TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Fans of the popular cartoon character Hello Kitty will likely to daze in surprise as the Japanese company Sanrio, that created and hold the patent of the usually-thought-as-a-cat character, claimed that Kitty 'is not a cat at all'. Sanrio set the record straight during the preparation of the Hello Kitty’s 40th birthday in Los Angeles.
As reported by Daily Mail on Friday, Sanrio revealed that Hello Kitty is a real human little girl who lives outside of London, has a twin sister and a cat of her own and will forever be in third grade. The origin story of Hello Kitty had never really been exposed since her first appearance in 1970s that grabbed the whole world’s attention. Kitty’s true identity came up when Sanrio edited the script made by Christine R. Yano, an Anthropologist of Hawaii University who put together Hello Kitty retrospective in Los Angeles to honor the character's 40th anniversary.
"I was corrected — very firmly," Yano told the LA TIMES. "That's one correction Sanrio made for my script for the show. Hello Kitty is not a cat. She's a cartoon character. She is a little girl."
"She is not a cat. She's never depicted on all fours. She walks and sits like a two-legged creature. She does have a pet cat of her own, however, and it's called Charmmy Kitty."
Yano helped to explain the background story of the truth. She said Hello Kitty emerged in the 1970s, when the Japanese and Japanese women were into Britain.
"They loved the idea of Britain. It represented the quintessential idealized childhood, almost like a white picket fence. So the biography was created exactly for the tastes of that time," said Yano.
RINA ATMASARI | DAILYMAIL
