CNN: Aggretsuko: Hello Kitty's beer swilling, heavy metal-loving angry sister

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Born in the aftermath of the student riots that rocked Japan in 1971, the cute craze sprang from an underground literary trend in the 1970s when teenage girls started writing the Japanese alphabet in childish, rounded characters, according to Sharon Kinsella, a lecturer in Japanese studies at Manchester University.

The movement, argues Kinsella, was a way for Japanese women set on the path to motherhood to re-embrace childhood and reject adult responsibilities.

But it wasn't just young women who latched on to Japan's cute craze.