We just had the Rio Olympics last year but it looks like Japan is already hyping up the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, which will begin on July 24 and run until August 9, 2020.
Japan is doing something that has probably never been done before. It has selected a team of super popular anime characters as the brand ambassadors of the 2020 Olympics.
The team includes iconic characters like Goku, Naruto, Sailor Moon, Shin Chan, Astro Boy, Monkey D. Luffy among others.
That’s right, fictional characters are now official brand ambassadors and that is just awesome! In fact, the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe was dressed as Super Mario at the closing ceremony of Rio Olympics in 2016. How cool is that?
The organisers say that this decision to go with the anime characters was a very conscious one as they wanted to draw the attention of the younger people towards the Olympics games.
Also, this will be a way for Japan to show the world their rich culture and the effect that it has had on the modern world, by making them central to the event itself, which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had hinted in at the closing ceremony of Rio Olympics.
There is even a video which shows all the characters that we will begin seeing more of in the coming 3 years.
Video by YouTube user Futbolete
Goku and team have already started making appearances on the official Olympics merchandise which include T-shirts, hats, cups, keychains, bags, towels among other stuff. As the Olympics draws nearer, the anime brand ambassadors will make more appearances in more marketing material.
Some people have questioned the mysterious absence of two of the most popular characters ever - Mario and Pikachu. Virtually everyone in the world knows about these two characters and they are probably more popular then all the brand ambassadors. Maybe the organisers have something else planned for these two.
As of now, the official mascot for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics has not been revealed however, which will be announced in the summer of 2018.