THE BEST COUNTRY — With everything on the up and up in the fantastic Middle Kingdom, the Communist Youth League decided to introduce a pair of patriotic anime mascots on Feb. 17.
According to the failing New York Times, the youth wing unveiled the two new anime influencers, but then got so pathetically hammered and criticized online that they quickly deleted them out of existence.
The Times reports that the new, super short-lived avatars were styled like Japanese anime characters and were named Hong Qi Man and Jiang Shan Jiao, names derived from fun-loving dictator Mao's poetry.
Apparently Jiang Shan Jiao, whose name translates into "lovable country," and her younger brother Hong Qiman, aka "fluttering flag," were meant to encourage patriotism among younger Chinese.
After introducing the tag team on Twitter's ugly cousin Weibo, netizens immediately started criticizing the pair.
Reuters reports that a lot of the negative comments were getting thousands of "likes," so they had to be removed by censors during the day on the 17th.
By the end of the day, the post with the avatars was given the old Beijing bye-bye. Well, better luck next time guys.