Also, while I agree with you that American “cute” is often vomit inducing, I disagree that TV “forces kids to watch” anything. As far as I’m concerned, adults have a great deal of control here. And as much as I hate Madonna’s holier-than-thou rejection of the American pop culture that she so greatly contributed to (cheapening), if you don’t want your kids watching crap, don’t have a TV in your residence.

To put this in perspective, I have to say that a lot of the stuff that passes for “cute” in mainstream America makes me want to vomit.

First of all, Teletubbies and Blues Clues are so fruity I feel myself growing a vagina after watching it for five minutes.

And consider all the Rugrats, Ahh! Real Monsters, Doug, Hey Arnold, and all those other ugly-ass cartoon characters that TV forces kids to watch. I can’t imagine how such intentionally grotesque and disgusting visages ever made it onto TV.

If I recall correctly, the boom started after the success of Ren and Stimpy. I guess it must have been a kind of reaction to the previous generation of Care Bears/Disney afternoon ultra-cutesy innocence cartoons.

Some of the newer cartoons that have been hits like Invader Zim and the new Puffy cartoon have returned to cuter kind of look, but the damage has been done. Ugly, in-your-face advertisements on TV, radio, and bus stops make you want to punch any random person in the advertising industry these days.

In general, I hope and pray that this ugly advertising will run its course soon. As the Onion dutifully reports, people have gotten good at ignoring advertising, so marketers are having to think of more creative ways to steer people’s attention toward a product. But don’t they know that they are currying no favor with the general public by broadcasting two godawfully annoying assholes chatting on the radio about mutual funds? Or at least are they losing some sleep over it? Maybe not, the money in advertising is good I hear.

So in short Japan compares pretty favorably with this unfliching ugliness (though the “annoying” angle in advertising/cartoons has caught on as seen in such crap as the Nova bunny and the anime ‘uchinchi’). Yes, it is weird that Japan’s government is spending money to develop so many indistinguishable “image characters” for every little campaign it runs, complete with theme music (as I have blogged about before).

They must be thinking a number of things about why these characters work. First, as seen in the election, people like to have a face to attach to a particular issue. That’s why you’ll see advertisements in magazines with random geinoujin or even doing nothing but STAND THERE SMILING FOR NO REASON.

Also, why make them cutesy? People respond to round, non-threatening objects. Simple as that.

I am 99.99% sure that there are some publicly available government reports on the use of image characters in campaigns. When I get some more time to waste I’ll do a google search for “イメージキャラクター” in the .go.jp domain to see what I can find.

Notice that the census web site heavily stresses the fact that census data is completely anonymous, and even illegal immigrants should not fear any backlash from accurately completing the survey.