Character profile: Spanky (スパンキー)
From: Hyakutanzaka, Ōsaki, Shinagawa, Tokyo
Full Name: Spiegel de Spanky III (シュピーゲル・ド・スパンキー３世)
Birthday: 365 days, any time
Earth debut: 29th December 2000
Designer: Akihiko Inuyama
Age: Eternal adolescence
Special skills: Playing the melodica and guitar
Hobbies: Complaining while watching TV
Type: Denji dog, from the planet Denji (or Denji star? not sure)
Gender: Male (yes, an actual gender for once!)
Personality: Appears to be scary, but is really soft
Height: Pretty big
Weight: Always on the increase from over-eating
Favourite food: Menchi-katsu, Umaibō
Backstory: Apparently he was a space pirate, but while in the Solar System he got arrested for littering cans. Now he wants to make 100 million friends on earth and not return home - or is that his sentence?
His current status is a NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training - an acronym coined in the UK but widely used in Japan), sponging off the Inuyama family. This is also reflected by the fact he doesn’t seem to represent anything in particular. He has no affiliation with local government or any businesses, except Inuyama Design I guess.
At over 14 years old, Spanky is pretty ancient in the yuru-chara world. The “yuru-chara boom” did not start until 2007, and the insanity of the likes of Kumamon and Funassyi has only happened in the past 4 years or so.
I don’t know what he did for his first two years, but it seems in 2002 he became the mascot of computer magazine Win++, a publication that Inuyama was involved with:
Image: Win++ vol. 1 (source)
The magazine seemed to cover a lot of legally dubious topics, such as DVD copying, P2P networks such as WinMX and Winny, and video game emulation - so I guess a space pirate was somewhat appropriate as the mascot? Some more pictures and info on Inuyama’s blog here (bottom of page). He also featured in a “live-action comic” in the magazine.
At some stage Spanky was moved to a theatre company in Osaka to avoid confusion with his similar-looking “younger brother” Togoshi Ginjirō (Gin-chan), introduced in 2004. In 2009 he returned to Tokyo, as I guess Gin-chan was well known enough for this not to be a problem by that stage. In 2013, he became guitarist for GCB47 and things really took off from there.
He is often referred to as “paisen” (パイセン) which I believe is a funny or less formal form of senpai, as he is seen as the elder of Gin-chan and Ōsaki Ichibantarō.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/s_p_spanky
Blog: ameblo.jp/sp-spanky/
Inuyama Design website (”Spanky” category): http://mt-dog.jugem.jp/?cid=11
(Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
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