They’ve been around for a long time – artists like Kuniyoshi used to put crazy animals in his drawings to get around censors: <insert image> More recently, they’ve been redone to be more kawaii , a term that loosely translates as ‘cute’. … 
Every single instructional sign should include at least one cute character if at all possible: 
This one’s just baffling: 
Cops have pretty characters for their dogs: 
And even your local bus has a character: 
Hell, you want some pork for dinner?