Umihara Kawase (海腹川背) is a series of platform games, starring a young Japanese school girl named Kawase Umihara (海腹 川背 Umihara Kawase), who has somehow become lost in a world of surreal salt-water and fresh-water creatures. She wears a bright pink rucksack. The Umihara Kawase games’ main distinction are their tranquil fish and bird infested worlds and the rope physics, which defines the gameplay.
The name is written as four kanji characters: umi, hara, kawa, se meaning sea, belly, river, back. This is an extraction from a Japanese kitchen idiom “Sea fish are fat in the belly; river fish are fat in the back.”.
The protagonist was first seen in the eponymous Super Famicom release of 1994 and later the sequel and re-release of Umihara Kawase Shun for the PlayStation in 1997 and 2000.