Ecchan

Recently I was given the opportunity to design a character for Echizen City’s Department of Environmental Affairs. The theme was supposed to be environmental, and the character was going to be used in comics talking about local environmental issues, and through the Echizen City International Association it would be geared towards foreigners as well, and translated into Portuguese and Chinese (no English). I was also going to get to design the comics! 🙂

It wasn’t too hard to come up with a character idea. In the 1960’s, chemicals and overdevelopment completely wiped out the Oriental Stork in Japan. Through a long process of captive breeding and stricter environmental laws, the stork was reintroduced to Japan, and wild hatchlings were reported for the first time in 2007. A few years ago, one of the storks made its home in Echizen city, and it has become a favorite mascot in town. It seemed like the obvious choice for a character symbolic of environmental action, so I drew up Ecchan the stork.

These comics are being published one a month, and can be seen in Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese on the Echizen City webpage, and International Association monthly newsletters. Hopefully they will be expanding viewership to a larger area. Since there’s no English version, I’ll translate it here. Anyway, here is the first comic.

Episode 1

Panel 1: 日本の人口は世界で１０番目に多い。
Japan’s population is the 10th largest in the world.
Panel 2: でも、日本の国土面積は世界で６１番目。
But Japan’s land area is only the 61st largest.
Panel 3: 日本のゴミの年間排出量　５２７３万トン･･･
Japan creates 52,730,000 tons of trash every year…
Panel 4: 「私たちにできること。それは３Ｒ！」 「３Ｒ？」
“There’s something we can do… 3R!” “3R?”

After the panels there is a paragraph with tips and information on the month’s theme, this one being Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. The strange tan blank spot at the top of the comic is for Ecchan’s profile. This comic was for April’s edition, so I’ll post May’s and June’s later on!