#puwawa

This, right here, is Puwawa. Released in 1995, he was born at the bottom of the Southern Sea from the combined events of a full moon and a shooting star. He is a baby; a very cute, chubby baby. He enjoys bonding with other sea creatures and collecting shells.

He might not look like it, but he is classified in most sources that I look at, which is very few that actually go in depth on him, as an umibōzu.

And I say this because a lot of artistic representations of the umibōzu look like this:

Translated as "sea monks", they are fairly benevolent, in the sense that in the world of folklore figures from Japan, they are not particularly violent, but they are a warning sign for choppy waters ahead. There isn't one true representation of the umibōzu, but the most well known one is usually a large, black humanoid with white eyes like the picture above. Here is an article that I found on them with further sources attached. Puwawa's lore in connection to his origins as an umibōzu aren't very deep, given that he isn't a well recorded "older" character. However, I thought I'd add this to add some context.

He is one of those Sanrio characters who also has at least 1 friend that acts as a support character. In this case, it's his cloud friend Powawa.

Powawa is an anthropomorphic cloud that loves to give Puwawa rides throughout the sky. He usually meets Puwawa from the horizon of the shores he hangs out on, extending himself so Puwawa can climb on his back and fly with him, sometimes falling asleep as Powawa travels the skies.

He also has bonded with a couple of seagulls, who appear in some merch with him, but there is nothing that really goes into that in particular.

So, how much media is there of Puwawa? As mentioned before... Not much. HOWEVER, the answer is also surprisingly more than I thought.

Let's start with the meatiest piece of media to feature him, this recorded theme song for him that I can only assume was out in the 90s shortly after he was released.

It's a very cute but also kinda bittersweet ballad. On one hand, it really illustrates how well liked he is among the shore and sea's populace, being given a ride by a whale and leading a bunch of baby turtles to the ocean.

It also has the lyrics from the singer wondering where his mom and dad are right in the 2nd and 3rd lines (remember, he was born through the moon and stars, so he doesn't exactly have a mom and dad). On one hand it does break the heart a bit, but from what I get, this video very much gives the impression that his family is everyone at shore and sea, and of course Powawa. I cried watching this for the first time, and I am so happy this video exists.

He also appears in Sanrio Timenet, whicn is pretty much Pokémon: Sanrio Edition. Released in 1998 and coming in two editions (Kako-Hen and Mirai-Hen, Past and Present), not much info exists, BUT, he can be found in the below sprite sheet.

He's in row 2, column 3 (the seal in the top row is Hana-maru, one of Badtz-maru's friends), seen with Powawa in basically a 1:1 to the image with the two of them I put above.

Other than that, he's only really been seen in merch and again, the Sanrio Character Rankings. Let's start with the merch.

As you can see, there's some variety! Keychains, dog tags, stickers, pencil cases (credit for which goes to @sanrioeveryday) and even a small plushie of him holding a seagull. Not pictured is a set of erasers that's simply Puwawa's head in different colors, google it, it's so cute. Not much is new, other than the fun giraffe cloud Puwawa rides in the dog tag, basically insinuating that Powawa can also shape himself to impersonate animals like he's a plasmoid druid. That being said, a lot of this is being resold and there isn't really any new merch of Puwawa out there. So if you're looking to buy, it can range from being out of luck to hoping you're down to fork XXXX amount of dollars over, probably.

Now, the reason I'm doing this: The Sanrio Character Rankings. To explain how it works, Sanrio runs an online fan vote every year where people can vote for their favorite characters (any amount) once a day for about 50 days. They've kept it consistent in recent years to about 90 characters each, sometimes swapping out very low placing characters with new ones that may rank better (e.g. Hanamaruobake, who came to be from a fan contest, debuted in 2024 in the 90th seat and then immediately shot up to 14th the same year). It's pretty much a popularity contest that provides fun character illustrations for a lot of otherwise unknown characters and also allows like 35 of them to somehow rank beneath a fucking gumball machine (FRESHPUNCH, which isn't even a character, it's a deSIGN PATTERN-).

Unsurprisingly, given the lack of exposure, Puwawa usually does not rank high, to the point that he wasn't even a contender from 2017 to 2021. His highest placements to date were 53rd in 2012, 58th in 2011, and 60th in 2025, notably being a 22 point jump from ranking 82nd in 2024.

In 2013, it was stated that if Puwawa ever reached 40th place or higher, he'd get to visit the mountains. He is obviously yet to reach that, although the big spike of 2025 has me very optimistic! If this endeared you to Puwawa and you want to help the baby see the mountains...

You can vote here every day, each character you like once a day, for about 38 more days until voting closes for the year. Let's all #SWEEP4PUWAWA.