With the drop of Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet this week, Pokemon seems to have made its yearly return to the public limelight. Whether it’s a new anime, toy gimmick or videogame, Pokemon has seemed to remain strongly relevant among the public across the globe from Japan to Europe to right here in the United States.
The global appeal for Pokemon has become a spectacle in my eyes, as not only has it sustained the attention of multiple generations of video game loving people, but the franchise has managed to do this across international boundaries. Many video game series have failed to find audiences from other countries, with the exception of few. This primarily has to do with cultural differences for certain storylines and game features, as well as the expectations for what a game is and should do within certain countries. Many gamers in the regions of east Asia will spend most of their time playing online multiplayer games, while American gamers will often focus more on individual videogames with heavier storylines, for example.
One of the marketing designs that the Pokemon Company took on was the idea of localizing their products so that Pokemon and its wide range of accommodating content would mesh in with the culture of different countries and parts of the world.
CNN writer Oscar Holland looks specifically at the names of each character as a lens to view this process of localization when he writes, “While the characters' designs remained the same overseas, Pokémon was nonetheless adapted for different markets, especially when it came to language… the Pokémon's new names often remained true to the spirit of the originals. Take Sawamura and Ebiwara, who had been named after a Japanese kickboxer and boxer, respectively, but were called Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan in English, a reference to martial artists that kids 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” (CNN).
Pokemon has certainly done a great job of staying relevant. I remember growing up, even though I did not play Pokemon, I started collecting Pokemon cards and ended up with hundreds, just because it was a cool thing to do. After I stopped doing that, around second grade, it totally fell off my radar, and I was amazed when Pokemon Go took such a massive hold on multiple generations. It seems as though they have understood the importance of diversity and representation earlier than most brands.