• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
  • Furukawa Speaks! We discuss the announcement of the Nintendo Switch Successor and our June Direct Predictions on the new episode of the Famiboards Discussion Club! Check it out here!

Fun Club What is up with Japan and Blue Penguins?

Derachi

Derachi

Fresh Eater
Founder
Pronouns
he/him
Dear mods: I am putting this in Treehouse because a lot of my examples here are games-related, but feel free to move this to The Roost if you deem it appropriate.

Okay, let's cut to the chase: why does Japan keep depicting penguins as blue? They're not blue! They're usually black and white, or sometimes grey. But never blue!

I have some examples.

This being a Nintendo forum, let's start with the iconic penguin from Super Mario 64.

PenguinSM64.png


Konami is rotten with blue penguins.

Their classic, Antarctic Adventure:

AntarcticAdventure.jpg


Blue Penguin (dripped out with the Rolex on the wrist) PROMINENTLY featured on the box. But that's not all, their all-time classic and my problematic fave Famicom game Yume Penguin Monogatari, has a blue penguin right on the box, also a pink penguin:

YumePenguinMonogatariBoxShotNES.jpg


Konami would keep at this, featuring a blue penguin throughout their Parodius series.

Another prominent blue penguin comes from Pokemon, Piplup:

pokemon_piplup.png


Animal Crossing has a NUMBER of blue penguins, in all sorts of shades of blue.

We have Roald

144px-Roald_NH.png


Tex

144px-Tex_NH.png


Chabwick

Chabwick_amiibo.png


Friga

144px-Friga_NH.png


and Sprinkle (more of a blue/green?)

144px-Sprinkle_NH.png





Any Yakuza fans would be familiar with Don Quixote, a chain of eccentric discount stores in real life Japan that were, until Yakuza Like A Dragon, licensed to be featured in the Yakuza games. Their mascot?

donpenProf03.png


GOSH DARN BLUE PENGUIN

WHY HE BLUE!!!

Speaking of brands featured in RGG Studio games, let's talk Suntory.

Now maybe you've seen him somewhere before but Suntory's mascot in the 80's was a blue penguin.

DdZ03CnU0AA6ZVA.jpg


3018627-845ba48d-f7a7-41f6-b76e-7e9d7e6142f0.jpeg


They made an animated movie called Penguin's Memory about this blue penguin. It gets into some "too real" topics like the Vietnam War and PTSD.



ANYWAY

WHAT IS UP WITH JAPAN AND BLUE PENGUINS

Also do you have any other examples of blue penguins coming out of Japanese media?
 
Derachi said:
Wait what
Click to expand...
Blue ones are https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/03/little-blue-penguins-from-australia-invade-new-zealand

The Parodius series is teeming with blue penguins, including a playable one which I think is the same one from Antarctic Adventure.
Yoshi's Island has a bunch of them.
In Doki Doki Penguin Land you play as a blue penguin.
The Penguin from Penguin Kun Wars is blue.
My understanding is that Club Penguin may contain some blue penguins.
There's also little-known single-screen platformer Penguin Brothers (pretty fun Bubble Bobble-like).
 
Last edited:
As for 'why are there so many' - I don't know. I want to say there might be a Manga root for this one, but that's purely speculative. It might even have started from the Suntory mascot. A Japanese zoo/aquarium might have got some Little Blues/Fairy Penguins in the 70s/80s and started a kind of fad, kind of like how Medjed took off for a while - they are pretty darn cute.
I googled and found this writeup, but it doesn't draw any firm conclusions - just notes that Sanrio seems to be involved here (which comes as no surprise whatsoever lol): https://www.kigurumi.com/blogs/kigurumi-news/why-penguin-characters-in-japan-are-usually-blue
 
critterfacts.com

Little Blue Penguin

Little blue penguins stand at only 1 foot tall and weigh around 3 to 6 pounds putting them at the smallest end of the penguin spectrum.
critterfacts.com critterfacts.com

oh wow I didn’t realize
 
these fuckers look like lil sonics
 
Cucufate said:
Bruh... what if this another "Morrigan-succubus" thing and the only reason why Japanese media portrays penguins as blue is because the first Japanese person who saw a penguin just happened to see one of those?
Click to expand...
As someone who knows next to nothing about Darkstalkers, I would love to hear this story! Can't find anything about it with google.
 
Future Boy Nemo said:
As someone who knows next to nothing about Darkstalkers, I would love to hear this story! Can't find anything about it with google.
Click to expand...
Sure thing. Morrigan from Darkstalkers was originally designed to be a vampire (thus the bat motif) and didn't become a succubus until Alex Jimenez from Capcom USA suggested the developers to do so in order to add more variety to the roster, since it already had a vampire (Demitri).

At that point, succubi were such an obscure concept to the Japanese that apparently no one at the development team even knew what a succubus was until Mr. Jimenez explained it to them. Still, the team loved the concept and Morrigan became a succubus, despite having a rather un-succubus-like design (other than "sexy monster", that is).

Once the game was released, Morrigan became insanely popular and, just like it happened with the guys at Capcom's development team, to the average Japanese player it was the first time they had encountered the concept of a succubus. Thus Morrigan became the template in Japan for what a succubus is supposed to be, and a lot of succubi in Japanese media look and/or act like her because of it.
 
They're cute. They're aquatic animals. Aqua is water. Water is commonly thought of us blue. Blue penguin.
 
0
HockeyBird said:
Click to expand...

oh my god I was just thinking earlier today about how bulma from dragon ball is called blue haired even though sometimes she definitely looks green

2969850779_1_3_uiIjWuaH_grande.jpg


on topic: I dunno exactly why penguins are blue in japanese media, other than maybe they think blue is a more appealing color to kids
 
0
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top Bottom