One of the big draws of working in Japan is of course its active and challenging technology sector. One of the more interesting side-products of that are the various subcultures that it engenders. Here, the personification of technology in Japan.
I decided to write this article up after coming across these images of Siri. Apple`s new “Virtual Personal Assistant” who / that has been taken by amateur artists and turned into a helpful, smartly dressed and of course drop-dead cute office lady.
The concept of personifying the unknown, or at least things which are hard to comprehend, goes back someway in Japan. In fact, I often wonder if the country’s numerous ghost stories can be attributed in some way to an attempt to add meaning to the darkness out there.
In terms of technology, the need to personify the cold products in our hands into something warm, friendly and familiar crops up in numerous manga and movies, just as it can be seen in the manuals and packaging of various products. Consider Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy) and his boy-like wonder or the moody, hulking robot forms of Evangelion – a series in which nature is far more terrible to behold.
The works here, which are all created by various individuals, spring from the evergreen cultural lands of 2-chan.
Microsoft, here with their official Cloud Girl mascot, was the first to be rewarded by its own character. An unstable, slow-minded bimbo who was prone to frequently crashing, yet somehow celebrated the characteristics that best define the company’s Windows operating system. Cloud Girl, however, has a much nicer personality, helping stressed office workers discover the power of cloud computing and harness it to improve their daily workflows in a series of manga the company has produced. One wonders (hopes) she will disappear soon, however…
One of the first to become famous is Opera-tan. The opera web browser is little used but was at one time one of the fastest ways to travel online. It had a small, hardcore user base in Japan. Firefox-tan below is a cooler cat.
Cooler still are the characters assigned to Google. In just a couple of short years, Google’s Android character has become synonymous with the smartphone in Japan but here we have a collection representing Google’s ever-needed services.
Wiki-tan, the ever present and helpful maid, represents wikipedia. See also.
A slightly space-age Safari remembering her late master. The Mac usually gets personified in the form of a cat, mirroring the big-cat nicknames that Apple gives each version of the operating system … as well as the cool-as-a-cat people that use Macs of course.
Finally, Hatsune Miku who is the clear star of the Japanese tech-scene. She is the mascot character for audio-editing software Vocaloid — even if you have nothing to do with the industry you would have seen her. How could you not? After all, she can be found just about everywhere.
Side note: I couldn’t find anything on Dos-tan or iTan. Should you know of any, a link in the comments would, I’m sure, be much appreciated.
