When the Gameboy titles “Pocket Monsters: Red” and “Pocket Monsters: Green” were first released in Japan in 1996, few could have predicted what would come next.
The concept was simple enough: players would traverse a fictional world by capturing, training, and fighting the creatures that inhabited it, a mission encapsulated in the game’s famous slogan, “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.” But in a few years, Pokémon, a combination of the Japanese name “Poketto Monsuta”, was a global phenomenon.
By 1999, the game had launched in several Western markets, later becoming one of the most successful franchises of all time. It spawned an anime series, which was translated into more than 30 languages, and trading cards that ravaged the world’s playgrounds during the “Pokémania” of the late 1990s.
He also imprinted the identities of 151 completely fictional characters in the memory of millions.
Japanese children participate in a Pokémon card game tournament in 1999. Credit: Yoshikazu Tsuno / AFP / Getty Images
A quarter of a century later, many first-generation Pokémon are as recognizable to millennials as they are to their children. This is partly thanks to a post-2016 renaissance inspired by the mobile game “Pokémon Go” and the movie “Detective Pikachu”. But the success of the franchise is more than smart marketing: it’s the result of unique characters who were universal enough to cross cultures and diverse enough to turn them into a whole challenge, not a chore.
Its origins go back to the creator of Pokémon, Tajiri Satoshi, his childhood love for collecting insects inspired a game with a surprisingly similar premise. Most of the individual designs were, however, the work of cartoonist Ken Sugimori.
Sugimori had worked with Tajiri on Game Freak magazine, which would eventually become the gaming company behind Pokémon. As the firm’s art director, he brought his collaborator’s vision to life through a complex and imaginative taxonomy, with individual lines of evolution and fictional genres, such as grass or dragon-type Pokémon.
Bulbasaur, one of the most recognizable Pokémon of the first generation. Credit: Courtesy of The Pokemon Company
Giving the characters different personalities was always difficult. Even with a TV series accompanying it, most were only able to pronounce their own names repeatedly. His appearances, therefore, were especially important.
Globalizing
“Along with Tamagotchi, the narrative was that you cared for them,” Tobin said in a video interview. “They take care of them so that they grow and the children can identify with being stronger. But then they also take care of them (making sure they don’t) they die. It was unusual to have him in a battle game … he took some of the characteristics of the war and combined them with nutrition. “
Squirtle, a light blue turtle. Credit: Courtesy of The Pokemon Company
The curious Squirtle (top) evolved into Wortortle and finally Blastoise (bottom). Credit: Courtesy of The Pokemon Company
This juxtaposition was reflected in the designs, both handsome and fierce, or, through the evolutionary process, which transformed from brave to fierce, from the Squirtle with big, childish eyes to the formidable Blastoise (like Wartortle). . None, however, embodied this dichotomy more accurately than Pikachu, the most successful and marketable figure in the franchise. Dumpy and pink-cheeked, with a high-pitched voice, the electrified mouse was also a powerful fighter.
According to Tobin, character design also played a broader role in Japan for exporting pop culture in the 1990s.
“The idea was – or corporate strategy as a nation was – we want our‘ mouse ’to compete with Mickey Mouse,” he said. “So I think the fact that Pikachu is a mouse-like creature isn’t coincidental, but (the character) became hyper-cute, prettier than Mickey or Minnie.”
Not all Pokémon talked about the playground, like Metapod, a crescent-shaped chrysalis. Credit: Courtesy of The Pokemon Company
But while Pikachu and Bulbasaur stole the spotlight and became the most important commodity, there was strength in diversity. And some of the big Pokémon castings were neither brave nor fierce.
Take Diglett, a crudely drawn sausage-shaped mole, or Metapod, an immobile chrysalis with drooping eyes, whose only ability is to harden the outer shell. All were relatively useless in battle; none was the most sought after card game in the school yard. But they were part of a whole universe, which he had for everyone. In the gender-normative world of toy marketing in the 1990s, that mattered, Tobin said.
“In the toy store (back then) you had a blue hallway and a pink hallway,” he said. “But Pokémon was created to get in the hallways.”
The art of location
Although the character designs remained the same overseas, Pokémon adapted to different markets, especially in terms of language.
A woman navigates the goods of a Tokyo Pokémon store. Credit: Behrouz Mehri / AFP / Getty Images
But new Pokémon names often stayed true to the spirit of the originals. He takes Sawamura and Ebiwara, who had been named after a Japanese kickboxer and boxer, respectively, but who in English were called Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan, a reference to martial artists that children in the West would recognize: Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Or Ivysaur, whose Japanese name Fushigisou combines “fushigi” (strange) and “sou” (grass), giving rise to a similar principle for the French version: Herbizarre.
Some names, such as Pikachu, were more or less directly transliterated from Japanese. But elsewhere there were portmantis like Psyduck (a duck with psychic powers), or names that only resonated with speakers of the language in question, such as the slowly Slowpoke. There were also puns of varying quality, from jellyfish like Tentacool, to Exeggcute, a collection of furious eggs.
Psyduck, a duck with psychic abilities. Credit: Courtesy of The Pokemon Company
Some were a little less imaginative. There was a seal of horns called Seel and a crab named Krabby. The serpentine Ekans and Arbok were made simply by inverting the words “serpent” and “kobra” (sic). But there were also moments of linguistic sophistication. The three “Legendary Birds” in the game were named Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres, with the Spanish suffixes -uno, -dos and -tres reflecting their consecutive order in the Pokédex. An amorphous stain, capable of taking the form of everything it saw, was aptly named Ditto.
The anime series also subtly adapted to overseas markets. For example, human characters were more central to the narration of the American version, because it was believed that “Americans wanted someone to identify with this was more than just insects and animals,” Tobin said. But, he added, Pokémon always retained something par excellence Japanese.
“I think the most amazing thing is that it didn’t change that much. Not only was Japanese not a passive, but it was associated with a ‘cool Japan.’ The kids didn’t like it because it was Japanese, but they certainly had the idea that it was a bit exotic, ”he said, comparing it to a kind of soft power for the country.
‘Intergenerational nostalgia’
A Hasbro employee shows Pokemon Battle Stadium components in the company’s showroom in New York in February 2000. Credit: Richard Drew / AP
Tobin, who has not been able to predict the longevity of Pokémon last time, is more optimistic about the franchise’s next 25 years.
“I was wrong to think that Pokémon, like most cultural or children’s media products, would go up and down and be replaced by the next big thing,” he said. “But I think what I, and the other authors of the book, got right was (understanding) what made Pokémon so appealing at the time. And the things that made it appealing weren’t limited to the culture of the 1990s.
Performers dressed as Pikachu during a “Pikachu Outbreak” event hosted bin Yokohama, Japan, in 2018. Credit: Tomohiro Ohsumi / Getty Images
“I think it has become one of those very rare products that, now, will never end, because it’s very much in the popular imagination,” he added. “It has this intergenerational value of nostalgia, in the way that parents who grew up with Barbie could now want (buy them for their kids) or people who grew up with baseball cards want to do it with their kids .
“He becomes self-recognizable; his own fame has value.”
Main image caption: 1999 (L to R) Pikachu, Psyduck, Togepy, Squirtle in the animated film “Pokémon: The First Movie.“