San-X

San-X was founded in April 1932 as a privately owned business under the name Chida Handler. In October 1941, Chida Handler became a limited company. In their early days of creating characters, San-X was still purely a stationery company. The market demand at the time was for stationery with a variety of designs. Some hits from this era include Aquamarine from 1980, Pencil Club from 1984, Pinny-Mu from 1987, and Kaijū Paradise from 1988. Withnews describe these early characters, like Kaijū Paradise, as having more of a simple cuteness, with easier to read facial expressions, compared to the characters that would later be seen as typical of San-X. In 2005, Mamegoma was created by and in 2009 it was adapted to an anime series. As of 2019 San-X had about 35 designers, growing to 40 in 2022-2023, most of whom were women. And as of 2020 60-70% of San-X's sales were stuffed toys and household goods, with about half the products produced in-house and half being licensed. In 2012 Sumikko Gurashi were created by Yuri Yokomizo, who since childhood was a fan of Tarepanda, and while at university attended lectures with its creator Hikaru Suemasa. As of 2019, sales of Sumikko products were worth about 20 billion yen a year. In 2026 it was announced that an area called San-X Paradise is planned for construction at the Fuji-Q Highland amusement park in Japan. ==Characters and products==

with plush Rilakkuma toys Between 1979 and 2022 San-X created 1000 original characters. Representatives for San-X have said that the characters are often mysterious and have few defined traits, leaving room for imagination and exploration of the characters' backstories. As of 2022–2023 San-X had about 40 designers, most of whom were women. The mobile game Sumi Sumi from 2018 also features a variety of San-X characters. The list below is chronological and contains media like books, video games, and animation with each character. 1979–1989 (1979) was the first original San-X character, a circus clown with designs decorated by stars. The design was changed to be more colorful and eye-catching, and it became an early hit for San-X. The character was selected in an in-house competition. means monster. A similar monster character was released by San-X a year earlier, in 1987, under the name , but Kaijū Paradise was more successful. It includes manga that can be played like sugoroku, a type of board game. Esparks manga was also serialized in CoroCoro Comic. Two Esparks video games were released, one for Game Boy in 1992, and one for Super Famicom in 1995. It was the first San-X series aimed at boys, and got so popular that some schools banned Esparks stationery. In 2009, a revival compilation book was published of the manga that had previously been printed as stationery. Created by . Three picture books and a fanbook by Suemasa were published in Japan. A Tarepanda OVA was released in 2000. Tarepanda was a major success and by 1999, sales of Tarepanda merchandise had reached 30 billion yen. The success of Tarepanda changed San-X from a stationery company to a full-time character creation and licensing company. is Japanese onomatopoeia for trembling. The original draft for the character was created by Hikaru Suemasa who also created Tarepanda. Three Buru Buru Dog picture books with text and illustrations by were released in the year 2000. Created by in 2000. Adapted to a short anime series in 2001. A number of Kogepan manga and picture books by Takahashi have been published in Japan. Over two million plush Kogepan toys have been sold, and book sales reached over 1.3 million combined copies. The manga series was revived in 2020, when a new manga serialization began in magazine. A Kogepan book was published in Japan in 2021 with a mix of new and old reworked material. The term is a Japanese onomatopoeic word for a cat's meow. is a word which in Japanese connotes with child or young. Together they make a childish/cutesy word for kitten. The characters were created by . Nakajima chose to create cat characters because of the popularity of cats. The first drafts were of tabby cats, because she owned a tabby cat at the time. She tried drawing cats wrapped in nori seaweed, and decided to make the cats white, to use them in place of rice in illustrations. Tabby cats still appear in some design themes, like Okonomi Nyanko which imitate Okonomiyaki. The first released version of the characters was called Nyankomaki, and showed them imitating maki sushi rolls. Memo pads and similar items with this design were released in 1999. In 2005 a video game called for the Game Boy Advance was released in Japan by MTO. The player uses dice to move around on a sugoroku style board game, with play elements including quizzes and mini games, like puzzles and rock paper scissors. (2001) is a dog with a colorful afro that changes color depending on its surroundings. is one of the readings of which means dog. Created by . A self-titled 3DCG animated Afro Ken OVA was released in 2001, produced by the studio Sunrise. It consists of a variety of different contents, including segments explaining the Afro Ken character, 3DCG short stories, some of which are surreal, with Afro Ken and similar dog characters, and an interview with Tetsuro. It is a tile matching puzzle game, where the player matches different colored Afro Ken characters. Four picture books by Tetsuro featuring Afro Ken were published in Japan, including wimmelbilderbuch type books. are roasted Chinese chestnuts of the variety. is short for , sweet. The original character design was created by , who also created Kogepan. Two Amagurichan books were published in Japan in 2002 and 2003, with text and illustrations by Aki Kondo, who went on to create Rilakkuma. (2001) is a dog who has a roof on its head. A Koya Inu picture book by was published in Japan in 2001. The main character Mikanbouya is a satsuma mandarin, known as in Japanese. is a colloquial version of boy. According to the backstory, Mikanbouya dreams of becoming a frozen mandarin (:ja:冷凍みかん). Two books by were published in Japan in 2002. Two picture books by were published in Japan in 2003 and 2005, (2002) is a mysterious character who resembles a Japanese giant salamander. It has a rounded shape and lives deep in the forest in clear streams. It leads a placid, carefree life and moves around slowly and calmly. San-X describes it as a relaxing and de-stressing character. The name is a combination of and that roughly translates to "intensely calming". A picture book by featuring Nagomimakuri was published in Japan in 2002. "Niji no mukō" means the other side of the rainbow. A picture book by was published in Japan in 2003. Created by Aki Kondo. Several Rilakkuma video games have been released for Nintendo systems, beginning with the Game Boy Advance in 2005. A stop motion animated series called Rilakkuma and Kaoru began streaming on Netflix in 2019. In May 2010, Rilakkuma ranked as the fifth most popular character in Japan in a survey of the Character Databank. By the end of 2016, Rilakkuma had earned more than 250 billion yen. A picture book by featuring Yōguru-kun was published in Japan in 2004. (2004) is a pig with a head shaped like a peach, who enjoys karaoke and painting her nails. Momobuta was released in 2004 as a media mix collaboration between San-X and Sega Toys. A manga by was serialized in Ribon magazine beginning in 2004, with Sega Toys selling a related fortune teller toy. A Momobuta picture book by was published in Japan in 2005. A picture book by was published in Japan in 2005. (2005) is a series of seal characters created by . They are depicted as small enough to live in a goldfish bowl. A 2009 Mamegoma anime series called was produced by TMS Entertainment. Four Mamegoma Nintendo DS games were released in Japan between 2007 and 2010, and two 3DS games in 2012 and 2013. The first and second DS games shipped a combined total of over 250 000 copies. Several picture books and manga by Yonemura featuring Mamegoma have been published in Japan. Monokuro Boo (2005) are two square shaped pigs, one black and one white. There is usually a bee buzzing around them, and the phrase "Simple is Best" or "Are you happy?" Two Monokuro Boo picture books by were published in Japan in 2006 and 2007. San-X has also created a spin-off line of products which features smaller, pastel or candy-colored pigs known as . (2005) is a cat's bread shop. A picture book by featuring Neko no Panya was published in Japan in 2008. Each Wanroom character has a name like Inusofa (a couch), Wano'clock (an alarm clock) and Sabowan (a cactus). A Wanroom picture book by was published in Japan in 2006. A picture book by was published in Japan in 2010. Two picture books by featuring Tohoho na Dog were published in Japan in 2005 and 2007. Three picture books by with Kerori were published between 2006 and 2008. "Kamonohashi" is Japanese for platypus, and "kamo" () is short for "perhaps" or "might be", so a rough translation of the name would be "A platypus, perhaps?" Six volumes of Kamonohashikamo yonkoma manga by were published in Japan between 2008 and 2013. (2007) is a black cat character named Bon Chan who wears white socks. Friends with Norucchi, a smaller fluffy yellow cat. means socks and is a childish way of saying cat. Seven picture books by were published in Japan between 2008 to 2014. The character was a collaboration project with the Japanese publisher . Three Sabokappa picture books by were published by Shufu To Seikatsu Sha in Japan between 2009 and 2011. (2009) is a lazy raccoon named Mar who transforms into the hard-working cleaner Kireizukin when wearing a red hood. Similar to , the Japanese name for Little Red Riding Hood, means clean/tidy hood and means living or daily life. Two Kireizukin Seikatsu picture books by were published in Japan in 2009 and 2010. (2010) is a Shiba Inu. A manga with Iiwaken by was published in Japan in 2016. (2010) is a character series where the setting is a vendor that sells omusubi (rice balls) with different types of Omusubi characters. A picture book by was published in Japan in 2005. (2010) is a group of worn out and forgotten stuffed toys who run a circus at night. Their leader is the pink patchwork rabbit character Shappo. Beginning in 2011, several books by have been published in Japan, including four picture books and two volumes of manga. According to a 2017 report in Japan, the popularity of Sentimental Circus was on par with that of Rilakkuma and Sumikko Gurashi. 2011–2020 (2011) is a panda who eats so much chocolate that she sometimes turns into a brown bear. A picture book by was published in Japan in 2012. Created by Yuri Yokomizo in 2012, and beginning in 2019 several animated theatrical feature films with the characters were released. Numerous Sumikko Gurashi books have been published beginning in 2014, including several picture books by Yokomizo. There have also been several Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Switch, and mobile games. According to San-X, in 2015, Sumikko Gurashi stood for 30% of sales of their original merchandise or about 5 billion yen. As of 2019, sales of Sumikko Gurashi products were worth about 20 billion yen a year. Eight million plush toys and 3 million books had been sold. Sumikko Gurashi was ranked #10 in 2016, and #5 in 2018 on character popularity charts from Bandai, based on surveys of parents of children under 12 in Japan. In 2019, Sumikko Gurashi won the Grand Prize at the Japan Character Awards. (2015) is a whale shark character that swims silently in the sea, with many friends gathering around it to relax. The name comes from , the Japanese name for whale shark. The creation of Jinbesan was inspired by the large size and elegance of a whale shark at an aquarium. The first product was a market test memo pad which sold well. The character also appeared in collaborations with aquariums, and at a Jinbesan themed cafe at . Two books with Corocoro Coronya by were published in Japan in 2018 and 2020. (2017) is a group of round fluffy cat characters, who have tails with a light fragrance of things like flowers, soap and berries. is an emphasized version of which means soft and fluffy, and is a combination of and . In 2019 a board book was published called . It contains yonkoma manga, profiles of the characters and activity book type elements. In 2024 A yonkoma manga book by with the title was published in Japan. The book follows the daily life of the characters through the four seasons. They were created in 2018 as a joint project between San-X and Nippon Columbia. , a designer at San-X who previously worked Sumikko Gurashi designs, was involved in the creation of the Gesshizu character designs. The Gesshizu characters are depicted as hatching from eggs and are based on rodents like the Japanese dwarf flying squirrel, octodon, and capybara. Between 2018 and 2022 three Gesshizu games for the Nintendo Switch and a mobile game app were released. A Gesshizu novelization was published in Japan in 2019. A Gesshizu manga has been serialized in Ciao magazine. Another manga was serialized in magazine. 2021– (2020) is a racoon character who washes sadness away. The name of this character was decided before the appearance. A book with Kokoroaraiguma was published in Japan in 2022. (2021) is a group of anthropomorphized food characters who dance. Characters include , a bone-in chicken, , a candy apple, , a kushikatsu deep fried meat skewer, and a frog who is the group's dance teacher. The short five minutes per episode anime series Chickip Dancers aired for three seasons on NHK Educational TV from 2021 to 2024. It was produced by Fanworks and was the first terrestrial broadcast TV anime with San-X characters. A Chickip Dancers video game for Nintendo Switch and a soundtrack CD were released in 2022. Several children's books based on the characters were published in Japan by Shogakukan between 2022 and 2024. (2022) is a rabbit character who is big like a bear. The name is a combination of and short for . In 2022 a Kumausa picture book was published in collaboration with the YouTuber (:ja:大松絵美) called . Kumausa is an example of a character developed by San-X that was launched as a media product, rather than as stationery. The name is a colloquial version of . A book called was published in 2025. It follows Ishiyowa-chan at the office and at home, and includes an advice column. Temporary Ishiyowa-chan themed cafes were opened in 2025 in Tokyo and Osaka. A children's novel with Sugarcocomuu was published in Japan in 2024. ==References==