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 quite simple: players roamed a fictional world capturing, training and fighting the creatures that inhabited it – a mission summed up in the game’s famous slogan, “Gotta Catch ‘Em All”. But within a few years, Pokémon, a suitcase of the Japanese name “Poketto Monsuta”, was a global phenomenon.
In 1999, the game was released in several western markets, later becoming one of the most successful franchises of all time. This spawned an anime series, which was translated into more than 30 languages, and stickers that swept the playgrounds of the world during the “Pokémania” of the late 1990s.
It also printed the identities of 151 entirely 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 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 more than smart marketing – it’s the result of unique characters who were universal enough to cross cultures and diverse enough to make catching them all a challenge, not a chore.
Its origins go back to the creator of the Pokémon Tajiri Satoshi, whose childhood love for collecting insects inspired a game with a surprisingly similar premise. Most of the individual designs were, however, the work of illustrator Ken Sugimori.
Sugimori had worked with Tajiri on Game Freak magazine, which was to become the game company behind Pokémon. As the company’s art director, he brought his collaborator’s vision to life through a complex and imaginative taxonomy, complete with individual lines of evolution and fictional genres such as grass or dragon Pokémon.
Bulbasaur, one of the most well-known Pokémon of the first generation. Credit: Courtesy of The Pokémon Company
Giving characters different personalities would always be difficult. Even with a TV series that accompanied him, most could only pronounce their own names over and over. Their appearances, therefore, were especially important.
Go global
“Along with Tamagotchi, the narrative is that you are taking care of them,” said Tobin in a video interview. “You care about them so they grow up, and children can identify with getting stronger. But you also take care of them (making sure they) don’t die. It was unusual to have that in a battle game … you got it some of the characteristics of the war and then combined them with nutrition. “
Squirtle, a light blue turtle. Credit: Courtesy of The Pokémon Company
The cute Squirtle (above) evolved into Wortle and eventually Blastoise (below). Credit: Courtesy of The Pokémon Company
This juxtaposition was reflected in the designs, which were both cute and fierce – or, through the process of evolution, transformed from cute to fierce, from the big-eyed child Squirtle to the formidable Blastoise (through Wartortle). None, however, embodied this dichotomy more appropriately than Pikachu, the franchise’s most successful and commercial figure. Stubby and rosy-cheeked, with a high-pitched voice, the electrified rat was also a powerful fighter.
The character’s design also influenced Japan’s broader drive to export pop culture in the 1990s, according to Tobin.
“The idea was – or corporate strategy as a nation was – that we want ‘our’ mouse to compete with Mickey Mouse,” he said. “So I think that the fact that Pikachu is a mouse-like creature is no coincidence, but (the character) was made to be super cute – more beautiful than Mickey or Minnie.”
Not all Pokémon were the subject of the playground – like Metapod, a chrysalis in the shape of a half moon. Credit: Courtesy of The Pokémon Company
But while names like Pikachu and Bulbasaur stole the spotlight – and became the most important commodity – there was strength in absolute diversity. And some among the vast cast of Pokémon were neither beautiful nor fierce.
Take Diglett, a crudely drawn sausage-shaped mole, or Metapod, a droopy-eyed, immobile chrysalis whose only ability is to harden its outer shell. All were relatively useless in battle; none was the most sought-after card game in the schoolyard. But they were part of a complete universe – one that had something for everyone. In the normative gendered toy marketing world of the 1990s, that mattered, Tobin said.
“At the toy store (at the time) you had a blue hall and a pink hall,” he said. “But the Pokémon was created to reach runners.”
The art of location
While the character designs remained the same abroad, Pokémon was adapted for different markets, especially when it came to language.
A woman searches for products in a Pokémon store in Tokyo. Credit: Behrouz Mehri / AFP / Getty Images
But the new Pokémon names have often remained true to the spirit of the originals. See 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 that children in the West would recognize: Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. Or Ivysaur, whose Japanese name Fushigisou combined “fushigi” (strange) and “sou” (grass), resulting in a similar principle being used for the French version: Herbizarre.
Some names, like Pikachu, were transliterated more or less directly from Japanese. But in other places there were portmanteaus like Psyduck (a duck with psychic powers), or names that only resonated with speakers of the language in question, like the lazy Slowpoke. There were also puns of varying quality, from Tentacool, which resembles a jellyfish, to Exeggcute, a collection of furious eggs.
Psyduck, a duck with psychic abilities. Credit: Courtesy of The Pokémon Company
Some were a little less imaginative. There was a horned seal called Seel and a crab called Krabby. The serpentine Ekans and Arbok were made simply by inverting the words “snake” and “kobra” (sic). But there were also moments of linguistic sophistication. The game’s three “legendary birds” were called Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres, with the Spanish suffixes -uno, -dos and -tres reflecting their consecutive order in the Pokédex. An amorphous bubble, capable of taking the form of anything it saw, was appropriately named Dito.
The anime series has also been subtly adapted for foreign markets. For example, human characters were more central to the narrative of the American version, because it was believed that “Americans wanted someone to identify with more than just insects and animals,” said Tobin. But, he added, Pokémon has always retained something essentially Japanese.
“I think the most incredible thing is that it hasn’t changed much. Not only was Japanese not a disadvantage, but it was associated with ‘cool Japan’. The kids didn’t like it because it was Japanese, but they certainly thought it was a little bit exotic, “he said, comparing it to a kind of soft power for the country.
‘Intergenerational nostalgia’
A Hasbro employee displays components from the Pokémon Battle Stadium at the company’s New York showroom in February 2000. Credit: Richard Drew / AP
Tobin, for not predicting the Pokémon’s longevity last time, is more optimistic about the next 25 years of the franchise.
“I was wrong to think that Pokémon would, like most cultural or children’s media products, rise and fall and be replaced by the next big hit,” he said. “But I think what I and the other authors of the book did was (understand) what made Pokémon so attractive at the time. And the things that made him attractive were not limited to the culture of the 1990s.
Artists dressed as Pikachu during a “Pikachu Outbreak” event held in 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 is very much in the popular imagination,” he added. “It has that intergenerational value of nostalgia, in the same way that parents who grew up with Barbie can now want (buy it for) their children, or people who grew up with baseball cards want to do this with their children.
“It becomes self-recognizable – there is value in its own fame.”
Top image caption: 1999 (from left to right) Pikachu, Psyduck, Togepy, Squirtle in the animated film “Pokémon: the first film.“