Kemono Friends Resources and References

sometimes I think of mirai's impact on the narrative of kemofriends and I get emotional

me before kemono friends:

Fukano narrowed down the list of Kemono Friends’ many characters to 37 species (26 mammals and 11 birds) that didn’t naturally occur in Japan, so that people could only get to know them either from online research or from visiting the zoo. Immediately after the show first aired, search results for these species peaked. It then tapered off a bit, but in the 18 months since Kemono Friends’ first episode, people in Japan looked up these animals more than a million times more often on Wikipedia than in the 18 months before that. Google searches were even higher: In those 18 months, the researchers recorded more than 4.5 million additional Japanese language Google searches for the animals featured in Kemono Friends than before the show. But the most tangible impact the show has had is in donations to wildlife conservation. Zoos in Tokyo allow donors to mention which animal they’re supporting, and animals that were featured in Kemono Friends received more donations since the show aired, compared to other animals in the zoos.  Of course popularity from a TV show doesn’t always necessarily lead to such a positive impact, but in this case the show’s creators made a deliberate effort to incorporate wildlife education into their marketing, and worked with zoos to allow the characters to be displayed around the parks. The show’s creators also donated to the World Wildlife Fund and to local zoos to support animal conservation.