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 traversed a fictional world to capture, train, and fight the creatures that inhabited it – a mission contained in the game’s famous catchphrase, “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.” But within just a few years, Pokémon, an amalgamation of the Japanese name “Poketto Monsuta,” became a worldwide phenomenon.
By 1999, the game had launched in multiple Western markets and went on to become one of the most successful franchises of all time. It spawned an anime series translated into over 30 languages, and trading cards that flooded the world’s playgrounds during the “Pokémania” of the late 1990s.
It also expressed the identities of 151 completely fictional characters in the memories 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 just as recognizable to Millennials as they are to their children. This is partly due to a post-2016 revival inspired by the mobile game “Pokémon Go” and the movie “Detective Pikachu”. But the franchise’s success is about more than clever marketing – it’s the result of unique characters that were universal enough to traverse cultures and diverse enough to make them all a challenge, not a chore.
Their origins go back to Pokémon’s creator Tajiri Satoshi, whose childhood love of collecting bugs inspired a game with a strikingly similar premise. However, most of the individual designs were the work of illustrator Ken Sugimori.
Sugimori had worked with Tajiri on Game Freak magazine, which would eventually become the games company behind Pokémon. As the company’s art director, he brought his employee’s vision to life through a complex and imaginative taxonomy, complete with individual lines of evolution and fictional genuses, such as grass or dragon-type Pokémon.
Bulbasaur, one of the most recognizable first generation Pokémon. Credit: Credit to The Pokemon Company
It would always be difficult to give the characters different personalities. Even with an accompanying TV series, most could only say their own name repeatedly. Their appearance was therefore particularly important.
Go global
“Along with Tamagotchi, the story was that you take care of them,” said Tobin in a video interview. “You take care of them so they grow up, and kids can identify with getting stronger. But then you also take care of them by (making sure they don’t) die. It was unusual to have this in a combat game … about some of the characteristics of war and combined them with nurturing. “
Squirtle, a light blue turtle. Credit: Credit to The Pokemon Company
The adorable Squirtle (top) evolved into Wortle and eventually Blastoise (bottom). Credit: Credit to The Pokemon Company
This juxtaposition was reflected in the designs, which were both cute and fierce – or, through the evolutionary process, turned from cute to fierce, from the big-eyed, baby-like Squirtle to the formidable Blastoise (via Wartortle). However, no one embodied this dichotomy better than Pikachu, the franchise’s most successful and marketable figure. Dumpy and rosy-cheeked, with a high-pitched voice, the electrified mouse was also a powerful fighter.
The character’s design also played into Japan’s wider drive to export pop culture in the 1990s, according to Tobin.
“The idea was – whether the corporate strategy was as a nation – that we want ‘our’ mouse to compete with Mickey Mouse,” he said. “So I think the fact that Pikachu is a mouse-like creature is no coincidence, but (the character) was made to be super cute – cuter than Mickey or Minnie.”
Not all Pokémon were the talk of the playground, like Metapod, a crescent-shaped doll. Credit: Credit to The Pokemon Company
But while the likes of Pikachu and Bulbasaur took the spotlight – making it the all-important commodity of all – there was power in sheer diversity. And some of the huge cast of Pokémon were neither cute nor fierce.
Take Diglett, a roughly drawn sausage-shaped birthmark, or Metapod, a hanging and immobile doll whose only ability is to harden its outer shell. All were relatively useless in battle; none were the most sought after playing cards in the schoolyard. But they were part of a complete universe – a universe that had something for everyone. In the gender-normative world of 1990s toy marketing, that mattered, Tobin said.
“At the toy store (at the time) you had a blue aisle and a pink aisle,” he said. “But Pokémon was made to reach the aisles.”
The art of localization
While the characters’ designs remained the same abroad, Pokémon was still adapted for different markets, especially when it came to language.
A woman is browsing goods in a Pokémon store in Tokyo. Credit: Behrouz Mehri / AFP / Getty Images
But the Pokémon’s new names often stayed true to the spirit of the originals. Take Sawamura and Ebiwara, who were named after a Japanese kickboxer and boxer respectively, but were called Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan in English, a reference to martial artists who would recognize children in the West: Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Or Ivysaur, whose Japanese name Fushigisou combined “fushigi” (strange) and “sou” (grass), using a similar principle for the French version: Herbizarre.
Some names, such as Pikachu, were transliterated more or less directly from Japanese. But elsewhere there were portmanteaus like Psyduck (a duck with paranormal powers), or names that resonated only with speakers of the language in question, like the lazy Slowpoke. There were also puns of varying quality, from the jellyfish-like Tentacool to Exeggcute, a collection of furious eggs.
Psyduck, a duck with psychic abilities. Credit: Credit to The Pokemon Company
Some were a little less imaginative. There was a horned seal named Seel, and a crab named Krabby. The serpentine Ekans and Arbok were created by simply flipping the words “snake” and “kobra” (sic). But there were also moments of linguistic refinement. The game’s three “Legendary Birds” were named Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres, with the Spanish suffixes -uno, -dos, and -tres reflecting their sequential order in the Pokédex. An amorphous blob that could take the form of anything he saw was aptly named Ditto.
The anime series was also subtly adapted for overseas markets. For example, human characters were more central to the story of the American version because it was believed that “Americans wanted someone to identify with them was more than just insects and animals,” Tobin said. But, he added, Pokémon always kept something distinctly Japanese.
“I think the amazing thing is that it hasn’t changed that much. Not only was the Japanese not an obligation, it was associated with ‘cool Japan’.” Kids didn’t like it because it was Japanese, but they sure got the sense that it was a bit exotic, ”he said, comparing it to some kind of soft power for the country.
‘Intergenerational nostalgia’
In February 2000, a Hasbro employee shows off parts of the Pokemon Battle Stadium in the company’s showroom in New York. Credit: Richard Drew / AP
Tobin, who didn’t predict Pokémon’s lifespan last time around, is more optimistic about the franchise’s next 25 years.
“I was wrong because I thought Pokémon, like most children’s media or cultural 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 in the book, were right was (understanding) what made Pokémon so attractive at the time. And the things that made it attractive weren’t limited to the culture of the 1990s.
Performers dressed up as Pikachu at a “Pikachu Outbreak” event to host Bin Yokohama, Japan, in 2018. Credit: Tomohiro Ohsumi / Getty Images
“I think it has become one of these very rare products that will never end now because it is so popular,” he added. “It has this intergenerational value of nostalgia, as parents who have now grown up with Barbie might want to (buy for) their kids, or people who grew up with baseball cards might want to do that with their kids.
“It becomes self-recognizable – there is value to its own fame.”
Top Image Caption: 1999 (L to R) Pikachu, Psyduck, Togepy, Squirtle In The Animated Movie “Pokemon: The First Movie.