Why Did America Panic About Pokemon?

Sources/References

The Games

  • Pokémon Patriarch (Business Week Online - 2000)

    • In 1997, Nintendo of America (NTDOY) President MINORU ARAKAWA made the biggest bet of his career. Everyone said he was nuts to import a strange Japanese video game featuring 150 tiny, collectible monsters. Research showed that American kids hated it, and employees dismissed the game as too confusing. But Arakawa persisted--and hit the Pokemon jackpot.

  • Ishihara Interview (Nintendo JP)

    • As expected, when I first showed Pokemon over there, people said, "Too cute." At that time, there was a character idea that the American staff came up with, and it was an illustration that I would never be able to show to anyone for the rest of my life, but if it was Pikachu, it would be something like ``Cats'' by Shiki Theater Company. She's shaped like a tabby cat, but she's changed into a character with big breasts. When I said, ``What? What's Pikachu about this!?'', they were like, ``No, this is where the tail is sticking up!''.

  • Mr. Mime (Bulbapedia)

    • Mr. Mime may be derived form the abbreviation of Mister and mime.

      Despite its English name containing a male-exclusive honorific, Mr. Mime's gender ratio is evenly split between male and female.

      This discrepancy is probably due to the fact that Mr. Mime's Japanese name, Barrierd, does not reference gender. Also, Mr. Mime was introduced in Generation I, before the gender mechanic was introduced.

      Based on this, translator Nob Ogasawara was wary about Mr. Mime's English name during localization: "If they make sequels and they give genders to Pokemon, we're going to be hooped."

  • Pokemon, Translate Them All - French

    • “ Chu is the cry of the mouse, and pika is the onomatopoeia of an electric spark. The Japanese have onomatopoeia for everything... So Pikachu  : the electric mouse. And there's a cute side because chu is also the sound of kissing in Japanese. They didn't want to translate this one. We don’t translate the names of the mascots, it had to be international…”

Porygon And The Pokemon Shock

4Kids Productions

Pokemania

Religion

  • Pokemon: What is it? (Carm - 2008)

    • Is Pokemon dangerous? Potentially, yes it is. It conditions the child who plays the game into accepting occult and evolutionary principles. Haunter can hypnotize, eat a person’s dreams, and drain their energy. Abra reads minds. Kadabra emits negative energy that harms others. Gastly induces sleep. Gengar laughs at peoples’ fright. Nidoran uses poison. The Psychic-type of Pokemon is among the strongest in the game. Charmander, Haunter, Ivysaur, Kadabra, and many more evolve. The children are taught to use these creatures to do their will by invoking colored energy cards, fights, and commands. Much of it is reminiscent of the occult and eastern mysticism.

  • Church attacks Pokemon as occult (Craig Press - 1999)

    • To drive the point home, the children, ages 6 to 12, were given a display that included: The burning of collectible Pokemon trading cards with a blowtorch. The children’s pastor swinging a sword with a 30-inch blade to strike a plastic Pokemon action figure laid on a table. That pastor’s 9-year-old son tearing the limbs and head off his own Pokemon doll.

    • Those details were confirmed Thursday by Mark Juvera, the children’s pastor, and Mark Cowart, the senior pastor, in interviews with The Gazette. The children reacted enthusiastically and, according to one account, chanted, ”Burn it! Burn it!” and ”Chop it up! Chop it up!” Though the tactics might seem unusual, Cowart said he believes in the message and the methods.

  • Pokémon trumped by pocket saints (BBC News/archive.org - 2000)

    • But theology student David Tate, 29, believes his Christian Power Cards, featuring 120 Bible characters, could offer a more acceptable spiritual alternative. Jesus has been left out of the pack to avoid offending anyone. "It would defeat the purpose if Jesus was beaten by one of the bad characters," said Mr Tate.

  • Biblical message found in Pokemon (The Guardian - 2000)

    • When Ash is killed trying to stop a fight involving Mewtwo, the theologian sees a further message. "Mewtwo is completely changed by Ash's sacrifice," she said. "All evil is gone from him and he is redeemed. The storm outside is calmed ... he flies off to start a new world. He has found new answers to the questions: 'Who am I?' and 'What am I for?'"

      "My own children found obvious Christian parallels with all this. They were impressed by the death and resurrection sequence and the fact that at the heart of it all was love."

  • Pokemon gets cautious reception from Christian media analysts (Baptist Press - 1999)

  • Schwarzenegger Beats Satan But Loses to Toys (Christianity Today - 1999)

Japanese Text, Identity and Voice

  • The Many Faces of Internationalization in Japanese Anime by Amy Shirong Lu (Northeastern Edu - 2008)

    • Japanese writing showing up on signboards in the background and uniquely Japanese family settings distract American kids, preventing them from really becoming absorbed in the movie’s fictional world. With these examples in mind, from the start we had our hearts set on thoroughly localizing Pokémon (in the English speaking market).

    • Although some dragon-like pokémons might remind the audiences of certain Western folklore creatures, they are portrayed as pokémons that do not belong to any specific culture. From the very beginning, Pokémon was intended in part for export.

  • Meet the man who made Pokémon an international phenomenon (Washington Post - 2016)

    • Kahn had a proven instinct for these things. He’d already taken Cabbage Patch Kids from a local business in Georgia to an international phenomenon. So he took a big bet. He agreed to put up the money to get the franchise going overseas, in exchange for the licensing rights to the franchise for everywhere outside Asia. That earned him his approval, and he got the rights to license the game and the anime cartoon that came along with the franchise.

      He decided then that the game needed a cooler name than “Pocket Monsters.” “I didn’t like the name ‘Pocket Monsters,’” he said, partially because it didn’t sound different enough from other monster games. “I wanted the name to be more Japanese-y.”
      And so, Pokémon was born, with that tricky accent over the “e” to give it a little flair and help with pronunciation.

  • Gotta Change ‘Em All? The Americanisation of the Pokémon series and the re-negotiation of fandom. (alannahtvcultures Wordpress - 2012)

    • It’s interesting to look back on my childhood adoration for Pokémon and Sailor Moon as I don’t think that I had any idea that I was watching ‘anime’ or even a Japanese series – yet in my mediated experience was I really experiencing anything close to the true Japanese product?

American Culture

Additional Material