THE NOWHERE-NEAR COMPLETE GUIDE TO ADVERTISING MASCOT SUPERHEROES : TURNING JAPANESE

I know I just did it, but I call a moratorium on discussing Japanese anything under the heading of "Turning Japanese." It was already dull and dead in the water when Kirsten Dunst recorded a video for it, for some ungodly reason. Now it's coughing and cold, but it hasn't stopped moving yet. Someone put a shovel through its neck.

ANYWAY. Japan does invest heavily in the mascot game, most notably picking mascots for entire towns and prefectures. I approve of this. I myself will invent some ridiculous blasted hellscape for my old hometown of Tucson. Let me get on drawing a desiccated lizard who is also really alarmingly racist against Mexicans.

Here's my warning, though: I literally don't know who a bunch of these people are, or only vaguely understand them, although they appear straightforward enough. I blame cultural, um ... Marxism? Maybe, I just hear that on Twitter a lot ...

"Jake the dog and Fukuoa-Man the human..."

F(ukuoa)-Man (Fukuoa Now Magazine)
This propellor-headed superhero (he counts, guys, he counts. He's a spaceman/helicoper maybe, but they describe him as a superhero everywhere I could find info about him) is evidently called F-Man to make it easier for English-speaking people to refer to him. Also probably they didn't want his name shoretened to "Fuk-Man," but then they called him "F-Man" so I don't think anyone's a winner.

Rapi:tldier (Rapit Train Line, Osaka)
Rapi:tldier is not only utterly unpronounceable, but he's one of very few superheroes whose design is based on a train. I can think of no others, but I'm sure someone thought he was being clever and created something called "Locomotive Breath," is my guess. I don't know every comic book super-character instinctively, folks, sometimes it's a struggle.

What makes Rapi:tldier fascinating, besides the conscious choice to make his name utterly unpronounceable, is the promotional video which introduces him to a curious public. It is seventeen minutes of low-budget curiosity made flesh. Video. Well, video is the new flesh, I guess.

This person (I don't know.)
This is a superhero whose head is a bowl of noodles. Now you know as much as I do.