What Is Pokémon? The Full Story of the Japanese Brand That Changed the World

Chapter 1The Eve of Birth: Satoshi Tajiri, Insect Collecting, and Game Freak

The origin of Pokémon lies in one boy's bug catching. According to a 1999 article in which the Asian edition of TIME interviewed Satoshi Tajiri, he was born to a Nissan salesman and a full-time homemaker and grew up in the suburbs of Tokyo in the late 1960s ⁴. Tajiri told the interviewer that as a child he wanted to become an entomologist. Put your hand in the river and you could catch crayfish; stick a rod into the water and look for bubbles and you would find another creature; every new insect was a bundle of wonder, he said in effect ⁴.

Pokémon was born from a lost playground

By the late 1970s, however, the rice fields around Tajiri had turned into shopping centers, and the ponds had been filled in to make apartment buildings, roads and railway lines. Tajiri told TIME that the pond where fish used to live had become an arcade ⁴. He also said that Pokémon is meant to give a new generation of children the chance to collect insects and creatures as he did ⁴.

That many Pokémon look like caterpillars, moths and crabs, and lurk everywhere, in grass, caves, forests and rivers, is a reflection of this formative experience ⁴. Tajiri himself said, in effect, that Pokémon is everything he did as a child brought together into one ⁴.

From game magazine to game company

Tajiri threw himself into his other passion too, video games. According to TIME, he did not go to university but studied electronics at a two-year vocational school and spent much of his time in arcades ⁴. With friends he started a fanzine called Game Freak, which carried game strategies and tricks. Among his friends was Ken Sugimori, who would later draw the Pokémon ⁴.

Sources disagree on the year this fanzine began. TIME gives 1982, while Famitsu.com introduces the fanzine that gave the company its name as one Tajiri made in 1983 ⁴¹⁷. Famitsu.com also reports that Tajiri contributed to the first issue of Famicom Tsushin (now Weekly Famitsu) as a professional game writer ¹⁷.

His friends' conclusion was that if there were few well-made games, they should make them themselves. TIME writes that Tajiri took apart a Nintendo console to study how it was made ⁴. Game Freak Inc. was founded on April 26, 1989, with Satoshi Tajiri as Representative Director ⁸. In the same month, April 1989, Nintendo had released the Game Boy, a handheld console with a monochrome LCD screen ².

Six years of development

Tsunekazu Ishihara, who became president at the same time as the predecessor of The Pokémon Company was established in 1998 ¹, recalled in a conversation with then Nintendo president Satoru Iwata that planning for Pokémon began in 1990 ². As producer, Ishihara worked with Game Freak on the development of the first game. The project had originally been drawn up as software for a new console, the Game Boy ². In Famitsu.com's chronology, the 1990 entry carries a working title, "Capsule Monsters" ¹⁷.

Tajiri explained to TIME that the monsters had to be small and controllable. His image was of monsters in capsules, the monsters inside oneself such as anger and fear ⁴.

Development of Pokémon was rough going. According to TIME, Tajiri signed with Nintendo but could not explain his vision well, and Nintendo, for its part, could not fully grasp it. Shigeru Miyamoto, who created Super Mario Bros., said that at first it was just an idea and nothing moved forward, and he became Tajiri's adviser ⁴. During the six years until completion, Game Freak came close to bankruptcy, and for several months it could barely pay its employees. When Tajiri told them how bad things were, five quit, and TIME writes that Tajiri paid himself nothing and lived by relying on his father ⁴.

Note that TIME puts the time Tajiri learned of the Game Boy and its link cable at 1991, which does not match Nintendo's primary sources, which place the Game Boy's release in 1989 and the start of planning in 1990 ⁴². For years, this article follows Nintendo's materials.

Pokémon, in time for "the last train"

Pocket Monsters Red and Green was released on February 27, 1996 ². According to Ishihara, they had wanted to finish it the previous October and sell it in the year-end season, but missed that, and it came out at the end of February, the worst time of year for a product ². By then there was a feeling that the Game Boy was already finished, and Ishihara says he felt as if he had "missed the last train" ².

In Iwata's and Ishihara's recollection, the initial shipment was smaller than expected, and in the weekly sales rankings the game was on the edge of the top 10 ². What turned things around, Ishihara cites first as the power of word of mouth and second as the power of magazines, centered on CoroCoro Comic ².

Mew, a "prank"

Another deciding factor was Mew. According to Morimoto of Game Freak, who joined development as a programmer, Mew was put in at the very last moment of development. The cartridge capacity was at its limit, but by removing a testing program that the product did not need, a gap of about 300 bytes opened up, and Mew was fitted into it ². Morimoto said it was a prank that included Tajiri. By design Mew should not have appeared unless a mechanism was set up for it, but because of an unexpected bug it showed up for some players ².

From here the "legendary Pokémon giveaway" began. The campaign, announced in the April 1996 issue of CoroCoro Comic, drew about 78,000 entries for 20 winners ². According to Ishihara, sales that had been at a given level "per month" became the same level "per week," then swelled to three and four times that. The game reached No. 1 in the weekly rankings only a year and a half or more after its release ².

Chapter 2Nintendo, Game Freak, Creatures and The Pokémon Company: How They Relate

Pokémon tends to be thought of as "a Nintendo game," but it has not been shaped by a single company. The official history of The Pokémon Company names Nintendo, Creatures and Game Freak as the original copyright holders of Pokémon ⁵. At the very bottom of the official site too, "Pocket Monsters, Pokémon, Pokémon" are stated to be trademarks of the three companies, under their joint names ⁵.

How the three companies involved in Pokémon divide the work

The Pokémon Company's "History" describes the roles of the three companies as follows. Nintendo manufactures and sells the Pokémon video games. Game Freak provides the original concept of the Pocket Monsters series and develops the video games. Creatures develops the trading card game and video games, along with the CG models and motion for the Pocket Monsters series and others ⁵.

Trademarks are shown under the joint names of the three companies: "trademarks of Nintendo, Creatures and Game Freak."

According to Creatures' own official history, it was established on November 8, 1995, and in June 2017 opened a dedicated studio for making Pokémon CG ⁹. Creatures describes itself as an original copyright holder of Pokémon alongside Nintendo and Game Freak ¹⁹. Nintendo's Satoru Iwata recalls that he once helped with the establishment of Creatures and that he sat next to Tsunekazu Ishihara when the initial shipment of Red and Green was decided ².

Tsunekazu Ishihara, the knot that ties them

One of the people who has connected these three companies is Tsunekazu Ishihara. Ishihara was involved in the development of Red and Green as producer, and at the time of a Nintendo conversation about Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver (the page carries no date), he was Representative Director, President and CEO of The Pokémon Company and also chairman of Creatures ². According to reports, Ishihara stepped down as chairman of Creatures in April 2023 ²⁰. In The Pokémon Company's company information as of October 2026, the Representative Director and President is Tsunekazu Ishihara and the Representative Director is Takato Utsunomiya ¹⁸.

The Pokémon Company began with a "shop"

The starting point of The Pokémon Company was, unexpectedly, a store. According to the official history, in April 1998 "Pokémon Center Co., Ltd.," responsible for running stores, was established with joint investment from the three companies, and the same month it opened its first store, Pokémon Center Tokyo ⁵. The founding date in the company information is April 23, 1998, and its capital is 365.4 million yen ¹⁸.

Then in October 2000 it changed its name to The Pokémon Company and widened its field to brand management for Pokémon overall ⁵. Brand management means overseeing the whole so that separate products such as games, cards, anime and merchandise all look like the same "Pokémon." A note in the Nintendo conversation article describes The Pokémon Company as "established in 2000," but that is the year it changed its name; its predecessor was established in 1998 ²⁵.

What the shareholding does and does not tell us

On the ownership proportions of The Pokémon Company, the only primary source that can be checked is Nintendo's securities report. Nintendo's report for the 86th term (fiscal year ended March 2026) treats The Pokémon Company as an affiliate accounted for under the equity method and gives Nintendo's share of voting rights as 32% ⁶. The equity method describes a relationship in which a company does not control the affiliate as it would a subsidiary, but takes in part of its profit in its own results. One officer holds posts at both companies, and the report states that there are transactions between the two, "purchase of our products and contract manufacturing of products" ⁶.

An explanation often seen online is that "the three companies each hold 32%, and others hold the remaining 4%," but in this research no primary source was found showing Game Freak's and Creatures' holdings ⁶. This article treats only Nintendo's 32% as fact.

According to the same report, from the fiscal year ended March 2026 Nintendo began treating The Pokémon Company as a "significant affiliate," noting that its importance had grown ⁶. However, the financial information disclosed is the combined figure for the three equity-method affiliates including The Pokémon Company, with sales of a little over 1.1028 trillion yen ⁶. The sales of The Pokémon Company alone cannot be determined from this material.

Different sellers at home and abroad

There is also a division of labor in how the games are sold. Nintendo's report notes that Pokémon Pokopia, released in March 2026, is a title that The Pokémon Company releases and sells in Japan and Nintendo releases and sells overseas ⁶. Overseas, The Pokémon Company has a group that includes The Pokémon Company International and entities such as Pokémon Korea and those in Shanghai, Taiwan and Singapore ¹⁸.

Chapter 3The Design of Collecting and Trading: A Link Cable and Two Versions

The core of Pokémon play lies in collecting and trading, before it lies in fighting. This chapter looks at how that mechanism was built, through the words of those involved.

Insects crawling along a cable

In a 1999 TIME interview, Satoshi Tajiri said that when he learned of the Game Boy link cable he pictured insects crawling back and forth along the cable, and that this became his inspiration ⁴. The link cable is a peripheral that connects two Game Boys so they can exchange data. TIME sums up the idea as Pokémon's basic concept: collecting leads to trading between handheld consoles, and eventually spreads to trading among people who collect cards and figures ⁴.

In a 2016 interview, Tsunekazu Ishihara explained that the link cable had originally been used for head-to-head play in Tetris, and that applying that mechanism to data communication for trading Pokémon was Tajiri's proposal ¹. Ishihara also said that trading had to have meaning and value, and that making it a mechanism that was not "zero-sum," where one side gains only if the other loses, was the most important point Game Freak considered ¹.

Two versions create "not enough"

At the center of that mechanism are the two versions. The Pokémon that appear differ between Red and Green, and completing the Pokédex was premised on trading with someone who had the other version ¹⁶. You cannot collect everything with your own cartridge alone. That "not enough" becomes a reason to talk to a friend.

On how the game came to be split in two, an English translation of a 1997 developer interview survives. According to it, Tajiri said he split it into two versions on Shigeru Miyamoto's advice, and Miyamoto thought not about sales but that it would be more fun if brothers could each have something different ²². However, the original publication has not been confirmed, and this article keeps to treating this as "reportedly so." In the same interview Tajiri said he had also considered an idea that would show how many people one had traded with, to encourage making friends ²².

Mew became a symbol of "trading"

Mew, whom we saw in Chapter 1, has also been discussed in connection with trading. TIME writes that Mew was included as the 151st among Pokémon officially said to number 150, and reports Tajiri's words that Mew cannot be obtained without trading ⁴. In the Nintendo conversation, on the other hand, it is explained that it was the programmer Morimoto who put Mew in, and that it began when something that should not appear in normal play showed up because of a bug ². The two sources tell somewhat different stories about who put it in and with what intent. What is certain is that Mew was handed out through magazine campaigns and events, and that rumors about the "151st" spread ¹⁶.

The cables sold

How much Pokémon trading was played showed up in the sales of peripherals. According to Ishihara, after Red and Green came out, Game Boy link cables suddenly began to sell, so much that Nintendo could not keep up however many it made. Learning that buyers' purpose was trading Pokémon, Ishihara says he realized that trading was the center of play ¹. Famitsu.com writes that the popularity of the Game Boy, which had calmed down about seven years after launch, was revived by Pokémon ¹⁶.

Trading and battling in Pokémon continued afterward. Gold and Silver was released in November 1999, and in August 2009 the official tournament Pokémon World Championships 2009 was held ⁵.

Chapter 4Expansion into Anime, Film and Cards

Within about two years of the game's release, Pokémon spread to cards, anime, films and stores. The beginning of each can be confirmed in The Pokémon Company's official history ⁵.

The card game from October 1996

The Pokémon Trading Card Game was released on October 20, 1996, eight months after Red and Green, with the first expansion pack and the first starter pack going on sale together ¹⁰. Creatures handles development ⁵. The cards can be seen as making the Pokémon that were traded within the game tradable as paper cards one can touch.

As of the end of March 2026, cumulative production of the Pokémon Trading Card Game exceeds 85 billion cards, and it has been sold in 16 languages and more than 90 countries and regions ³. Note that this figure is the number "produced" as announced by the company, not the number sold.

Anime and film spread it beyond children

The TV anime Pocket Monsters began on TV Tokyo stations in April 1997 ⁵. In April 1998 Pokémon Center Tokyo opened, and in November Pokémon Center Osaka, while in July the first feature films, Mewtwo Strikes Back and Pikachu's Summer Vacation, were released ⁵. As of the end of March 2026, the TV anime has aired in more than 190 countries and regions ³.

Publishers also helped the spread beyond games. According to TIME, Masakazu Kubo of Shogakukan recalled that at the time of release the Game Boy was seen as finished, and neither magazines, television nor toy companies showed interest. Amid that, Shogakukan decided to back Pokémon and went on to publish manga ⁴.

The broadcast incident of December 16, 1997

Pokémon's anime has an event that remains in the history of Japanese broadcasting. According to a report compiled in June 1998 by a study group of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (now the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications), children who watched episode 38, broadcast on Tuesday, December 16, 1997, complained of symptoms such as seizures caused by flashing light ¹¹. According to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency, by 5 p.m. the next day, the 17th, 685 people nationwide had been taken to hospital by ambulance and treated ¹¹.

This episode was aired on six stations covering Hokkaido, Tokyo, Aichi, Osaka, Okayama and Kagawa, and Fukuoka, and its rating in the Kanto region was 16.5% (according to Video Research) ¹¹. The cause was said to be the transmitted-light photography technique commonly known as "pakapaka," a strong flashing lasting several seconds ¹¹. A research group of the Ministry of Health and Welfare reported that the images in question were flashes of red and blue 12 times per second ²³.

Two misunderstandings should be addressed here. One is the claim that a particular character or move was the cause. The report names the visual technique as the cause, not a character ¹¹. The other is the number of people. Figures such as "208 hospitalized" circulate, but what can be confirmed in Japanese primary sources is the 685 taken by ambulance, and the research group's estimate that roughly one in ten young people up to age 20 who were watching the program suffered health effects (including seizures) ¹¹²³.

Broadcasting rules changed

After the incident, the TV Tokyo network stopped broadcasting the program ¹¹. According to the report, NHK and the Japan Commercial Broadcasters Association (JBA) jointly adopted "Guidelines on Visual Techniques in Animation and Similar Works" on April 8, 1998. TV Tokyo also set its own production guidelines the next day, the 9th, and resumed broadcasting Pocket Monsters on the 16th ¹¹. It was a pause of about four months.

The report positions the incident as the first case that made society aware that visual expression can adversely affect the human body ¹¹.

Chapter 5Going Overseas: North American Localization and "Pokémania"

Pokémon went outside Japan two and a half years after its release in Japan. And the order in which it spread overseas differed from the order in Japan.

Pokémon sent games and anime to the US at the same time

According to The Pokémon Company's history, in September 1998 the Game Boy software Pokémon Red Version and Pokémon Blue Version was released in the United States, and the same month the TV anime Pokémon, I Choose You! began airing on 111 US stations ⁵. In Japan the anime began a little over a year after the game's release, but in the US the games and anime went out side by side from the start ⁵. That the first US release was Red and Blue rather than Red and Green is also a difference from Japan.

The official history records that the card game went on sale in the US in January 1999 ⁵.

Delivered under changed names

To reach children overseas, Pokémon changed many of its names. According to TIME, the anime's protagonist Satoshi became Ash in the US, and his rival Shigeru became Gary ⁴. TIME writes that the protagonist's Japanese name is taken from Satoshi Tajiri and the rival's from Shigeru Miyamoto, who had been Tajiri's adviser ⁴.

Language support is still expanding. As of the end of March 2026, the Pocket Monsters game series supports 10 languages ³.

The "Pokémania" of 1999

Pokémon's popularity in the US reached its peak in 1999. The film Pokémon: The First Movie, released in the US on November 10, earned $31,036,678 over its first weekend, Friday to Sunday, playing in 3,043 theaters ²⁴²⁵. Its final US box office was $85,744,662 ²⁴.

Anime News Network at the time reported it as the first Japanese film to take first place in weekend box office in the US market, ahead of American films, and also said it set a five-day box office record for a film released outside the May to July summer period ²⁵.

That same month, the November 22, 1999 issue of TIME put Pokémon on its cover and ran a feature, "Pokémania" ⁴. Guinness World Records recognizes this as "the first time a single video game franchise appeared on the cover of Time." Earlier covers had dealt with games, but with generic artwork or collages ¹².

Building overseas companies

The vessel for overseas business was also put in place. Pokémon USA, Inc. was established in February 2001, and in March 2003 a representative office was set up in London ⁵. In April 2009, Pokémon USA in Seattle and New York and Pokémon UK in London merged their operations and came together under the name The Pokémon Company International (TPCi for short). Its president was Kenji Okubo, and it was announced that the company would handle brand management, licensing, marketing, the card game, anime and more in regions outside Asia ¹³.

How Pokémon games are released changed as well. Pokémon X and Y in October 2013 was the first in the series to be released worldwide at the same time ⁵. The order of releasing in Japan first and overseas after some delay had thereby disappeared.

Chapter 6Managing the Brand and Intellectual Property

Pokémon appears not only in games and cards themselves but also in products made by other companies, from plush toys to snacks. How does The Pokémon Company manage that spread?

Producing with Pokémon at the center

On "producing Pokémon," The Pokémon Company holds that the company exists for Pokémon, not Pokémon for the company ²¹. The same page lists bringing out the individuality of each of the more than 1,000 Pokémon, among other things, as pillars of its production ²¹.

On work with other companies, The Pokémon Company explains that it advances numerous projects and developments with tie-up partners and licensees (companies that make products with permission to use the property) ²⁶. But the page does not say by what procedure or by what criteria permission is granted ²⁶.

The line drawn by Pokémon's terms of use

What is closest to fans is the official site's "Terms of Use." The text, images and other data on the site may be used only for personal enjoyment, and use on public networks such as the internet is not permitted ²⁷. Regarding derivative content based on Pokémon, not limited to submissions to the site, the terms provide that its creators and users grant The Pokémon Company, and parties such as Nintendo, Creatures and Game Freak, a non-exclusive, sublicensable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide license to use it ²⁷. It then states expressly that this provision does not permit use of Pokémon property beyond personal use ²⁷. It also does not accept unsolicited projects or ideas ²⁷.

As for Pokémon, the editors found no official document from The Pokémon Company that sets out the scope of fan activity individually, as of October 25, 2026.

The Palworld lawsuit is a patent dispute

On September 19, 2024, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company announced jointly that they had sued Pocket Pair, Inc. in the Tokyo District Court for patent infringement. The suit, dated the previous day, the 18th, claims that the game Palworld, developed and sold by Pocket Pair, infringes multiple patents, and seeks an injunction against sales and damages ¹⁵. Nintendo said it will continue to take necessary measures against infringement of intellectual property, including its brands ¹⁵.

This lawsuit tends to be talked about as a copyright dispute over "similar characters," but as the wording of the announcement says, its basis is patent rights. According to reports, three patents are at issue, and the claim is for an injunction and payment of 5 million yen each to Nintendo and to The Pokémon Company, plus delay damages ²⁸. This is the amount claimed, not an amount a court has awarded.

According to the same reports, in November 2025 the plaintiffs narrowed the object of their claim to older versions of Palworld. Pocket Pair changed the game's specifications in November 2024 and May 2025, and has taken the position that the changes were precautionary, that it does not infringe, and that the patents are invalid ²⁸. There were also developments in the Patent Office's examination. It was reported that the Patent Office issued a notice of reasons for refusal in October 2025 on one of the applications divided off from the "monster capture" patent connected to the lawsuit ²⁹. A notice of reasons for refusal is a document at the stage of asking the applicant for a rebuttal or amendment. It was then reported that for another divisional application in the same family, a notice of reasons for refusal was issued in April 2026 and a decision of refusal (the examiner's judgment not to grant the patent) in July, and that on September 3 Nintendo and The Pokémon Company filed an appeal against the decision of refusal, asking for that judgment to be reviewed ³⁰. The result of the appeal has not yet come out.

Reports in June 2026 said that a technical briefing was scheduled for October 1 and a "disclosure of impression," in which the court indicates its view, for November 9 ²⁸. As of October 2026, no report that a ruling has been issued can be confirmed. The statements in this article are based on information up to that point.

The White House post, and who issued the statement

There are also cases where Pokémon was used in politics. On March 5, 2026, the official X account of the US White House posted an image parodying the title logo of the new game Pokémon Pokopia, with the words "make america great again" attached ³¹. Japanese reporting on it attributes the statement in its headline to "Kabu-Poke" (The Pokémon Company). In the body of the same article, however, it says that the one who responded to the New York Times was a spokesperson for The Pokémon Company International, which handles The Pokémon Company's overseas business, who explained that it was not involved in creating or distributing the image and had not permitted use of its intellectual property ³¹. Note that the headline and the body differ in who they say made the statement.

Chapter 7Influence on the Global Entertainment Industry

When we talk about how big Pokémon is, many numbers are cited. But those numbers mix company announcements, a certifying body's estimates and research firms' estimates. This chapter looks at what Pokémon left to the entertainment industry while separating where the numbers come from.

Figures Pokémon itself announces

In "Pokémon by the Numbers," The Pokémon Company publishes figures as of the end of March 2026. Cumulative shipments of Pokémon-related game software are over 515 million copies, cumulative production of the card game is over 85 billion cards, and the anime has aired in over 190 countries and regions ³. These are "shipped" and "produced" figures, not the number sold in stores or sales revenue. On The Pokémon Company's official site, no page giving sales for the brand as a whole was found in this research ³.

Shipment and production figures are not sales revenue. Download figures count downloads, which is different from the number of people playing.

Guinness's "Best-selling media franchise"

When talking about the scale of Pokémon, the Guinness World Records certification is often cited. But the record name is not "earned the most." Guinness's record title is "Best-selling media franchise," and the holder is Pokémon. Total revenue is estimated at about $147 billion, a figure said to be as of April 2024 ⁷. It also says that about $102.9 billion of that is considered to come from merchandise ⁷.

However, the Guinness page does not show how this figure was calculated ⁷. It needs to be kept in mind that it is Guinness's estimate, not sales announced by The Pokémon Company. Also, the name of the record is "best-selling," and it is not a comparison of the size of profits.

Bringing a handheld console back to life

One of the effects Pokémon had on the industry was reviving a handheld console that was seen as nearing its end. As we saw in Chapter 1, at the time Red and Green was released, there was a feeling that the Game Boy was already finished ². Famitsu.com writes that the popularity of the Game Boy, about seven years after launch, was revived by the arrival of Pokémon ¹⁶. Pokémon showed that even an old machine can gain new value depending on the design of play.

Pokémon GO and how to read the numbers

In July 2016, the smartphone game Pokémon GO began service ⁵. It is a location-based game in which you search for and catch Pokémon on a map of the real world. In August of that year Guinness World Records certified five records, including 130 million downloads in the month after launch and $206.5 million earned in the first month. The data were from the research firm SuperData ³⁴. The research firm Sensor Tower estimates that in less than seven months after launch, its revenue in app stores worldwide passed $1 billion, the fastest in app store history ³⁵.

Cumulative download figures differ greatly depending on the source. According to an August 2019 report, a promotional video that The Pokémon Company released for Japan showed "over 1 billion downloads" ³². On the other hand, a July 2026 report relaying an estimate by the research firm AppMagic puts cumulative downloads at about 710 million and in-app purchase revenue at about $6.37 billion ³³. Both are counts of "downloads," not the number of people playing.

Beyond film and the screen

Pokémon also became a live-action blockbuster film. The Pokémon Company's history records that the Hollywood film Detective Pikachu was released in May 2019 ⁵. According to the box office database Box Office Mojo, its worldwide gross is about $451.45 million ³⁶.

Nintendo's financial results also hint at Pokémon's weight. From the fiscal year ended March 2026, Nintendo began treating The Pokémon Company as a "significant affiliate," noting that its importance had grown ⁶.

Chapter 8Limits and Criticism: Health, Quality, the Pokédex, and Resale

When a brand becomes as big as Pokémon, its effects are not all good. This chapter organizes, as far as can be confirmed, the criticism Pokémon has received and the problems the company itself has acknowledged.

Health: the first major problem

The broadcast incident of December 1997 that we saw in Chapter 4 was Pokémon's first major social problem. According to the report of the research group of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, more than 80% of those who sought medical care had seizure-like symptoms, and convulsions were 66.3% ²³. It was also reported that about half of those who sought care had never before experienced any seizure symptoms ²³.

The incident confronted makers with the danger of "flashing light," which had until then been hard to notice, and became the occasion for changing the rules of the whole broadcasting industry ¹¹. The same report records that similar cases, on a smaller scale, were found later in another animated program on NHK ¹¹. The problem was not Pokémon's alone; it was a danger common to the visual expression of animation at the time.

Criticism of the games' quality

In recent years, what stands out in criticism of Pokémon is the technical quality of the games. For Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, released in November 2022, operational glitches were reported one after another after release. In its December 1, 2022 announcement about an update (Ver. 1.1.0), Nintendo said it was aware of problems affecting the game's operation and apologized for the inconvenience ¹⁴. This apology was issued in Nintendo's name, not as a statement by The Pokémon Company alone.

Attention has also turned to working practices at the development site. In April 2022 Game Freak announced a system letting employees who wish to work a four-day week. The extra day off is unpaid, and employees raising children or caring for family are the main target ³⁸. That report also touches on concern about the long working hours that are an issue in the game industry, but it contains no statement that Game Freak admitted to long working hours ³⁸. This article too makes no definite claims about conditions at the development site.

The shrinking of the "National Pokédex"

The growing number of Pokémon has also caused problems. For Sword and Shield in 2019, it was announced that not all Pokémon from earlier in the series could be brought over, and only those listed in the new region's Pokédex would be included, which drew strong backlash from fans. Producer Junichi Masuda issued a statement on June 28, 2019, explaining that it was a difficult decision and saying that a Pokémon that cannot be used in one title does not mean it will not appear in future titles ³⁹.

As we saw in Chapter 6, The Pokémon Company writes that the number of Pokémon exceeds 1,000 ²¹. For play centered on collecting, the more there is to collect, the harder it is to fit everything into one game. It is an example of the appeal of collecting colliding with the burden on the makers.

Resale and counterfeits

The popularity of Pokémon cards has also produced the problems of resale and counterfeits. For "Pokémon Card 151," released in June 2023, The Pokémon Company announced that it firmly declines purchases made for profit, such as resale ³⁷. It said that orders judged to be for resale at Pokémon Center Online may be canceled and use restricted, and, noting that counterfeit and imitation goods, and "searched" packs whose contents have been checked, have been found listed on flea-market apps, urged caution ³⁷. In an announcement for a new product the following month it issued a similar notice, and said it would work with the operators of flea-market apps and others to build a place for trades people can feel safe about ⁴⁰.

Criticism from religion

Overseas there was also criticism from a religious standpoint. According to a 2016 report relaying Reuters, in Saudi Arabia a religious opinion (fatwa) banning the Pokémon card game was issued in 2001, and in 2016 the secretariat of the Council of Senior Scholars was said to have presented it again. The reasons reportedly given were that Pokémon "evolution" is blasphemy promoting the theory of evolution, and that it amounts to gambling ⁴¹.

However, regarding the reports that in 2016 "the council issued this opinion anew," it was reported that an official at Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Culture and Information called them inaccurate, and that the council also said it had issued no opinion on the new smartphone game ⁴². This article has not been able to confirm primary reports or the original text of the 2001 opinion.