what is sanrio?

"Sanrio Co., Ltd. (サンリオ Sanri o)...

is a multi-billiondollar Japanese entertainment company that heavily focuses on the kawaii popular culture known in that country (and became its image). Headquartered in the Ōsaki district of Shinagawa, Tokyo, Japan, it creates a wide range of designs and characters mostly based on cute and/or pure-hearted anthropomorphic animals (with generally basic appearances), and sells and licenses various products branded with these characters. These products include stationery, school supplies, gifts, accessories, and much more.

Shintaro Tsuji is the founder of Sanrio and he continues to work at the company to this day despite being age 97 as of February 2025. Its slogan is "Small business, big smile". According to Shintaro himself, the purpose of Sanrio's founding is to create a peaceful culture and to help people befriend each other. He was inspired to start the now-beloved company after experiencing the hardships of war at the time."

what does sanrio mean to me?

i literally grew up with sanrio. like, my mom smothered me with sanrio plushies since before i could walk. i have sanrio posters and merch in my room. we used to have a hello kitty toaster and telephone. sanrio, especially hello kitty, has unironically been a huge part of my life. so *yes,* i'm a sanrio girl. mental illness included.

me and my mom didn't consume much sanrio media growing up. it was mainly toys and clothes, and some appliances, as previously mentioned. my mom said that it was pretty popular when i was a baby, so she bought a lot of merch for me whenever we'd go shopping. it was simple, but it mattered a lot to me.

my childhood was.. rocky. family aside, i struggled with my identity as a queer nuerodivergent kid in texas, where everything i knew about being queer was what random people told me on the internet and i just had to believe it. i didn't know anything else! i still don't know everything! and my biggest pet peeve about queerness is how we didn't take the oppurtunity to use polysexual as the mspec term for bis, pans, omnis, etc. like poly is such a prettier prefix to me than Multi. like no wonder yall shortened we all know multi's such an Okay i'm getting off topic. but yeah.

i came out in real life as trans in middle school, and while i'm officially nonbinary now, that doesn't mean i don't still have gender ties to my past. like lesbianism! i love girls in a gay way. but also i'm a cute boy. but also im a black and nuerodivergent girl, but also he/him feels really nice on me. but one thing i think is an exception to that is sanrio. idgaf what gender i am i love sanrio!! like i call myself a sanrio girl but only in reference to the meme. sanrio has legit been such a constant in my life it's insane. my mom used to buy me hk stuff when i was 3, then in middle school i started liking sanrio again during like 2020, and now in 2024/2025 i have a bunch of sanrio merch that i do genuinely make use of, and maybe someday i'll try watching sanrio media for once ... yeah i still don't. sue me.

so what i'm saying is, while change is good, it's comforting to know that something that's been with me all my life is continuing to do so. i don't really view my past selves as me anymore, or at least i try not to, but knowing we all have that common thread still feels.. really fucking nice, honestly. like, i don't know who i am all that much yet, but i know where i am from. and that i'm 14 and a half apples tall. and maybe that's good enough for now.