When Politicians Campaign with Anime

Over the weekend, Tsai Ing-wen became the first woman to be elected the president of Taiwan. Above is a GIF from her political campaign. Because anime is real.

The biggest cornerstone of her agenda is perhaps protecting Taiwan’s own identity, but her campaign did what it could to appeal to the country’s youth by playing up her two cats (because, cats) and creating a cute cartoon version of the politician.

[GIF: 蔡英文 Tsai Ing-wen | Facebook]

Yes, that means a cat girl.

During the campaign, President-elect Tsai uploaded several of these animated clips to her official Facebook account. She admitted that she didn’t know much about the anime industry, but pointed out that few politicians were willing to take the first step to learn more and see its potential.

Which seems good, because the anime clips typically have over 100,000 Facebook likes. (Note that the majority of her other ads were typical political-type spots.)

Taiwanese animators created this clip, in which the newly elected Tsai says to show the country’s strength and what it can become. For her, as a politician, she notes that this is a start for her to learn more about Taiwan’s animation industry. And what a first one at that.

[GIF: 蔡英文 Tsai Ing-wen | Facebook]

In this one, the animated Tsai introduced her campaign’s ideas on energy.

[GIF: 蔡英文 Tsai Ing-wen | Facebook]

Anime fans will be pleased to know that one of the clips, not the nuke one, is labelled “moe version,” with “moe” being, as illustrator Noizi Ito once told me, Japanese slang to refer to the “warm, fuzzy feeling” characters give you.

Top GIF: 蔡英文 Tsai Ing-wen | Facebook

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