When you think of the titans of the Japanese entertainment industry you might think of Toho, a company responsible for many kaiju films, or perhaps of an anime studio such as Studio Ghibli or TMS Entertainment. However, I thought that I’d take a look at a massive entertainment company which is quite often overlooked when it comes to the Japanese entertainment industry, Sanrio.
Interestingly, when Sanrio was founded in 1960, the company began life as Yamanashi Silk Center which, unsurprisingly, focused on the sale of silk products. After expanding to producing rubber sandals, they noted an increase in sales when cute designs such as flowers and strawberries were added and began to focus more and more on creating cute characters and designs after changing their name to Sanrio in 1973. Their most notable IP was created the next year, 1974, that being Hello Kitty which has since become a franchise worth billions of dollars!
While Sanrio has continued to develop other characters such as Bad Badtz-Maru, Aggretsuko and Cinnamoroll for use in merchandise, they’ve also expanded in some interesting ways. In 1977, Sanrio established a production company to release movies which continued until 1985. Within these eight years, Sanrio released a surprising variety of films such as numerous animated shorts, animated films such as Ringing Bell, The Mouse and His Child and Nutcracker Fantasy, live-action films such as Olly Olly Oxen Free and Don’t Cry, It’s Only Thunder and, most surprising of all, a few documentaries including the Academy Award winning “Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids?”!
Sanrio has also seen a major push into television since the 2000s with shows such as Onegai My Melody, Sugarbunnies, Jewelpet etc. This has continued into the present day with perhaps the most notable example being Aggretsuko which recently finished its five-year run on Netflix and proved to be a critical success. They’ve also returned to producing films although, this time, they’re now based on Sanrio IP such as Hello Kitty, Cinnamoroll, Jewelpet etc.
Something that I was quite surprised by was to learn of an acquisition of a major IP that Sanrio made back in 2011, that being the Mr. Men and Little Miss series. Sanrio explained that the acquisition was part of an effort to diversify their global portfolio with Hello Kitty dominating international sales. Sanrio also has a subsidiary called “Kokoro” which specialises in the production of animatronics and robots with perhaps the most famous being their Actroid models which are androids that mimic human breathing, speech and blinking. Sanrio also run a couple of theme parks with the most notable being Sanrio Puroland in Tokyo.
Sanrio is a surprisingly large and diverse company that often gets overlooked when we discuss the Japanese entertainment industry. Let me know your thoughts on this look at the massive entertainment company Sanrio, which Sanrio characters you’re familiar with, whether you knew that they now owned the Mr. Men and Little Miss IP, what you think about their filmography and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!