Interest
Haruhi Stars Reunite for Penmanship Course Mascot's Anime Commercial
posted on by Lynzee Loveridge
Voice actors Aya Hirano and Tomokazu Sugita are together again, not as Haruhi and Kyon, but in an upcoming anime commercial for a long-standing pen mascot. Nippen no Miko-chan is the mascot for the Japan Penmanship Study Group at Gakubun University General Education Center in Waseda. The character has represented the ballpoint pen calligraphy course there for over 40 years.
Hirano will voice Miko-chan and Sugita will voice the cat Nyanko. The first commercial will debut on Tokyo MX on January 8.
Miko-chan was first introduced in an advertisement in the Akashi entertainment magazine in 1972. Since that time, four different artists ave been in charge of her aesthetic until 1999: Seika Nakayama, Reiko Seihara, Gen Satō, and Kazumi Hiro. The character was featured in her own manga series in several monthly girls' magazines. However, with the advent of e-mail in 1999, the character's presence in Japan began to diminish.
There were attempts in the digital era to revive Miko-chan to her former glory but each new generation of Miko-chan ran into its own hurdles. The sixth generation of the character finally reached modern times at the beginning of this year with an official Twitter account that is updated weekly with new work by artist Shōta Hattori. The Twitter account was a success, garnering nearly 30,000 followers by the year's end. The character is in magazine's again, having appeared in this year's combined 36-37th issue of Young Jump and collaborating with the Nakano Broadway shopping complex.
[Via Nijimen]
