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 Why the Lazy Egg, Gudetama,
Is the Internets
Greatest Star
Japans kawaii sensibilities and deeply ingrained food obsession
have combined to produce Sanrios most hilariously offbeat
character. Heres how it happened.

T he Internets newest superstar is lazy.

Like, chronic fatigue lazy. It lies around in
bed all day and generally wont move unless
prodded with a giant pair of sticks. Dropped
in boiling water, its only reaction is to sigh
and accept imminent doom. It cant even be
bothered to cover its bare butt. Its adorable.

Thats Gudetama, or Lazy Egg, Sanrios new-

est cartoon character and its biggest hit since
Hello Kitty, the mouthless cat-girl whose most
noteworthy quality is that she wears a hair
bow. Since Gudetamas launch in 2013, that
apathetic yellow face has appeared on nearly
1,700 items, from pencil cases to luggage, to
full-body costumes. Thats incredible success,
especially for a company thats struggled over
the past two decades to create a follow-up to
its powerhouse Kitty. But why is an anthro-
pomorphic, gender-neutral piece of food the Life in Japan has been filtered through a layer
one to hit big time, let alone a lumpy yellow of cartoon for hundreds of years, from the
egg with a butt and a bad attitude? Its compli- 18th-century origins of manga, to the first
cated. anime of the early 1900s. Unlike comics and

cartoons in the West, theyve never been just
kids stuff; the earliest manga books were
stories of life in Japans red-light districts, and

Gudetamas popularity contemporary works dont shy away from adult

situations either. Japanese cartoons tend to re-
is equally an obsession flect whats happening in the world right now,
and in this moment, whats happening is food.
with food as it is Gudetamas popularity is equally an obsession

kawaii culture. with food as it is kawaii culture, says Manami

Okazaki, author of Kawaii, Japans Culture of
Cute.

If cartoons have been around for centuries,
kawaii is what made them big business. Kawaii.

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