Goodbye Kitty.

Vivant has emerged as a major hit on Japanese TV to a degree that only seems to come along every decade or so. It stars Masato Sakai, who also starred in Japan’s last gigantic TV hit Hanzawa Naoki, by the same director, with Sakai this time playing a businessman who gets embroiled in international intrigue.

The program has become so popular that it is frequently involved in tie-ups with other brands eager to ride the Vivant wave. And there is perhaps no company that loves collaborating more than Sanrio, which has teamed up with just about everything from Sesame Street and Clinique to Pringles and Godzilla.

Earlier this year, various goods such as plush toys and T-shirts featured six of Sanrio’s most popular characters dressed as the characters from Vivant. Nogitty was a mash-up of Hello Kitty and Sakai’s character Yusuke Nogi, while Hangyodon took on the role of Mamoru Nozaki, played by Hiroshi Abe in the show. There were also My Melody, Pompompurin, Cinnamoroll, and Kuromi as Kaoru Yuzuki, Drum, Nokoru, and Kurosu respectively.

I’m using past tense there because as of 29 October, all of the Sanrio Vivant items have been taken off the market. On October 28, Sanrio’s Chinese arm, Sanrio Shanghai International Trading, announced, through its social media account, the cancellation of Sanrio’s collaboration with Vivant and that all future activities related to it would be cancelled as well. Sanrio Japan also posted a statement on October 29 announcing the cancelation of the collaboration, apologizing for any discomfort it may have caused and that the themes of the show were inconsistent with Sanrio’s corporate philosophy of “One world, connecting smiles.”

A few days earlier, Chinese state-run media had published a piece on Vivant, accusing it of slandering China and “exaggerating the China threat theory,” referring to the idea that China’s rapid growth poses a fundamental threat to global peace and stability. This all stems from scenes in Vivant that show a fictional organization affiliated with China brutally torturing members of the fictional Japanese covert group Beppan, hacking all of the fingers off one member’s hand.

Problematic Japanese-Chinese relations aside, reading that last sentence would make one wonder what Hello Kitty was doing with this show in the first place. Granted, Sanrio has been known to dabble in dark franchises in the past, but close association with torture and mutilation might not be good optics for the maker of Dokidoki Yummychums. It’s an opinion shared by many in online comments as well.

“It was an odd combination to begin with.”
“I always thought Sanrio avoided collaborating with themes involving things like the military or war. How did Vivant get the green light?”
“I guess this was a miscalculation on Sanrio’s part. Maybe they didn’t anticipate this kind of explicit and controversial content from Vivant.”
“It was cancelled before I could buy anything! I was planning to get something next month, too.”
“This is hardly surprising. I’m guessing Masato Sakai won’t be finding much work in China either.”
“Sanrio needs to put more thought into who they team up with.“

As for Vivant’s response to the criticism from China, the network that airs it, TBS, released a statement saying they will seriously consider questions that the show “harbors hostility towards certain countries” and features excessive violence. While they maintain that the torture scenes were necessary to the show’s story, they also say they will continue to carefully consider whether certain depictions will cause discomfort or excessive fear among viewers.

We’ll see how that goes, but hopefully Hello Kitty learned her lesson and will stick with more family-friendly fare like It… I’m guessing they didn’t read the book.

Source: Sponichi Annex, Hachima Kiko, Sanrio
Photo ©SoraNews24
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