Hello Kitty

Hello Kitty (ハローキティ, Harō Kitī), also known by her full name, Kitty White (キティ・ホワイト, Kitī Howaito), is a fictional character produced by the Japanese company Sanrio, created by Yuko Shimizu, and designed by Yuko Yamaguchi. Hello Kitty is portrayed as a perpetual 3rd-grade student who lives outside of London. She along with her twin sister Mimmy, was born on 1 November 1974.

Hello Kitty is a staple of the kawaii segment of Japanese popular culture. Originally marketed toward pre-teenage girls, Hello Kitty's image found commercial success among not only her original target audience but adolescent and adult consumers as well.

Why She Rocks

 * 1) Due to her popularity, her character essentially became the face of the Sanrio brand and is the most well-known character amongst the company, it's even to the point where people just refer to Sanrio as the "Hello Kitty company" or "the company that created Hello Kitty".
 * 2) With that being said, similar to Pikachu, Hello Kitty is often considered a fan favourite amongst the Sanrio brand, mostly because of how cute she looks.
 * 3) She is a very nice and caring person to everyone around her, and unlike Peppa Pig and Caillou, who encourage bad behaviour towards friends and family, Hello Kitty on the other hand actually encourages kids to be nice and caring to others.
 * 4) *She is shown to have a healthy relationship with her twin sister Mimmy, which is most notable in most of the anime and cartoons.
 * 5) *She also is very caring towards her friends too, the best example of this is her relationship with her best friend, My Melody.
 * 6) *To show even further that she is a very caring person, she hates the idea of people fighting with each other, and she always tries to make people to get along with each other, as seen in Gundam vs. Hello Kitty.
 * 7) **Furthermore, she is a great role model for children and a great influence on them as she can teach children to be kind and caring to their friends and family.
 * 8) Her design is very well done, it's a pretty simple design, but is also pretty cute to look at and is also iconic, the simple design is done quite well as it can make people identify the fact that it is Hello Kitty if they ever saw her by looking at her face.
 * 9) She never resorts to getting angry and worked up whenever a problem gets in her way, and she always tries to fix that problem no matter what.
 * 10) She manages to avoid coming across as a complete Mary Sue in a few cartoons that she's presented in.
 * 11) *An example of this is shown in Growing Up With Hello Kitty, where in each episode, she ends up learning life lessons.
 * 12) Not only is she one of the most popular characters in Japan, but she is also one of the most popular characters of all time with her character being known worldwide.
 * 13) She has spawned lots of clothing, accessories, toys, games, books, manga, anime series, music albums, and even theme parks.
 * 14) She has even made some appearances in video games, some games include I Wanna Be the Boshy, mh:awesomegames:Super Mario Maker, Sonic Dash and Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania.
 * 15) She has had crossovers with other pieces of media, such as mh:greatestmovies:Ready Player One, Animal Crossing, Splatoon, Sonic the Hedgehog and Gundam in Gundam vs. Hello Kitty.
 * 16) Many of the actors who play her role in the anime and cartoons all do great jobs at voicing her.
 * 17) *What is quite interesting is that mh:besttvshows:Tara Strong actually had Hello Kitty as her first ever major voice role in Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater.
 * 18) Much like Mario, her character mainly has a widespread appeal to people of all ages, as her character is not only enjoyable to children, but also to adults too.
 * 19) She is pretty heroic too, as shown in Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue, in which she and her friends save the earth from aliens.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) As cute as her design may be, the lack of a mouth can be kind of unsettling for some viewers and it also makes her character pretty emotionless too.
 * 2) *Though, her creator has stated that the reason that Hello Kitty has no mouth is that she wanted her character to make the person who sees her project their own emotion onto Hello Kitty.
 * 3) *However, some anime/cartoons have Hello Kitty have a mouth in them.
 * 4) Despite what WSR #6 said earlier about her not being a Mary Sue in Growing Up With Hello Kitty, she can be treated as a Mary Sue in quite a few other cartoons she is in.
 * 5) Her voice can admittedly be quite annoying when she cries.
 * 6) Much like Mario and Pikachu, she has faced some controversies:
 * 7) *The Dutch artist Dick Bruna, creator of Miffy, has suggested that Hello Kitty is a copy of Miffy, being rendered in a similar style, stating disapprovingly in an interview for the British paper "The Daily Telegraph", stating that "Hello Kitty 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".

Reception

 * Hello Kitty eventually rose to greater prominence internationally during the late 1990s and became one of the most popular franchises from Japan. Several celebrities, such as Mariah Carey, had adopted Hello Kitty as a fashion statement. Newer products featuring the character can be found in a large variety of American department stores. Hello Kitty became a universally loved character by people around the world and peaked in Japan 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.

Trivia

 * Hello Kitty is currently the second highest-grossing media franchise of all time, with her brand gaining a total revenue of $84.515 Billion in USD.
 * Despite having Kitty in her name and her looking like a cat, the creator has actually stated that Hello Kitty is in fact not a cat at all, Christine R. Yano stated that "That's one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat. She's a cartoon character. She is a little girl. She is a friend. But she is not a cat. She's never depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature".
 * Due to her popularity, she has been referenced in tons of other pieces of media:
 * She has been most notable referenced a few times in some episodes of mh:besttvshows:The Simpsons, a few examples include the "Hello Kitty factory" in "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo", Marge replacing all of Bart's trophies with items from the Hello Kitty expansion in "Marge Gamer" and Marge saying her line "What the Hello Kitty?!" in "Homer's Paternity Coot".
 * mh:besttvshows:Robot Chicken has made a few sketches involving Hello Kitty in them, these include "Enter the Fat One", which has Hello Kitty fighting Joey Fatone as a part of Joey's training, and "Straight From Hello Kitty's Mouth", which has Hello Kitty throwing up a furball.
 * Sometimes her merchandise and/or toys can be seen in the background in a few movies, such as mh:awfulmovies:Problem Child, mh:awfulmovies:The Smurfs, Bird Box, mh:greatestmovies:Superbad and mh:greatestmovies:Deadpool.
 * Hello Kitty has appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in three forms:
 * The first one was in the form of a walk-around character costume. During this appearance, Hello Kitty was joined by fellow Sanrio characters as they waved to the crowd from the formerly-named Fruit Juice Valley float.
 * The second one has Hello Kitty resemble a "Super Cute" superhero version of herself in the form of a helium balloon.
 * The latest one has Hello Kitty flying in a retro plane in the form of a helium balloon.
 * Despite her living in London according to her biography, every voice actor that portrays her in the cartoons give her an american accent.
 * The creator has stated that the reason why Hello Kitty has no mouth is because she wanted the people who see Hello Kitty to project their own emotion onto Kitty's face.
 * Both mh:awesomegames:SEGA and Sanrio once did a partnership with each other, and in celebration of the partnership, they released Hello Kitty plushies where she is dressed up as Sonic the Hedgehog and an event for Sonic Dash where Hello Kitty, My Melody, Chococat and Badtz-Maru became unlockable characters.
 * Similarly, Hello Kitty became a buyable DLC character for Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania.
 * She along with My Melody became unlockable Mystery Mushroom costumes for mh:awesomegames:Super Mario Maker.
 * A few songs are named after her, most notably the one made by the Canadian songwriter Avril Lavigne, who has written and recorded a song called "Hello Kitty" for her fifth studio album, which was released in 2013.
 * A full-length theatrical movie of Hello Kitty was initially planned for 2019 by Sanrio. In early 2019, it was revealed that New Line Cinema will be teaming up alongside Sanrio and Flynn Picture Company for an "English language film based on the venerable kid brand", and in 2021, it was reported that Jennifer Coyle and Leo Matsuda have been hired to direct the film with Lindsey Beer set to pen the script.
 * According to her biography, she has the same height as a stack of five apples and the same weight of three apples.