A normal person in a rural town has dreams of becoming a master. As they come of age and spring approaches, it\u2019s time for them to begin their journey to chase that dream. After saying goodbye to their mother and hometown, adventure awaits. They open the front door and take their first steps into a world full of new experiences and things to uncover.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
That\u2019s right: it\u2019s time to enter the workforce!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> that existed when Game Freak and series creator Satoshi Tajiri kick-started a phenomenon in 1996, and the one that premiered its first live-action TV series<\/a> in Japan with Pack Your Pocket With Adventure <\/em>(Pocket ni Bouken o Tsumekonde<\/em>, or Pok\u00e9Tsume<\/em> for short) last month, are almost unrecognizable. Which makes sense when you go from creating a game in a home office to a franchise more lucrative than the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Harry Potter<\/em>, and Nintendo\u2019s own Mario combined<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n More than 25 years since the original game\u2019s release, multiple generations of kids have become adults under the watchful eyes of Pikachu and friends, and the series has grown to encompass everything from anime and merchandise to card games and Hollywood blockbusters<\/a>. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, with the growth in popularity of trading card games like Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> in a postpandemic world and the record-breaking sales of the recent generation of titles despite quality concerns, it only seems to get more popular by the year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For a franchise to retain relevance for as long as Pok\u00e9mon<\/em>, it must evolve \u2014 and not just evolve but interweave its ideals into the fabric of daily life. Those early generations of kids need to pass on their love of Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> like how Disney animated classics often serve as a formative childhood introduction to film.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Perhaps nothing encapsulates Pok\u00e9mon<\/em>\u2019s successful transformation from video game to a way of life quite like Pok\u00e9Tsume<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But what even is Pok\u00e9Tsume<\/em>? Prior to the premiere of the series in Japan last month, there had only been one prior attempt at live-action storytelling within the world of Pok\u00e9mon<\/em>: 2019\u2019s Detective Pikachu<\/em><\/a>. Unlike Ryan Reynolds\u2019 wisecracking gumshoe Pikachu, Pok\u00e9Tsume<\/em> was the first Japanese live-action foray into Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> and doesn\u2019t even take place within the universe of the games.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In this series, we follow Madoka Akagi, portrayed by popular Japanese idol Nanase Nishino of Nogizaka46, a recent graduate moving out of her childhood home to live in the city and follow her dream of becoming a creator with an upstart company called ADventure. She played Pok\u00e9mon Red<\/em> and Blue<\/em> (Red<\/em> and Green<\/em> in Japan) when she was a kid but has long since grown distant from the franchise. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Much of the opening episode of the series plays out as a nostalgic parallel between the trials of working life and the journey to become a Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> Master. The childhood friend who works for another company is your rival. The product presentation to an investment CEO with the company\u2019s status on the line is a gym battle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n She rediscovers Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> in a box of items sent from her mother and begins to replay this formative adventure; there are clips of the game or shots where we see the joy on the faces of both child and adult Madoka from the dim glow of the Game Boy screen. Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> love even intertwines with the music scoring the series: a relaxing bar plays a slow jazz-infused rendition of the Pok\u00e9mon Center theme, just like how a synth rendition of Pallet Town marks the start of Madoka\u2019s journey.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As the show develops, the lessons from the game form the basis of a pseudo-episodic tale about Madoka\u2019s life at the company. The struggle to connect with a new client is paralleled by the way pok\u00e9mon won\u2019t listen to you until you\u2019ve proven your worth with gym badges. Learning and improving on the job is the experience that turns a flailing, floundering Magikarp into a job-leading Gyarados. And so on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The show can come across a bit silly in places, and it struggles with communicating itself by making its Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> overlay at times difficult to take seriously. But there\u2019s heart: there are plenty of touches that represent a series made with love, such as how characters have their own sprites integrated into the gameplay of Pok\u00e9mon Red<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n With Pok\u00e9Tsume<\/em>, Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> isn\u2019t just a virtual journey to become a champion. It\u2019s a lesson we take with us into our daily lives long after our adventure is at an end. It\u2019s an integration of the morals of the franchise into our daily lives that epitomizes a 15-year transformation of the Pok\u00e9mon brand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To understand this, we must first cast an eye back to 2006. During the preparation for the launch of Pok\u00e9mon Diamond<\/em> and Pearl<\/em> for the Nintendo DS, developer Game Freak found the series at a crossroads. Sales had been on a steady decline since the original release, with the Hoenn GBA games at the time holding the distinction as the worst-selling mainline titles in the series. The reality was that the original generation of players had graduated from playing Pok\u00e9mon<\/em>, and new generations simply weren\u2019t interested. Something had to change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In response, the company launched the Japan-only Pok\u00e9mon Garden<\/em><\/a> via the country\u2019s online Yahoo! Kids portal, an interactive experience taking you on a live tour through the history of Pok\u00e9mon,<\/em> featuring mini-games and new information on the yet to be released Diamond<\/em> and Pearl<\/em>. Over 5 million unique users accessed Yahoo! Kids every month at this time<\/a>, all within the series\u2019 core target demographic. In the end, the project proved successful, with Diamond<\/em> and Pearl<\/em> selling one-third more copies than its predecessors Ruby<\/em> and Sapphire<\/em> before eventually eclipsing the lifetime sales of those titles. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Notably, at the time, it was one of the company\u2019s biggest attempts at diversifying the brand since its initial launch. Following the initial multimedia blitz, and the introduction of a World Championships and competitive circuit for the video games and TCG, the series remained relatively static. At this point, Pok\u00e9mon was yet to truly experiment with online distribution and promotion, nor had attempts been made to branch out beyond the series\u2019 core audience and multimedia properties following the initial surge in popularity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n As such, Pok\u00e9mon Garden<\/em> was the first real attempt at expanding the core experience of Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> to other platforms and audiences. While it\u2019s easy to mark 2016\u2019s Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> as the key turning point for Pok\u00e9mon in its appeal to older demographics \u2014 and it certainly was significant \u2014 the framework for this success was paved far earlier by experiments in diversifying what Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> could be, whether that be through experiences like Garden<\/em> or the transformation of the anime to tell a greater array of stories within this ever-expanding universe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For the first time, external partners were being brought in to expand the world of Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> beyond Ash Ketchum. OLM, long-term Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> animation studio since 1998, passed the baton to other studios with the production of a spinoff series: Pok<\/em>\u00e9mon Origins<\/em><\/a>. While the studio did assist in production and animated the finale for the four-episode series, the rest of production was a collaborative effort led by Production I.G and Xebec, and proved to be a hit with audiences craving something new from the world of Pok\u00e9mon<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This was just the beginning. Since then, no fewer than six unique web series have been produced by various external partners from around the world, each set in different regions within the world of Pok\u00e9mon<\/em>. The most recent of these, this summer\u2019s Path to the Peak<\/em><\/a>, was unique for taking place in the real world with a focus on the experience of competing in the TCG. Meanwhile, the upcoming Netflix series Pok\u00e9mon Concierge<\/em><\/a> is another unique addition to this ever-expanding animation portfolio, marking the franchise\u2019s series debut in stop motion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This is on top of a slew of one-off short films and music videos as well as a refocus of priorities for the long-running movie franchise. In 2017, the annual film franchise abandoned continuity with the TV anime in order to tell its own original stories without being confined by external events, allowing them to experiment with CG animation<\/a>, remake the early episodes of the Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> TV series<\/a> in movie form, and allow Wit Studio, animators on the original series Attack on Titan<\/em>, to helm their own movie with 2018\u2019s The Power of Us<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The company did more than simply introduce dynamism into an anime that had long since gone stale in the eyes of many. Greater efforts were made to integrate Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> into the lives of communities in Japan and further afield, both through relief efforts and merchandising campaigns that provided more than toys and light relief to an aging audience.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku and Fukushima, The Pok\u00e9mon Company joined many others in rushing to the aid of those affected. These efforts led to the establishment of the Pok\u00e9mon With You Foundation<\/a>, aiming to provide support for disadvantaged communities even beyond this initial tragedy, expanding to everything from providing free educational materials and food drives for struggling children to funding scholarships<\/a>. This was soon followed by partnerships with local governments across Japan for tourism initiatives, seen everywhere from Yokohama\u2019s yearly Pikachu Outbreak<\/a> to the Pok\u00e9mon Local Acts<\/a> initiative, which loans pok\u00e9mon out to flog local delicacies and hotspots, while serving as the origin of the country\u2019s charming Pok\u00e9mon<\/em>-themed manhole covers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n This diversification naturally included merchandising. Many of the 10-year-olds who played the initial games were now adults with families of their own. This led to the launch of monpoke<\/a>, a special line of Pok\u00e9mon<\/em>-themed items for infants, as well as the now-discontinued Pok\u00e9mon Shirts, which sold button-up shirts and formal workwear based on various pok\u00e9mon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n With each of these efforts, alongside the launch of Pok\u00e9mon Go<\/em> \u2014 which gave lapsed older audiences an accessible reentry point that could fit around their busy schedules \u2014 the franchise was suddenly less of a gaming curio and more an ingrained facet of modern life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n By the time the 2023 Pok\u00e9mon World Championships<\/a> rolled around, the first to be held in Japan in Yokohama, the aforementioned Pikachu Outbreaks were transformed into a city-wide takeover. Beyond the competition and Pikachu marches were drone shows<\/a>, pop-up Pok\u00e9mon Centers, an orchestral concert<\/a>, an entire cruise ship transformed into the SS Anne, food collaborations, photo spots, station takeovers, and more. Yokohama felt less like a typical Japanese city and more like a location ripped directly from the world of Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> itself. Within all that were families, often two or three generations, sharing in a mutual love of Pok\u00e9mon<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The results speak for themselves. In recent years The Pok\u00e9mon Company has recorded record profits<\/a> and revenue, while the games, anime, and TCG are more popular than ever, with both new mainline Switch entries selling over 20 million copies<\/a>. The phenomenon of growing out of Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> is no longer a concern. Even if young kids stop playing the video games as they grow, that doesn\u2019t mean they won\u2019t still engage with this world via other means. Nor does it mean they won\u2019t introduce their own children to the series in the future.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Pok\u00e9Tsume<\/em> is a series that\u2019s only possible because of a reinvention of what Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> can be. While, in reality, it\u2019s a mostly light, inoffensive promotional tool to sell games (it\u2019s no coincidence the second episode has a scene of a young kid playing the latest entries in the series on his Nintendo Switch), it represents everything the franchise has aimed to be in recent years. Rather than a series for children, Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> now promises something for everyone. And those new adults seeking direction in life might find a fellow directionless 20-something employee more relatable than a kid wanting to be a Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> Champion. Frankly, it\u2019s a way to see they aren\u2019t alone, no different from how your party of pok\u00e9mon kept you company through the deepest caverns of Mt. Moon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s not unusual for the stories that defined you in your formative years to stick with you long into adulthood, providing the moral framework and life lessons you need in times of strife. What\u2019s wrong with taking a bit of guidance in finding a way to exist within it? We all live in a Pok\u00e9mon<\/em> world. Pok\u00e9Tsume <\/em>just puts that feeling on-screen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n