Sanrio Aesthetic: All You Need To Know

The Sanrio Aesthetic is amazingly unknown to many but it is still a subculture of the kawaii culture that a lot of people around the world are also adhering to in their lifestyles. Just like what the name suggests, the sanrio aesthetic centers mostly from the characters that Sanrio Ltd made, mostly highly influenced from its most iconic characters such as My Melody, Hello Kitty, and Kuromi.

Here's a video that quizzes you on which Sanrio character you resonate to the most, give it a try

If I could freely describe the Sanrio Aesthetic, that would be adoringly cute yet scary.

Fandom Wiki would describe this aesthetic as an aesthetic centered around Sanrio Co., Ltd.(株式会社サンリオ) a Japanese company created by Shintaro Tsuji that sells cute (or Kawaii) Japanese merchandise and it leeches into multiple aesthetics. It focuses on a gentle, childlike innocence and nature, accompanied with the cute Sanrio merch and characters.

So what are the highlights of the Sanrio Aesthetic? Here’s what we observed:

Fashion

Fashion-wise, a combination of the kawaii aesthetic and the soft girl aesthetic. In a physical sense, the Sanrio aesthetic can be seen as a combination of the kawaii aesthetic and the soft girl aesthetic with a twist. If you look  at the aesthetic in a fashion sense, you will see a common theme that plays around kidcore, or the aesthetic that makes it seem that the person styling their fashion is playing around the idea of innocence. This can be seen by the users making use of short skirts paired up with high rise stockings. 

While Sanrio aesthetic fashion is known for its cute and pinky elements, it also incorporates strong, dark elements. It is almost as if the fashion that they are going for is borderline going for the e-girl aesthetic while still making sure that their cute, kawaii concept is retained. This can be shown by their enthusiasts wearing soft girl-like attire while also wearing a black belt that has a lot of thorns, that make it seem almost emo-like. A high influence of the emo getup is actually from one of the Sanrio characters, namely Kuromi. I think it is safe to assume that Kuromi is the center of the gothic influence of the Sanrio aesthetic mostly because of how Kuromi looks like that greatly appealed to the goths and anything that has something to do with edgy aesthetics. 

They also go for babydoll dresses, and even lolita fashion. As for their makeup, they are almost comparable to that of the soft girl aesthetic makeup, considering that both aesthetics are almost alike in many ways. Fandom Wiki also mentioned that the makeup that is often used in the Sanrio aesthetic are neutral looks with heavy blush can be seen, as well as pink, glittery eyeshadow with fake lashes. Pink lips or lip gloss with/without glitter seem popular as well. Nails tend to have heavy sanrio deco.

Contradictory aesthetic 

The unique thing about the sanrio aesthetic is that while it wants to show the upside pink bubbly character on the front, the aesthetic itself has a lot of darker elements surrounding it, and from the observer’s point-of-view, the aesthetic feels like the aesthetic is basically contradicting itself. 

You also can’t really associate the aesthetic with anything positive since for some reason just by observing some of the users of the aesthetic, it sometimes makes you think of negative characteristics like that of an existence of some deep seated trauma trying to peek out of the person harboring the aesthetic. That is why I mentioned that the aesthetic is cute yet scary in the introduction. It’s almost as if that the people doing the aesthetic had unwanted childhood so now that they're already older, they are doing the things that they want - like acquiring seemingly cute and adorable things, or just simply dressing up cutely and adorable, just so they can compensate for their childhood that they haven't experienced freely.

I am not sure if I am over analyzing things here, but I just get that type of feeling sometimes.

Their online presence basically centers around the Sanrio characters...

Their online presence is basically filled with a lot of Sanrio characters, mostly My Melody, Hello Kitty, Gudetama, Chococat, Keroppi, and Cinnamoroll, but there are still a lot of characters that make up under the Sanrio company.  

If you over the different social media platforms in the internet and search for the hashtag #sanrioaesthetic, you can basically see the type of posts that the people using the aesthetic do (or just basically searching for the “sanrio aesthetic” keyword is enough to search for its users).  

You can basically just instantly know if someone harbors the Sanrio aesthetic for when they post things like this one that we found from Instagram:
 

...and even in irl

If you think that having an Instagram feed filled with Sanrio characters isn’t enough, then you are mistaken because even in real life, these enthusiasts embody greatly the Sanrio aesthetic. Basically, they take this aesthetic seriously, it’s basically their whole personality. Now make no mistake, this is not because they altered their personality to base it off on the Sanrio characters, there are several assumptions as to why they really love these characters. 

One would be the possibility of growing up with these characters. Since its from the Sanrio characters that the kawaii aesthetic was originally originated from, it can also be understood that in order to fully embody the kawaii aesthetics, following its iconic characters is their meaning of peak kawaii (this is mainly an assumption and is no way a known fact). Second would be simply, its enthusiasts just simply love the kawaii features that the Sanrio characters have. Take Hello Kitty for example, there are a lot of reasons why the world loves Hello Kitty, but one reason that was stated by one collector of Hello Kitty products named Masao Gunji (as reported by Vice) is because he is fascinated by Hello Kitty’s expressions, saying that “For some reason, when I'm sad, she looks a little bit sad as well, and when I am happy she looks happy.” So just like everyone else, the Sanrio characters are also their comfort character when at times they need them.

The second assumption is most likely the reason for the center of this aesthetic obsession because even some Youtube Creators that center their content on the kawaii aesthetic never really fail to show their adoration to the Sanrio characters specifically of the above mentioned characters. 

They have a lot of Sanrio-related character plushies and items that they own

Since I already mentioned that they do embody the aesthetic irl, that would also mean hoarding Sanrio character product items as well. Have you seen their bedroom aesthetic? Hella cute! You can definitely see the heavy influence of the Sanrio characters when you go inside a room of a Sanrio aesthetic enthusiast. Sanrio character plushies, even stationeries or just anything that is under the name of the Sanrio merchandise, you can literally find anything in there, and I am not even exaggerating. This can also be rooted on how Sanrio markets their products, and the fact that they own the title of the merchandising icon by one of their most loved characters, Hello Kitty, this comes as no surprise. The company is known to merchandise their characters even up until now. Have you seen how Gudetama is almost everywhere? That’s just how powerful Sanrio is!

They're big gamers, at least mostly

I am not saying that people harboring the Sanrio aesthetic are all gamers. Not all of them are gamers, but they do play a lot of video games. This is a trend that can be seen in a lot of social media platforms especially on TikTok, Instagram, and Tumblr. From playing chill games such as Animal Crossing on their Nintendo Switch, to playing MOBA through League of Legends on PC, most of them really are gamers at heart. They even design their gaming rigs with cute, pink, fluffy designs and, of course the characters that will never disappear, some Sanrio characters such as My Melody and Hello Kitty.

They do a lot of memes with Sanrio characters

This one really confuses me as an observer - why is it a thing in this aesthetic that they try to express their feelings through using Sanrio character memes? This is actually a fun way of expressing your feelings without having the need to expose your face honestly. And it’s almost as if they like to associate their feelings with a certain Sanrio character. Maybe this is because of the designs that the characters are built with: aside from their cute characteristics that may represent the POV of the person talking, but maybe also because simply of humor - since you know how varied the humor of today due to the the limitless amount of photos and information that we can use in the internet. Whether they do this due to humor or out of love, there’s really knowing why they do this specifically. And if you see someone doing this, and it’s most likely they are doing and/or trying the aesthetic themselves. 

In a general sense, the Sanrio aesthetic is just basically an aesthetic that was built by enthusiasts to express their admiration towards the Sanrio characters. They eventually learned how to make it so that these adorable characters can have virtual personalities despite them not able to speak on their own. While there are still a lot of things that cannot be fully understood that lie under this aesthetic, it’s still fascinating how we get to appreciate aesthetics like this one once in a while. 

What do you think of the Sanrio aesthetic? Do you think it’s interesting, too? Tell us your thoughts below on the comments and see whether you know a thing or two about this cute aesthetic!