This week the world was rocked by the reveal that Hello Kitty, global icon of cuteness, was not a cat. After being revealed during Sanrio's corrections of a museum exhibit celebrating Kitty's 40th anniversary, the news quickly went global, shocking the world and causing people to question everything they had ever been taught, abandoning the laws of God and man in order to tear down a society built entirely on lies.

Well, it turns out that the hours we spent laying on the floor questioning our own existence might've been a little premature. Following up on that initial correction, Kotaku got in touch with Sanrio's Tokyo headquarters, whereupon they were informed that "It's going too far to say that Hello Kitty is not a cat. Hello Kitty is the personification of a cat."

So.. that should clear everything up. Except for the part where Kitty definitely still owns a cat of her own, I mean. That's still weird as all heck.

 

Left: Hello Kitty. Right, Charmmy Kitty, the cat Hello Kitty owns as a pet.
Left: Hello Kitty. Right, Charmmy Kitty, the cat Hello Kitty owns as a pet.
loading...

 

Kotaku went on to offer this specific clarification, just in case anything was lost in the translation:

When Kotaku called Sanrio's Tokyo headquarters today and asked whether or not Hello Kitty was indeed a cat, a spokesperson explained, "Hello Kitty was done in the motif of a cat. It's going too far to say that Hello Kitty is not a cat. Hello Kitty is a personification of a cat."

 

The specific word that the Sanrio spokesperson used to describe Hello Kitty was "gijinka" (擬人化), which means "anthropomorphization" or "personification."

While this may be comforting to some, it actually raises a lot of strange questions that I did not wake up prepared to ask today. Specifically it's the use of "personification." What exactly does it mean to be the personification of a cat? Is Hello Kitty an otherkin? Or does the description of Kitty (real name: Kitty White) as being "done in the motif of a cat" imply that she is something else, something unknown, something unknowable that was merely created in the image of a cat so that we could comprehend it, mouthless and standing at the height of two apples (and weighing as much as three)?

Either way, it's still not as complicated as Lloromannic, the demonic mirror universe twin of a puppy who is also a cloud.

Sanrio's weird, y'all.

 

More From ComicsAlliance