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The story
On September 8, JR East announced the three finalist designs for a new mascot to succeed “Suica no Penguin,” which has served as Suica’s image character for 25 years, and opened a user vote that same day at 3:00 PM. Voting runs until 11:59 PM on September 23, with one vote per person regardless of nationality or age. The penguin will retire on March 31 next year. On 5channel threads, the candidate designs proved divisive — with comments like “I can’t tell if it’s a squirrel or a koala” — and the discussion turned into a stream of alternative suggestions, including people pushing their own AI-generated polar bear design and others backing the Ezo flying squirrel featured on JR Hokkaido’s Kitaca card.
9/8 (Tue) 15:53
JR East announced on the 8th that it would begin a user vote at 3:00 PM that day to decide the new image character for its “Suica” transit IC card. Whichever of the three finalist designs receives the most votes will be adopted. “Suica no Penguin,” beloved for 25 years since Suica’s introduction in 2001, will retire on March 31 next year.
The company explained its reasoning: “The new image character embodies the ‘Suica Renaissance’ vision and will be a character that grows alongside Suica as a symbol of our connection with customers and communities. Because we wanted to build Suica’s future together with as many customers as possible, we decided to determine it through a customer vote.” Voting runs until 11:59 PM on September 23. It’s being held on a dedicated website, and anyone in Japan or abroad who agrees to the terms can vote once, regardless of age, gender, occupation, or nationality.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
The AI-generated polar bear that's going mildly viral — funny thing is, it's actually way better than the official ones
Isn't there anything better than this? They could've just licensed some existing character instead
Why'd they even get rid of that penguin? It was better than any of these
JR: "The penguin? Oh, we roasted it and ate it lol"
B: Germs
C: A bald drunk who stripped down to nothing but black socks
The one on the right's a koala. Can't tell about the middle one at all — maybe a rabbit?
Wouldn't Mobile Suica work for that?
Apparently this is what you get when you have AI make one
https://i.imgx.site/InDtCh8.png
A bear's a bad idea in this day and age — JR East's whole service area is crawling with bear sightings
This one's way better, honestly. Feels like it could actually sell as merch
https://i.imgx.site/90Zc3pc.png
Too surreal lol
That's cute 😀
Guess I'll just slap a Chiikawa sticker over this thing…
https://i.imgx.site/MVLieBN.png
Babies would probably love this
Wait… that's actually not bad?
C is cute. Does B fly or something…?
B is fat lol so gross lol
Looking at it again, C might actually work… if they made the head bigger and adjusted the proportions it could look cuter. Kind of resembles Booska (a cute kaiju character from a classic Japanese TV show)
Kansai people stay out of this one
Give it a few years, and once people calm down, I bet everyone will agree Myaku-Myaku was just a creepy, unappealing character all along. Even now, nobody outside Kansai finds it cute at all
This'll do
Kitaca's mascot is adorable. I want one but never get the chance to buy it
Re: #201
JR East should just absorb JR Hokkaido, problem solved
Had no idea about this, but it's actually cute. The black-and-white coloring is probably meant to match Suica no Penguin, right? If so, they should've based the penguin's successor on black-and-white too. Otherwise, if they're just matching the Suica card's colors instead, there's zero consistency in this Re: #1 lineup
The mole is the one riding in the pouch
The mole's the one in the pouch
Background and Talking Points
Suica no Penguin has been the mascot since Suica launched in 2001 — a rare case of a mascot going unchanged for 25 years. This time, JR East prepared three finalist designs and is basing the final choice directly on the vote results, a detail that’s easy to overlook, along with the fact that anyone in Japan or abroad can vote once regardless of nationality or age. On the thread, the dominant reaction was that the new candidates are hard to identify as any particular animal, and the conversation was largely driven by users generating their own AI images as counter-proposals. At the same time, some pointed to Expo 2025 Osaka-Kansai’s mascot “Myaku-Myaku,” which was also panned at first before gradually winning people over, arguing this is simply a matter of getting used to something new — so opinion remains split. There were also posts claiming the switch was made “to avoid paying licensing fees” on the old penguin design, but no such explanation appears in the official announcement, so that claim should be treated as speculation only.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “JR East Announces 3 Finalist Designs for New “Suica” Mascot — Voting Opens for Successor to the Beloved 25-Year Penguin.”
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