Pokémon Becomes a Comic
[Note: The main text of Pokemon Story is written by freelance author, Kenji Hatakeyama. Masakazu Kubo adds marginal notes at various points throughout the text. The translator has set aside Kubo's text with brackets.]
At the time of Pokemon's release, the monthly "CoroCoro Comic" had a circulation of 1.2 million copies, and the supplementary volume had a circulation of 600,000, half that number. The reason why "CoroCoro Comic" decided to feature Pokemon was precisely because Pokemon was a Game Boy software. The editorial approach of "CoroCoro Comic" was, and still is, based on marketing to children. Therefore, a survey was conducted in every issue to find out how much children's allowance was per month and how much money they received as New Year's gifts.
According to the survey, in 1996, the average amount of New Year's gift for grade school students was about 26,200 yen.
The editorial department of "CoroCoro Comic" wondered what children would buy with their New Year's money. Here, we will only talk about game-related spending trends related to Pokémon, but with 26,200 yen, it is impossible to buy a Sony PlayStation, which retails for 39,800 yen. You can buy a Nintendo N64, which retails for 22,400 yen, but you cannot buy a single piece of software for the N64, which retails for 5,800 yen or 6,800 yen. The same is true for the Sega Saturn.
However, with the Game Boy, which was priced at a reduced 8,000 yen at the time, the software was also inexpensive, ranging from 2,000 yen to 3,000 yen, so one could buy the console and several game titles, go see a movie with friends, and put the rest into savings.
Of course, there are cases where children are bought expensive game consoles by their parents or grandparents, but the image of grade school students that emerged from the CoroCoro Comic survey was that most children spend their own New Year's money systematically by putting aside a deposit.
The survey also revealed that about 65% of children own a Game Boy, and about 95% own a Super Famicom. No matter how much the world was excited about the new video game consoles, the reality was that the majority of children were playing with Game Boy and Super Famicom consoles. Knowing this was the strength of CoroCoro Comic.
CoroCoro Comic confidently positioned the Game Boy and Super Nintendo as the basic game consoles for children, clearly differentiating itself from other magazines that mainly focused on next-generation game consoles. "No matter how much noise the world is making, we are different," said the editorial department (Kubo).
Because it was such a magazine, it did not need tie-ins or any other special motivation to feature Game Boy and Super Nintendo games or to make comics about them.
It was Nintendo's Kawaguchi who brought Pokémon to CoroCoro Comic. Kawaguchi had published several Nintendo game strategy guides for Shogakukan before that, and had many acquaintances in Shogakukan's 8th Editorial Department, which mainly published "First Grade" and other school year magazines, and in the 9th Editorial Department, which mainly published comics for children, such as CoroCoro Comic. Among them was Kubo, the deputy editor of CoroCoro Comic.
Kubo Masakazu, who was deputy editor of CoroCoro Comic when Pokemon was first released, was born in Sapporo, Hokkaido, in 1959, the eldest son of a banker's family. Unlike Ishihara and Tajiri, Kubo spent his childhood far from being honored for his brilliance. He was a cartoon-loving neighborhood bully with a constant stream of fresh bruises.
It is said that Yamauchi Hiroshi of Nintendo, who later became a genius at giving nicknames, referred to Kubo as "the boss ape of the monkey enclosure" and told people around him, "Don't make him too angry," and this was exactly the same comment made by Kubo's friends when he was a boy.
When Kubo entered his teens, he moved to Tokyo due to his father's job transfer and entered the faculty of education at Waseda University on the recommendation of Ou Sadaharu's alma mater, Waseda Vocational High School. Kubo chose the faculty of education because he wanted to become a teacher. His motivation was that "only school teachers are called 'teachers' even by prime ministers." Despite such joke-like motives, children's sociology, to which Kubo awakened while a student at the faculty of education, has been a theme of Kubo's life ever since until today.
During his student days at Waseda, Kubo was given the nickname "Goa." This was because of his resemblance to the villainous alien from the monster TV show "Ambassador Magma." This was Kubo's first association with the character business.
When Kubo was a freshman in college, he had a chance to study abroad at the University of California (UCLA), Los Angeles. The Kubo family had never even dreamed of his father transfering unaccompanied, so he followed his father's lead and the four of them spent a year in Los Angeles. Kubo received English language training at UCLA.
Kubo graduated in 1983, but was unable to get the teaching job he had hoped for and had no choice but to apply for a job in the mass media. At that time, the mass media job market was slow in hiring, and many students like Kubo were rushing to the front. Kubo took the entrance exams for publishing companies such as Shinchosha, Shueisha, Sekaibunkasha, and Shogakukan. During his job search, Kubo decided that he really wanted to edit comics and magazines. Kubo was fortunate enough to be accepted by his first choice, Shogakukan.
In 1983, Kubo joined Shogakukan. Still a "child with a love of manga," Kubo was determined to become an editor of a children's comic magazine after joining the company. However, this desire did not come true, and Kubo was first assigned to the Materials Department. Although Kubo had joined the company with great enthusiasm to become an editor of a children's comic magazine, he was actually assigned to purchase printing paper and other materials. Kubo was so disappointed that he even considered leaving the company. However, his boss at the time, Ueno Tokio, former senior managing director of Shogakukan, told Kubo that "perseverance prevails," or "three years on a (cold) stone (will make the stone warm)."
"When they cut the fixed date to three years, I was somewhat relieved, even though I thought it might be a lie. In fact, I was able to transfer after two and a half years instead of three, but now that I think about it, the experience I had in the Materials Department was significant, because I was able to get an idea of the manufacturing cost of materials used in printed matter and in extras to school year magazines." (Kubo)
After leaving the Materials Department, Kubo worked for a children's TV magazine called TV-kun, and in 1986, he was assigned to the 9th Editorial Department, CoroCoro Comic Editorial Department, which he had longed for.
After being assigned to the CoroCoro Comic Editorial Department, Kubo was active as a photographer-editor, often going out to cover stories with a camera in his hand.
He worked at CoroCoro Comic for a total of 13 years, from the desk and as deputy editor until he was transferred to the editor-in-chief of GOTTA, a monthly comic magazine launched at the end of 1999, an unusually long period even within Shogakukan.
During his time as editor of CoroCoro Comic, Kubo achieved remarkable success, initiating and producing the second mini 4WD toy car craze.
[The Boom Created by "CoroCoro Comic" [Kubo]]
Children's fads and booms are even more changeable and brittle than those of adults. This is especially true for grade school children, who are in the process of growing up.
CoroCoro Comic was born 25 years ago as a comic magazine for such children, in which they could read lots of "Doraemon." Therefore, if you look back at the first issue, you will find that there are almost no color graph pages as there are today. It was a pure comic magazine.
After the first issue was published, the majority of the editorial staff had experience in grade-specific learning magazines, so the magazine naturally began to feature stories about what was popular and hobbies among children. A prominent example of this is the manga "Arcade Arashi." It was based on the subject of arcade games where the young Mr. Tajiri seemed to appear as he did in his younger days, and it became very popular. The circulation of CoroCoro Comic grew, and even gave birth to the popular term "cheat" (裏技).
Since then, CoroCoro Comic has created various booms from scratch. That's right! The word "creation" is the perfect word to describe this job, which has brought various hobbies to boom from nothing.
Choro-Q, Bikkuriman stickers, Obocchamakun, Human-Faced Dog, Mr. Maric, Super Dodge, B-Daman, Mini 4WD, Hyper Yo-Yo, and many more. I can't list them all here.
CoroCoro Comic's method of creating a craze is very clear. After collecting data from children and meeting with toy manufacturers' development staff, we select the recreations that we think will be popular. Once the editorial staff decides on a particular game, they approach children with a two-sided strategy: they publish a comic on the theme of that game, and at the same time, they use color graph pages to teach children how to play the game. For those games that are difficult to express in print media, we will make an effort to raise awareness through original events and TV programs.
If the children like it, the pastime will boom, and if not, that will be the end of it.