Human knights who fight for Lords Hello Kitty and Cinnamoroll? Sanrio launches fantasy franchise

”Full-fledged fantasy” is focused on knights pledged to Sanrio characters on quest to save the world.

Sanrio has produced a lot of beloved characters over the years, and the vast majority of them, from Hello Kitty to Aggressive Retsuko, are animals. Just about the only prominent human Sanrio characters are Kiki and Lala, the Little Twin Stars, and even then they’re simplified, cartoony caricatures of the human form.

But now Sanrio is launching a whole new line of characters that are not only human, but look like they’d fit right in as part of an otaku/fujoshi-oriented action anime series.

Sanrio is calling Fragaria Memories, as the line is titled, “A full-fledged new-age fantasy with Sanrio human characters.” Pictured from left to right in the above image are the trio of knights Cielomort, Hallrit, and Badobarm.

Fashionable anime boys produced by Sanrio might have you thinking of Sanrio Danshi/Sanrio Boys, the merch line-turned-anime-series from a couple years back about a group of male high school friends who all have a devotion to a specific Sanrio character, but there’s a key difference. Whereas Sanrio Danshi took place in our world, where Hello Kitty and her pals are just fictional characters, within the setting of Fragaria Memories Hello Kitty and her animal friends are all living creatures, and they’re the lords in charge of these knights.

As explained in the above diagram, each of the Fragaria Memories knights forms a covenant with a “Lord.” In the case of Hallrit, his lord is Hello Kitty, who’s tasked him with saving their world from the threat of mysterious beings known as Seeds.

▼ Hallrit’s character design color scheme resembles Hello Kitty’s, and the Japanese pronunciation of hello sounding closer to “hallo” means even their names are similar.

Faithful and pure-hearted Hallrit is chosen as the champion of the Red Continent, and on his journey of adventure he’ll eventually cross paths with Cielomort of the Blue Continent and Badobarm of the Black Continent, whose Lords are Cinnamoroll and Bad Badtz-Maru.

▼ Badobarm shares his haughty personality with would-be bad-boy Bad Badtz-Maru., and also has a couple of Xs (called batsu in Japanese, pronounced the name way as “Badtz” is supposed to be) incorporated into his costume.

Each of the three has a different designer (Lam for Hallrit, Kei Mochizuki for Cielomort, and Shiro Miwa for Badobarm). They also all have official voice actors (Gakuto Kajiwara, Nobunaga Shimazaki, and Shunsuke Takeuchi, respectively), which implies that some sort of anime, music, or audio drama component is planned for Fragaria Memories, even if none of the characters speak in the short teaser video that accompanied the Fragaria Memories announcement.

If you’re thinking that the vast pantheon of Sanrio characters means that there’s potential for plenty more Fragaria knights, Sanrio is way ahead of you and has already said that more characters, and their Lords, will be revealed early next month, so if you’re a fan of My Melody, Gudetama, or Kirimi-chan, keep your fingers crossed.

Source: Fragaria Memories official website, PR Times via Otakomu
Top image: Fragaria Memories official website
Insert images: YouTube/フラガリアメモリーズ【サンリオ公式】, PR Times
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