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Hello Kitty

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This article is about the character. For other uses, see Hello Kitty (disambiguation).

Hello Kitty
Sanrio character
First appearanceMarch 1975 (created 1974)
Created byYuko Shimizu
Voiced byMegumi Hayashibara (1990–2023), others[a]
In-universe information
Full nameKitty White[5]
SpeciesAnthropomorphic cat
GenderFemale
FamilyMimmy (twin sister)
George (father)
Mary (mother)
Anthony (grandfather)
Margaret (grandmother)
Charmmy Kitty (pet cat)
Significant otherDear Daniel (boyfriend)
NationalityBritish

Hello Kitty (Japanese: ハロー・キティ, Hepburn: Harō Kiti),[6] also known by her real name Kitty White (キティ・ホワイト, Kiti Howaito),[5] is a fictional character created by Yuko Shimizu, currently designed by Yuko Yamaguchi, and owned by the Japanese company Sanrio.[7][8][9] Sanrio depicts Hello Kitty as a British anthropomorphized white cat with a red bow and no visible mouth.[10][11] According to her backstory, she lives in a London suburb with her family, and is close to her twin sister Mimmy, who is depicted with a yellow bow.[5][12]

Hello Kitty was created in 1974 and the first item, a vinyl coin purse, was introduced in 1975.[13][14] Originally, Hello Kitty was only marketed towards pre-teenage girls, but beginning in the 1990s, the brand found commercial success among teenage and adult consumers as well.[15] Hello Kitty's popularity also grew with the emergence of kawaii (cute) culture.[16] The brand went into decline in Japan after the 1990s, but continued to grow in the international market.[17] By 2010 the character was worth $5 billion a year and The New York Times called her a "global marketing phenomenon."[17] She did about $8 billion at retail in 2013.[18]

UNICEF has appointed Hello Kitty children's ambassador and the Japanese government appointed her ambassador of tourism.[15] There are Sanrio theme parks based on Hello Kitty: Harmonyland in Hiji, Ōita, Japan,[19] Sanrio Puroland in Tama New Town, Tokyo, Japan, and Hello Kitty Shanghai Times in Shanghai, China.[20] The Hello Kitty media franchise has grown to include a number of animated series targeted towards children, as well as several comics, animated films, video games, books, music albums and other media productions. A variety of products have featured the character over the years, like school supplies, clothing, accessories, and toys, along with other items. In 2008, there were over 50,000 different Hello Kitty branded products.[15]

Creation and design[edit]

Yuko Shimizu was the original designer of Hello Kitty.

In 1962, Shintaro Tsuji, founder of Sanrio, began selling rubber sandals with flowers painted on them.[21] Tsuji noted the profits gained by adding a cute design to the shoes and hired cartoonists to design cute characters for his merchandise.[21] Hello Kitty was designed by Yuko Shimizu and was added to the lineup of early Sanrio characters in 1974.[8]

Hello Kitty was initially known only as "the white kitten with no name" (名前のない白い子猫).[11] Shimizu got the name Kitty from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass; during a scene early in the book, Alice plays with a cat she calls Kitty.[22] Sanrio's motto is "social communication," and Tsuji wanted the brand name to reflect that by including a greeting. He first considered "Hi Kitty" before finally settling on "Hello Kitty," her current name.[23] Sanrio decided to make Hello Kitty British because foreign countries, in particular Britain, were trendy in Japan at the time of Hello Kitty's creation. Sanrio already had several characters set in the US, and it wanted Hello Kitty to be different.[9][15]

In 1976 Setsuko Yonekubo temporarily took over as lead designer for Hello Kitty, after Shimizu left Sanrio. In 1980 Yuko Yamaguchi became lead designer and has remained in charge since.[24] Yamaguchi has said that fashion, movies, and TV inspire her in creating new designs. New series involving Hello Kitty with different themed designs are released regularly, following current trends.[9][17]

Spokespeople for Sanrio have said that Hello Kitty has no mouth, as they want people to "project their feelings onto the character" and "be happy or sad together with Hello Kitty."[9][25] Another explanation Sanrio has given for Hello Kitty's lack of a mouth is that she "speaks from the heart. She's Sanrio's ambassador to the world and isn't bound to any particular language."[15] However, Yuko Yamaguchi has also said that "Kitty has a mouth" that is "hidden in the fur".[26] Representatives for Sanrio have said that they see Hello Kitty as a symbol of friendship, which they hope she will foster between people across the world.[9] There has been speculation that Hello Kitty has her origins in Maneki Neko, a traditional Japanese cat figurine. The name "Hello Kitty" is a back-translation of Maneki Neko, meaning "beckoning cat" in English. Despite this, no definitive statement supports that speculation.[27] Hello Kitty has also instead been put forth as an early example of mukokuseki, a Japanese term meaning "stateless" or "nationless" in reference to characters lacking any identifiable national background.[28]

History and reception[edit]

Hello Kitty first appeared on a vinyl coin purse sold in Japan in 1975.[13][14]

The character's first appearance on an item was in March 1975 on a vinyl coin purse sold in Japan, where she was pictured sitting between a bottle of milk and a goldfish bowl.[13][14][29] She first appeared in the United States in 1976 when Sanrio opened a Gift Gate store in San Jose, California.[30][31]

Hello Kitty sold well immediately after her 1975 launch, and Sanrio's sales increased sevenfold.[17] Due to Japan's growing economy, many Japanese children could afford to buy Hello Kitty products.[32] Her popularity also grew with the emergence of kawaii culture, which embraces cuteness.[16]

UNICEF named Hello Kitty as children's ambassador to the United States in 1983, children's ambassador in Japan in 1994, and gave her the title of UNICEF Special Friend of Children in 2004, a title unique to her.[33][34][35]

Originally, Hello Kitty was only marketed towards a child and preteen audience. In the 1990s, the target market for Hello Kitty was broadened to include teenagers and adults as a retro brand.[9][15] Marketing to those who could not get Hello Kitty merchandise as children, and those who fondly remember items they had, Sanrio began selling Hello Kitty branded products such as purses and laptops.[9][15][17] The 1994–1996 Face series was the first to be designed specifically for mature consumers.[9]

The Hello Kitty brand rose to greater prominence internationally during the late 1990s. At that time, several celebrities, such as Mariah Carey, had adopted Hello Kitty as a fashion statement.[15] New products featuring the character were made available in a large variety of American department stores.

Hello Kitty's popularity in Japan peaked in the late 1990s when she was the country's top-grossing character. In 2002, Hello Kitty lost her place as the top-grossing character in Japan in the Character Databank popularity chart. In a 2010 survey, she was in third place behind Anpanman and Pikachu from Pokémon.[17] In 2010, The New York Times attributed the character's relative decline in Japan to her biography not being "compelling enough to draw many fans." The newspaper later wrote that analysts called the characterization "weak,"[17] and that Hello Kitty not having a mouth has dampened her success as an animated TV character.[17] According to Character Databank, Hello Kitty was the third highest-grossing character in Japan as of 2013.[36] In 2019 and 2020, Character Databank ranked her fifth, and as of 2021 she was out of the top five.[37][38][39]

Overseas, her global popularity has increased over the years.[17] According to Sanrio, Hello Kitty was appearing on 12,000 new products each year as of 1999.[23] Beginning in 2007, following trends in Japan, Sanrio began using darker designs for Hello Kitty with more black and less pink and pulled away from kawaii styles.[17] By 2008, Hello Kitty was responsible for half of Sanrio's $1 billion net income, and there were over 50,000 different Hello Kitty branded products in more than 60 countries.[15] By 2010 the character was worth $5 billion a year and The New York Times called her a "global marketing phenomenon".[17] Worldwide annual sales reached $8 billion in 2013.[18]

In July 2008, the Dutch artist Dick Bruna, creator of Miffy, alleged that Hello Kitty is a copy of Miffy, being rendered in a similar style. He stated disapprovingly in an interview for the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph: "That" [...] "is a copy [of Miffy], I think. I don't like that at all. I always think, 'No, don't do that. Try to make something that you think of yourself'."[40] Mercis, the firm that managed copyrights for Bruna, took Sanrio to court over their Hello Kitty-associated character Cathy, a rabbit which made her first appearance in 1976 and which Mercis argued infringed the copyright for Miffy. A court in Amsterdam ruled in favour of Mercis in November 2010 and ordered Sanrio to stop the production and sale of merchandise featuring Cathy in the Benelux countries. However, in June 2011, the two companies announced that they had reached a settlement agreement to end their legal dispute. Sanrio stopped using the Cathy character, and the two firms jointly donated €150,000 for reconstruction after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.[41]

As of 2014, 90% of the profits from Hello Kitty came from licensing of products for the international market.[42] She has been particularly popular in other Asian countries for decades, such as in China, where her cultural impact is comparable to that of Barbie in the Western world.[43] In 2008, Japan named Hello Kitty the ambassador of Japanese tourism in both China and Hong Kong, marking the first time Japan's tourism ministry had appointed a fictional character to the role.[44] Sharon Kinsella, a lecturer at Oxford University on Japanese sociology, called the selection of Hello Kitty "a bit farcical ... as if a dumbed-down cultural icon ... can somehow do something significant to alter the gnarly and difficult state of China–Japan relations."[15]

In the United States, Hello Kitty is recognized by more than 80% of young adults in the 18–23 age group, as of 2016.[45] In 2014 a four-day convention, Hello Kitty Con in Los Angeles, attracted over 25,000 visitors. The convention was held in celebration of Hello Kitty's 40th anniversary.[46] Sanrio's Puroland Tokyo theme park also held a celebration spanning several days in November 2014.[47]

Character[edit]

Hello Kitty is a gijinka, an anthropomorphism or personification of a Japanese Bobtail cat.[48][11][49] Official character profiles list her full name as Kitty White (キティ・ホワイト, Kiti Howaito), born in the suburbs of London, England, on November 1. Her height is described as five apples and her weight as three apples. She is portrayed as a bright and kind-hearted girl, very close to her twin sister Mimmy. She is good at baking cookies and loves her mama's homemade apple pie. She likes to play the piano and collect cute things, and her favorite subjects in school are English, music, and art.[5][50][12]

Hello Kitty is portrayed with a large family with the surname White. Her twin sister Mimmy is described as "shy and very girly," interested in sewing and dreaming of marriage. While Hello Kitty wears a red bow on her left ear, Mimmy wears a yellow one on her right. Their papa George is described as dependable, humorous but also absent-minded. Their mama Mary is portrayed as a good cook who loves doing housework. Grandpa Anthony likes to tell stories and grandma Margaret likes sewing.[50][12] In addition to family, Hello Kitty is also depicted with several animal friends, including the mice Joey and Judy, the bears Tippy and Thomas, the raccoon Tracy and the squirrel Rorry.[51]

Aside from the core Hello Kitty characters, several spinoff characters have been created: Hello Kitty's boyfriend Dear Daniel in 1999, Charmmy Kitty, Hello Kitty's pet cat, and Sugar, her pet hamster, both in 2004, and her superhero alter-ego Ichigoman in 2011.[29][52]

SFGATE said in 2004 that in light of the level of success of Hello Kitty, her fictional biography "seems almost too modest – or irrelevant" and "doesn't seem to have played much of a part" in the success.[16]

In 2014 an anthropologist was told by Sanrio that Kitty White was not simply a cat (i.e. "depicted on all fours"), describing her as a little English girl called Kitty White, from outside London.[10] Following reports that interpreted this to mean she was human, a Sanrio PR representative said that the organization had "never said she was a human", explaining anthropomorphization by comparing the character to Mickey Mouse: "No one would mistake the Disney character for a human–but at the same time he's not quite a mouse. Just like Hello Kitty isn't a human, she's not quite a cat either."[48] Sanrio stated further, "Hello Kitty was done in the motif of a cat. It's going too far to say that Hello Kitty is not a cat."[11]

Media[edit]

Animated series[edit]

Further information: List of Hello Kitty animated series

There have been several different animated series starring Hello Kitty. The first was Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater, an animated television series with 13 22-minute episodes that premiered in 1987.[53] The next, an OVA titled Hello Kitty and Friends, spanned 30 entries originally released in Japan between 1989 and 1994. Hello Kitty's Paradise came out in 1999 and was 16 episodes long. Hello Kitty's Stump Village came out in 2005, and The Adventures of Hello Kitty & Friends came out in 2008 and has aired 52 episodes. A crossover series under the name Kiss Hello Kitty (that paired animated versions of the members of the rock band KISS with Hello Kitty) was announced in March 2013. Produced by Gene Simmons, this show was supposed to air on The Hub Network (now Discovery Family),[54] but it never came to fruition.

Hello Kitty's Paradise [ja] was a long-running live-action children's program that aired on TXN from January 1999 to March 2011. It was the longest-running weekly kids' television program in the network's history. In January 2011, the show's creators mutually agreed to end the series after twelve seasons, with the final episode being broadcast on 29 March 2011.

In August 2018, Sanrio began streaming a CGI animated series on YouTube. It features Hello Kitty talking to the camera about her life in the style of vlogging YouTubers.[55][56]

Sanrio began streaming the newest 2D animated Hello Kitty series Hello Kitty and Friends Supercute Adventures on YouTube on 26 October 2020.[57]

Comics[edit]

Hello Kitty had two Japanese comic series serialized in Ribon, a shōjo manga magazine - Hello Kitty Doki (ran from May 2007 to April 2008)[58] and Hello Kitty Peace (released in June 2008).[59]

In March 2016, Sanrio launched a webcomic featuring Hello Kitty as a strawberry-themed superhero called Ichigoman (ichigo meaning strawberry). The webcomic is created by Toshiki Inoue and Shakua Sinkai and updates once a month.[60] Ichigoman first appeared in 2011 in an exhibition with Yuko Yamaguchi's art.[52]

Music[edit]

Hello Kitty has her own branded album, Hello World, featuring Hello Kitty-inspired songs performed by a collection of artists including Keke Palmer, Cori Yarckin, and Ainjel Emme under Hello Kitty's Lakeshore Records record label.[61] Hello Kitty was also chosen by AH Software to be the basis of the new Vocaloid Nekomura Iroha (猫村いろは, Nekomura Iroha)[62] to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sanrio.[63]

Musician Yoshiki unveiled the Hello Kitty theme song "Hello Hello" in November 2014 at the first Hello Kitty Con. Yoshiki, who was the first celebrity to have his own Hello Kitty doll, "Yoshikitty," was approached by Yamaguchi to compose the song seven years prior.[64]

Video games[edit]

There are numerous Hello Kitty games starting with the release of the first title for Famicom in 1992; however, the majority of these games were never released outside of Japan. Hello Kitty also has made cameo appearances in games featuring other Sanrio characters, such as the Keroppi game, Kero Kero Keroppi no Bōken Nikki: Nemureru Mori no Keroleen. Special-edition consoles such as the Hello Kitty Dreamcast, Hello Kitty Game Boy Pocket, and Hello Kitty Crystal Xbox have also been released exclusively in Japan.

Hello Kitty appeared as a guest character in Sega's Sonic Dash in 2016, as part of Sega's partnership with Sanrio. Hello Kitty and My Melody (another Sanrio character) appeared together in Super Mario Maker as unlockable Mystery Mushroom costumes. Hello Kitty appears as a playable character via downloadable content in Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania.[65]

Partial list of Hello Kitty video games[edit]

See also: Category:Hello Kitty video games

5 Replies to “Hello Kitty”

  1. Hello Kitty, has 8 images, for some reason I can only get 2 on my ps3, so if anyone has the same problem let me know. thank you.

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