up his body and his silent disposition combine to make something that’s just plain weird.

Funasshi

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Funashi represents Funabashi city and vaguely resembles a pear. Although he doesn’t seem very gross standing by himself, when he jumps around (which is very often) you can understand why he might fit into this category.

Sento-kun

Nara’s city mascot, Sento-kun represents his town through his Buddhist monk appearance, reindeer horns and “amiable disposition.” He has not been completely well-received throughout his life, but has continued to thrive due to that those who love him, really love him.

Lerch-san

Lerch-san (pronounced reruhi-san) represents the snowy areas of Niigata prefecture, and is in fact based off of  real-life guy Theodor Edler von Lerch, who supposedly first brought skiing to Japan. I had the pleasure of meeting the mascot at a shopping center a few years ago. (Kimo-)Kawaii!

Blood and Guts- Grotesque Kawaii

Although kimo-kawaii has been a recent fad, Japan has always had a relationship with creating strange things. Similar to the kimo-kawaii is the grotesque-cute or “guro-kawaii”, which is a step more extreme. Those who know Gloomy Bear know guro-kawaii. Gloomy Bear, which has had a surge of popularity overseas, is a teddy bear character who brutally murders his child owner- but he’s so cute while he does it! Although more than a little disturbing, I can see why it would be popular with kids going through a goth-phase. Gloomy bear seems like just the thing embrace if you want to be edgy, but still cute.

Speaking of edgy, if you “look” around Harajuku (and the rest of Japan) you may “see” something called “eyeball decorations.” Japanese girls are ripping out the eyeballs of their friends and are sewing them on their bags and jackets (just kidding.) But eyeballs are embellishing many fashion accessories, and are considered cute by many. Accompanying the eyeballs can be bones or other blood-splattered body parts parts. Adorable!

While this sort of fashion can be seen in Japan it also exists overseas, even in America, in fact! A lot of times it seems like there’s some inspiration going on, one way or another.

Guro-Kawaii Outside Of Japan?

Take for example the American animation Happy Tree Friends, which if you do not know, is a cartoon where cute fluffy animals inflict horrifying levels of violence and gore upon each other. It’s not Japanese, but I have heard various Japanese high school girls tell me that they love the show. Why? I honestly do not know. Personally, I can’t watch a whole video without cringing and looking away. Seriously, watch at your own discretion. Meccha kawaii~!

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The idea of something being both aesthetically unpleasing yet cute at the same time is being accepted both in Japan and outside of it, whether it is for shock factor or for remembrance, and shows around the English-speaking world have also used bursts of gross and grotesque in the mainstream. (Spongebob or Ren and Stimpy, anyone?)

Guro and Kimo Kawaii in the flesh

If we’re going to talk about guro-kawaii, we have to talk about her. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, the supreme overlord of Harajuku, is responsible for earworms such as PONPONPON, Candy Candy, and Tsukematsukeru, definitely embraces the concepts of kimo-kawaii and guro-kawaii.

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Kyary is responsible for many strange (often kimo/guro-kawaii) fads, the perpetuation of eyeball fashions (“see” above), as well as a recent fashion idea of using makeup to emphasize the bags under your eyes to make them look bigger- which is strange to some and cute to others.

Kyary herself states that her image is one of the main focuses of her musical career. She said in an interview once that “I love grotesque things. My concept is scary things that become traumatic with their cuteness. There are so many “just cute” things in the world, so I add grotesque, scary and even shocking materials like eyeballs and brains to balance out the cuteness.”

Almost Zen like with that balance. Wash on… wash off… Ommmmm.

But… Why?

So why are Kobitodukan, eyeball accessories, and Kyary so popular? Is it  the Japanese love of the strange in a society where most are not strange? Are people getting bored of the traditional soft vanilla-type Sanrio cute? The strange is what initially shocks the consumer, and is more interesting than the plain cute. And once they get past the initial shock, they become more open to the idea of it being “cute”, especially when the media and their peers are also calling these things cute. Japanese society is what gives these things the names “kimo-kawaii” and “guro-kawaii”, and once a name is given, the concept comes along with it.

So go forth, Japanese schoolgirls! Bring more kimo-guro-kawaii into the world for the rest of us to enjoy! We will continue your legend by calling these things cute as well, though maybe it’ll take a little getting used to. Although guro-kawaii has been accepted more outside of Japan with things such as Happy Tree Friends, kimo-kawaii still has a ways to go, I think, as I am reminded almost daily when people see my Kobito keychain. “What the hell is that?” or “That’s kind of creepy,” are things I hear a lot. I’m sure the more that I tell people that my kakuremomojiri Kobitodukan keychain is cute, the more it will rub off on someone at some point.

So let’s see, did it work? Let me know how you’re feeling about all of this in the comments. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder? (That is, unless said eye is on your handbag)

Time To Coloring Book!

For those of you who still love coloring books (or have kids) our (not) kimo-kawaii artist Aya made you a coloring book page out of the header. How fun is that? Just click the image below to get to a full size.

Also, if you want this image as your very own desktop background, you can do so by clicking below:

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From baseball teams to giant corporations to even tiny towns, it seems that Japan has a mascot for everything. People claim that Kobe alone has 42 different mascots for everything from the city itself to recycling campaigns. In Japan, these mascots are called yuru kyara, or “gentle characters.” The costumes that yuru kyara wear are called kigurumi which, when worn by civilians, can tread dangerously into furry territory.

So why do so many Japanese cities and town create their own mascots? Mascots help boost a town’s profile, and create a brand that a town can market. Not to mention that mascots can be just so darn cute that they’re hard to ignore!

And in fact, mascots are hugely popular in Japan, having their own fan clubs, websites, and even conventions.

Sometimes though, a mascot can be more confusing or strange than appealing; and that, to me, is a lot more interesting. Let’s check out some of my favorite weird mascots:

Manbe-kun

Moments later, this local Japanese politician was devoured by Manbe-kun.

If you asked me what Manbe-kun is supposed to be, I don’t think I would be able to tell you. He’s something like a mix of a crab, clam, starfish, and soulless, unblinking eyes.

Manbe-kun is the mascot of a town called Oshamanbe in Hokkaido. Manbe-kun is surprisingly popular, and even has his own website and Twitter account.

Earlier this year, Manbe-kun got in trouble for making some political comments on his Twitter. You’d expect a town mascot to say things like “Our town looks very lovely this time of year” or “Be sure to visit during our seasonal festival!” Instead, Manbe-kun (or rather, the PR firm that runs his Twitter) posted tweets talking about Japanese imperialism during World War 2. Not exactly the kind of thing that brings tourists running to Oshamanbe.

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Since then, the mayor of Ohsamanbe has suspended Manbe-kun’s Twitter account, leaving Manbe-kun to pursue his first love of terrifying people. You can check out Manbe-kun’s official YouTube channel, full of videos of him standing alone in complete silence, here.

Sasebo Burger Boy

“Big Kahuna Burger! I hear they have some tasty burgers.”

Once again, America’s greatest contribution to the world is hamburgers. The Japanese city of Sasebo is home to a major naval port and during the US Occupation of Japan after World War 2, the US Navy established a base there. Tons of restaurants opened up around town to serve hamburgers to the American troops stationed at the base and even today, the city has a huge number of burger joints. The Sasebo government even produces a “Burger Map” of the city to help tourists find the tastiest burgers around town.

Sento-kun

“Ladies.”

Longtime Tofugu readers will remember when Koichi wrote about Sento-kun, but here’s a recap for those who don’t: Sento-kun was the mascot for the city of Nara’s 1300 anniversary. Unlike Manbe-kun, Sento-kun is easy to describe: a half-naked chubby man-baby with antlers. (He’s actually supposed to be a Buddha to represent the Buddhist ties that Nara has with deer antlers as a nod to the tame deer that roam Nara.)

Sento-kun’s equally strange-looking grandfather, Rokuji.

People understandably really didn’t like Sento-kun when he was first created, so eventually Nara chose another mascot, Manto-kun. Even though Sento-kun was replaced by a cuter, less bizarre mascot, Sento-kun’s legacy didn’t end there. Sento-kun gained a cult following, spawning tributes, parodies, and homages to the former mascot.

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Hikonyan

I know I said I’d talk about the strangest yuru kyara in this post, but it’s hard to talk about mascots in Japan without talking about one of the most popular of all time: Hikonyan.

Hikonyan is the official mascot of Hikone Castle and his name is a combination of Hikone and nyan, the Japanese onomatopoeia for a cat’s meow. His costume is a maneki neko wearing a samurai’s helmet.

But most importantly? People go crazy for Hikonyan. He is, understandably, very adorable, and the mascot of a popular tourist attraction, but Hikonyan’s popularity goes way beyond that. He has a giant fan following, appears at public events, and becoming somewhat of a national sensation.

In fact, Hikonyan is a big reason why all of these other mascots exist. Once people caught wind of how much press Hikonyan was drumming up, they decided that they too needed a yuru kyara for their town/park/host club. So is Hikonyan a hero and a villain for kickstarting the yuru kyara craze? History will tell but in the meantime, I think we can all agree he’s too cute for his own good.

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Which mascot is your favorite? Let us know in the comments.

Header Image Photo Credit: Edward Harrison

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