Sony has decided it has a problem. No, not the backlashes against its decision to scrap PlayStation discs or to beam Spider-Man ads into BMWs. Its problem is that it doesn't have a Hello Kitty.
The Japanese tech and entertainment conglomerate has realised that it has a "lack of characters", and it's throwing big money at solving the problem. The aim is to fill the hole with someone or something that's kawaii enough to rival the world's most famous whiskered girl (because remember, Hello Kitty is not a cat. She's just an ordinary suburban London gal... with whiskers and cat ears). And it thinks it might have found the answer.
Sony's predicament might be difficult to understand for any brand outside of Japan, where mascots are huge business. In gaming, Nintendo has Mario, Sega has Sonic, Bandai Namco has Pac-Man and Digimon and The Pokémon Company has, well, Pokémon.
Beyond gaming, Hello Kitty's owner Sanrio has a whole roster of corporate pop culture icons including Kuromi, and Cinnamoroll. San-X is another character giant with Rilakkuma and Sumikko Gurashi, while the biggest grossing Japanese character of all is the ubiquitous Anpanman, a superhero with bean paste for a head.
Even regional authorities have mascots, called yuru-kyara. Kumamoto Prefecture's Kumamon has won over fans around the world. Sony has characters like Crash Bandicoot and Astrobot, but they haven't reached the level of recognition. They're also not very cute. Now it wants a piece of the action.
Behold. Nemu the Night Owl Bear.
According to the Japanese news site Nikkei, Sony's Creative Products (SCP) department has assigned a team to the mission of improving its ability to create unique characters and develop intellectual property for anime and movies. It's set a target of developing IPs that can generate sales of 10 billion yen by 2030.
Nemu the Night Owl Bear has been identified as one of the strongest candidates. Sony thinks he's the perfect character for our times, and it might be right. Tokyo-based creator Tsumupapa, who designed the character for Sony, describes Nemu as a sensitive but exhausted bear who's plagued by anxiety.
Nemu, whose best friend is a sheep, worries so much about the problems of the world that he can't sleep, which sounds just perfect. We're so used to characters with super powers, it's refreshing to have one with a weakness that makes a lot of sense right now.
The sleep-deprived bear has already racked up over 80,000 followers on Instagram. An SCP executive told Nikkei the “stress-filled society theme" was "resonating across borders,” noting a strong following in South Korea already.
Sony's aim to make Nemu as big as Hello Kitty might sound ambitious, but this is a company with massive reach across animation, film, music and games. It already makes movies with other people's IPs. It has a lot of avenues open even just within its own subsidiaries if it manages to develop a hit character of its own. A Nemu anime is apparently already being planned.
