For a while, Hamtaro was marketed as the next Pokémon, a series featuring a population of mega-adorable animals. For many, it was a relaxed, cute show. While Hamtaro didn't finish its run in America due to poor ratings, overseas the show ran from 2000 to 2006 and lasted 296 episodes. It's garnered a cult following over the years, in part due to the popularity of its video games and characters.
While there's not much on the surface that would obviously connect Hamtaro to politics, this is precisely what is happening in Thailand right now. Thai youth protesters — in the largest protest since a coup in 2014 — have taken the Hamtaro theme song and used it as an anthem in their protests against the government.
The Free Youth Movement has been fighting the government since February, when the Thai Government dissolved the Future Forward Party, a movement designed to push progressive reforms and reduce military control over the daily activities of civilian life. The party was primarily comprised of Millennial voices, who helped make it the third-largest political party in Thailand. The latest round of protest come in defiance of the country's COVID-19 shelter-in-place decree.
On Sunday, July 26, the protesters gathered together in a massive circle around Bangkok's Democracy Monument and started running around it. The intent was to resemble a hamster running in its wheel, getting nowhere. To add to this hamster imagery, the singers then began to sing the theme song to Hamtaro, altering lyrics to criticize the Thai government. They sang "The most delicious food is taxpayers' money. Dissolve the parliament! Dissolve the parliament! Dissolve the parliament!"
The movement seeks to convince Thailand to dissolve the parliament established following a 2014 military coup, revise the militaristic constitution and end the silencing of Thai government critics. The government's economy has stalled in the years since the coup, and while many Millenials and Gen-Z Thai people gave the government a chance, they have been continuously disappointed by what they consider the government's overt corruption and incompetence. One 20-year-old protester stated, "The adults may think because we're doing this, they can't take us seriously. But this is the way for the new generation. We are doing this differently in hope that something will change."
As for Hamtaro, it makes sense that the movement would appropriate iconography from an anime the protesters watched in their childhood. The imagery is cleverly applied, as hamsters often are content to just run in circles and consume seeds, unaffected by the outside world. This satire, though innocent, uses a universally known anime as an icon for revolution.