Saturday, January 28, 2012

Chopper X "Herro" Kitty


Look who's at this crazy Hello Kitty shop in Odaiba Aqua City. Oh! It's our cutest and most huggable Chopper in One Piece! I have to admit that I am not a big fan of the mouthless cat, but she sure makes a perfect hat on Chopper.

On the board in the picture, it says that the concept of this teaming up between One Piece and Sanrio is that Kitty and the pirates take a stroll in each other's world.

The character Chopper is also one of the reason why One Piece is so popular in Japan. In class, we talked about how Kitty is successful because one does not need to know her story to like her. You can just like her big eyes, round face, red ribbon or mouthless, innocent look. I think in these peripheral products, whether it's clothes, bags, straps or anything else, Chopper is just the same as Kitty in the sense that Chopper is also a simple cute animal figure that can be drawn in a few strokes. Children or even adults who do not read the story of One Piece can immediately find Chopper cute without understanding its background story. In fact, there might be readers who only started reading because they see a cute Chopper figure somewhere, and then become interested in reading the actual story.

In fact, if we compare One Piece and Naruto, in Naruto, there is no cute figure like Chopper. There are only ninjas (humans which normally cannot out-cute animals) and tail-monsters (animals which are way too powerful and scary to be cute). The tail-monsters in fact are like Godzilla in the sense that nobody would think they are cute, but the only difference is that Godzilla is a classic and it sells, but in Naruto the story does not center around the monsters, but the humans.



I wonder how many people can really handle this much pink. According to the blog, there are going to be many more One-Piece-Hello-Kitty mash-up products coming out soon.

The first picture was taken by myself.
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