Still, walk through any airport duty-free shop on the planet and you’ll see Pikachu staring back at you. Ask a child in Oslo, São Paulo, or Mumbai to name a Japanese person, and they’ll struggle; but ask them to name a Japanese character, and they’ll reel off Mario, Pikachu, Sonic, and Link before you finish the question. No other country has produced anything remotely comparable: a pantheon of interactive, multigenerational, globally beloved characters that have shaped how hundreds of millions of people feel about a nation from childhood.
The United States has Hollywood. South Korea has K-pop. Japan has the controller. Douglas McGray, a journalist, coined the phrase “Gross National Cool” to describe Japan’s burgeoning cultural influence. More than two decades on, it is clear that the core of that cool was never anime alone, or cuisine, or fashion. It was the interactive worlds dreamed up by designers in Kyoto and Tokyo — worlds that billions of people have not merely watched but lived in.
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