Pikachu's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon

by Joseph Tobin (Editor)

Initially developed in Japan by Nintendo as a computer game, Pokémon swept the globe in the late 1990s. Based on a narrative in which a group of children capture, train, and do battle with over a hundred imaginary creatures, Pokémon quickly diversified into an array of popular products including comic books, a TV show, movies, trading cards, stickers, toys, and clothing. Pokémon eventually became the top grossing children's product of all time. Yet the phenomenon fizzled as quickly as it had ignited. By 2002, the Pokémon craze was mostly over. Pikachu’s Global Adventure describes the spectacular, complex, and unpredictable rise and fall of Pokémon in countries around the world. In analyzing the popularity of Pokémon, this innovative volume addresses core debates about the globalization of popular culture and about children’s consumption of mass-produced culture. Topics explored include the origins of Pokémon in Japan’s valorization of cuteness and traditions of insect collecting and anime; the efforts of Japanese producers and American marketers to localize it for foreign markets by muting its sex, violence, moral ambiguity, and general feeling of Japaneseness; debates about children’s vulnerability versus agency as consumers; and the contentious question of Pokémon’s educational value and place in school. The contributors include teachers as well as scholars from the fields of anthropology, media studies, sociology, and education. Tracking the reception of Pokémon in Japan, the United States, Great Britain, France, and Israel, they emphasize its significance as the first Japanese cultural product to enjoy substantial worldwide success and challenge western dominance in the global production and circulation of cultural goods. Contributors. Anne Allison, Linda-Renée Bloch, Helen Bromley, Gilles Brougere, David Buckingham, Koichi Iwabuchi, Hirofumi Katsuno, Dafna Lemish, Jeffrey Maret, Julian Sefton-Green, Joseph Tobin, Samuel Tobin, Rebekah Willet, Christine Yano

Genres: Nonfiction, Japan, Video Games, Game Design, Gaming, Sociology, Academic

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Joseph Tobin (born 1950) is an educational anthropologist, currently professor of Education at the University of Georgia.

Reviews

[Koen Crolla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. This is indeed a collection of essays on the significance of Pokémon as a phenomenon, as promised, but they're written by a bunch of childhood education undergrads—in spirit if not necessarily in actual fact—few of whom have apparently ever even held an actual Game Boy. Some are less bad than others, and some of the authors have obviously put significant effort into their contributions—though not usually to the extent that they bothered to double-check the spelling of the names of the Pokemans, as Kengaskhan, Missingo, and Blastoid will attest—but all are written by obvious outsiders so disconnected from any aspect of Pokémon it's hard to understand why they felt they were qualified to write about it.
(Well, I suppose that's not true. At least three of them have small children who play Pokémon, and some of the others are apparently child psychologists. For whatever reason, both of those groups often combine an ostensible interest in what kids are doing with the sort of deep condescension towards them that makes real understanding impossible.)

I guess what I was really expecting was an examination of the history of Pokémon and its economic aspects. What I got instead was the sort of half-informed busy-body bullshit that characterised educators' and psychologists' interest in me in my teen-age years, which is a pity.
Given that it's that sort of book, though, I'm also disappointed that every single contributor only sees Pokémon as the pursuit of very young children. I'm not going to go full brony and pretend college-age neckbeards are the real target audience of Pokémon while pre-teens are just irrelevant interlopers at best, but it would have been good at least to look at the actual demographics of Pokémon's audience. The book was written in 2004, in the middle of the GBA generation (though if anyone realised any main-series Pokémon game existed on a platform other than the original Game Boy, they didn't exactly let on), so I suspect the divide is wider now, when all of the kids who originally played the first games in elementary school are in college or already out of it, than it was then; it would have been an interesting thing to look into.

If you're the sort of childhood professional who (more or less) subconsciously holds children in contempt and doesn't really believe they have anything meaningful to contribute to your chosen field, I suppose you may find value in this book. I'm over it.

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I personally think this book might be exaggerating reports of Pokemon's demise. While the media mix of games, TV shows, movies, comics, and toys doesn't control the imaginations of all children anymore, the games still make enormous, ridiculous amounts of money (as looking up the sales figures for the most recent iteration, Pokemon Black and White will show). Still I found the essays interesting, especially those relating to pedagogy. It was enlightening to me to see how teachers used Pokemon in the classroom, as collaboration seems far more interesting than those obnoxious "TEACHER BANS ________" headlines we get every time a fad reaches critical mass.

[Razakius · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fairly decent book about how Pokemon became popular, both why and how Nintendo marketed it. It ranged from extremely interesting to outright boring. I think this tends to be true with any compilation. The ones I felt that were worth reading were "Cuteness as Japan's Millennial Product" by Anne Allison, "How 'Japanese' is Pokemon?" by Koichi Iwabuchi, "Localizing the Pokemon TV Series for the American Market" by Hirofumi Katsuno and Jeffrey Maret, and "Conclusion: The Rise and Fall of the Pokemon Empire" by Joseph Tobin. These I felt were the best by far, the rest could have very well been skipped IMHO.

[Ninakix · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I was expecting was a history of Pokemon and how it came to be. What I got was far better... This is actually a collection of scholarly (or, well, mostly scholarly) writing about the Pokemon phenomena. As such, it didn't really cover much of how Pokemon came about, but rather, how and why people reacted to Pokemon. The writing can be dry in places, and some of the essays are duds, but on the whole, there's a lot of really fascinating phenomena and discussion of children's culture.

[Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting take on the how Pokemon became the global phenomenon and the global cultural implications involved with its success. It's broken down into sections where it examines it from a toy marketing standpoint, effects on children and also cultural exportation. Really fascinating read.

[Fowlbro · Rating 2 out of 5]

hard to understand not for younger children

[Juan Ochoa · Rating 5 out of 5]

want to read it plz