Inori is an anime character, created by animation studio CACANi on behalf of Microsoft Singapore for a special video that will screen at this year's Anime Festival Asia in Singapore this weekend.
What? Seriously? This is my what face. Imagine it. It's not quite of animetastic proportions, but I can get my eyebrows pretty waggly and my jaw fairly askew.
I'm from Singapore, in case you missed that context. You have to understand, while anime's popular around here, I wouldn't say it's that much more popular than...say, in America. It's still basically a subculture thing.
What I'm trying to say is - this isn't Japan. I've been to Japan. And I can tell you, Singaporeans don't have any particular biological imperative to slap cute anime mascots on things. It's not a widespread ingrained phenomenon, and most attempts to create mascots for stuff don't really work out.
Like, say, the last Singapore general elections. I'm looking at you, Democracy Bear. Okay, actually, I take that back. Democracy Bear is sort of awesome. Because he's Democracy Bear. I give Democracy Bear a free pass, but I'm not nearly as charitable to a pirated copy of the old Windows-tan meme.
Anyway, so...you really have to view this through the filter of a Microsoft regional office trying very hard to be hip and cool and down with what the kids like, but...just...kind of not. Not really.
This post is already getting rather ramble-tastic, so I should cut it off. One last thing, though. It's kind of hilarious that I'm learning about a major anime con in my town from people a bazillion miles away. Viva Internet. I'm not ashamed to admit that I went and looked at how much it costs to get a ticket to walk into the place - and promptly noped the hell out. Jeez, when I was a teenager, this stuff was still niche enough to be mostly free...
-- Acyl
What? Seriously? This is my what face. Imagine it. It's not quite of animetastic proportions, but I can get my eyebrows pretty waggly and my jaw fairly askew.
I'm from Singapore, in case you missed that context. You have to understand, while anime's popular around here, I wouldn't say it's that much more popular than...say, in America. It's still basically a subculture thing.
What I'm trying to say is - this isn't Japan. I've been to Japan. And I can tell you, Singaporeans don't have any particular biological imperative to slap cute anime mascots on things. It's not a widespread ingrained phenomenon, and most attempts to create mascots for stuff don't really work out.
Like, say, the last Singapore general elections. I'm looking at you, Democracy Bear. Okay, actually, I take that back. Democracy Bear is sort of awesome. Because he's Democracy Bear. I give Democracy Bear a free pass, but I'm not nearly as charitable to a pirated copy of the old Windows-tan meme.
Anyway, so...you really have to view this through the filter of a Microsoft regional office trying very hard to be hip and cool and down with what the kids like, but...just...kind of not. Not really.
This post is already getting rather ramble-tastic, so I should cut it off. One last thing, though. It's kind of hilarious that I'm learning about a major anime con in my town from people a bazillion miles away. Viva Internet. I'm not ashamed to admit that I went and looked at how much it costs to get a ticket to walk into the place - and promptly noped the hell out. Jeez, when I was a teenager, this stuff was still niche enough to be mostly free...
-- Acyl