Results of the 2014 Sanrio Character Ranking Awards!

The results for the 29th Sanrio Character Ranking Award were announced on August 2nd at the Sanrio Puroland in Tokyo.

My Melody took home the top spot with 79,235 votes. This is the third time she topped the ranking and the first time in 3 years. Hello Kitty ended up in 2nd place with 72,951 votes after winning for 2 consecutive years.

Hello Kitty had originally planned on adding to her 40th celebration in November this year with this honor, but was unable to beat out My Melody. In third place is Little Twin Stars, also known as Kiki and Lala, while new characters from the "Tabe-Chara General Elections" ranked in with Gudetama at 7th place and Kirimi-chan at 8th place.

This year's character ranking awards took a cue from the FIFA World Cup and divided 100 characters into 5 groups. The top 4 characters from each group passed the first stage (5/10 ~ 6/15, 2,255,452 votes) and advanced to the final stage (7/8~7/21, 619,786 votes). The final voting results are as follows:

2014 Sanrio Character Awards (last year's ranking in parenthesis)

1. My Melody (2)

2. Hello Kitty (1)

3. Little Twin Stars (4)

4. Pom Pom Purin (3)

5. Cinnamoroll (5)

6. Goexpanda (Go-chan) (6)

7. Gudetama (first time)

8. Kirimi-chan (first time)

9. Bonbon Ribbon (15)

10. Fuku-chan (8)

11. Kuromi (10)

12. Charmmy Kitty (17)

13. Kero Kero Keroppi (12)