So since there were not any posts to respond to, I decided to focus on the video that we watched during class on Tuesday. There was a part that discussed the focus on youth in games and the fact that video games allow you to remain in a child-like world even as you develop into an adult. This sparked my memory of an article that I read in Vanity Fair entitled “Addicted to Cute.” While the first part of the article discusses exactly how cute is displayed in a variety of mediums throughout the United States, the discussion of Japanese “kawaii” culture on pages four and five have a connection to the article on Nintendo’s marketing technique. There is a discussion of a 10 year time lag and the creation of this kawaii culture during the postwar 1940s and 1950s. While companies like Sanrio and HelloKitty had a big influence on this, I feel as though Nintendo was a power player as well in fusing Japanese culture into American society. Not to mention that the adoption of kawaii into American culture could easily be a representation of a switch of positions with the Japanese in a much more powerful position than they were 60 years ago and the state of depression on the United States. I wonder to what extent that the family-oriented, graphically cell-shaded Nintendo video games had an influence on this? And does this perhaps a political commentary attached to it as well?