[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.]
Pikachu
Thus, the anime production staff became more and more enthusiastic in the production environment that had been created as the Shogakukan Group took a gamble, and the original creators responded to that enthusiasm.
"The game team has been very friendly from the beginning regarding Pokemon. You could say they have a kind eye for the anime team, and when we say, 'I want to do it this way' or 'I'm thinking this way, what do you think?' or 'I want to develop it like this,' they're happy to share the ideas."
So says Kanda.
"In general, when I work with people who make games, they are very narrow-sighted. The restrictions are very tight. It was like that with the work I did myself, and the same with what I heard from others. There are so many things that have to be done this way, and you can't deviate from the trunk line of the game. When you think about it, the Pokémon game team has a great deal of freedom. They are very tolerant. When it came to making the animation, the first thing they told us was to play the game first, and feel what we did in the game by playing it. They didn't tell us what to do or what not to do, but they tell us to feel what the game team hoped when they made the game. They tell us to play the game and feel why kids are hooked on it. To put it bluntly, I think that was the only restriction."
In their words, there was a relationship of mutual trust between the animation team and the game team here that is not seen in other game software animated adaptation production sets.
"That's right. I think there is a pretty high level of cooperation. There is no holding each other back, and on the contrary, I think it's a very good relationship where we make suggestions to each other, like, 'It would be interesting to do this here.'" (Yuyama)
As an example, Yuyama and Kanda cited the time when they proposed that the animation's story be set up so that the main character Satoshi, with his Pikachu, continues his journey of training to become a Pokémon master with two friends.
"You know, the game starts by choosing one of the three critters at the very beginning. I suggested that instead of choosing one of the three in the game, I wanted to do it with Pikachu. Well, I was thinking that the three Pokemon would eventually come together on TV, but most of all, I just wanted to go with Pikachu. And since we wanted to include companions on that journey, we also wanted two of the gym leaders in the game to travel with him. This is not something you would normally think of. The gym leader is a character in a gym. I told the game side that I wanted to have him make friends with them and travel with them. I thought that if I made such a proposal, there might be a fight, but I brought the proposal to the game side." (Kanda)
What was the response from the game side?
"They said, 'Oh, that's fine.'"
That was the only response from the game side. It was the basic policy of the game team to accept any change in the traits of the game, as long as it did not destroy the game's world. It was a natural understanding that this was the way to express a work in a different medium.
Yuyama spoke of the decision to choose Pikachu as the main Pokémon character.
"I thought that if he chose one of the Hitokage, Fushigidane, and Zenigame that first appeared in the game and made it into animation, the children who chose the other Pokémon in the game would feel lonesome. I have three children, you know. So I would feel sorry for the other two if I picked one of them. I thought it would be better to avoid that. If that was the case, I thought it would be better to choose one that was completely different from the first three you can get. For example, I could have chosen Purin or Pippi, but a too unusual Pokémon would not fit in with the established world, so I decided on Pikachu, a cute Pokémon that looks like it could exist in everyday life but really doesn't. That said, the big factor was that Pikachu was the most popular Pokémon in a popularity contest held in 'CoroCoro Comic' at that time. Pikachu was chosen because of its popularity and because it was a Pokémon that would not be strange to have around. It fits in with the Pokémon universe in that it is somewhere between reality and fantasy, with its shape being a mouse but only its tail being a lightning bolt."
The animation team's changing and deepening view of Pokémon is also well illustrated in the process of finalizing the policy that Pikachu and other Pokémon, with the exception of Meowth, would not speak in the end.
"Ishihara and Tajiri had told us that Pikachu was not allowed to talk, but since Pikachu would be traveling with Satoshi, I told them that I wanted Pikachu to talk, and they said yes. But as we worked on it, I began to think more and more that Pokemon are animals. So when Pikachu talks, it becomes a moving character called Pikachu, not an animal, and I felt that was really weird. On the contrary, I felt that it would kill the cuteness of Pikachu. So we decided that Pikachu should not be able to talk." (Yuyama)
[Who made Pikachu the protagonist?]
I remember that the decision was made at the aforementioned large production council. In the end, everyone's opinion was unanimous and Pikachu was chosen, so there should be no question as to who did it. I think that Director Yuyama was the one ultimately responsible for the decision. As the editor of CoroCoro Comic, Yoshikawa asked me to confirm if it would be better to make Pippi, the main character in the CoroCoro manga, the main character in the anime, but I personally wanted to try a yellow character.
By the way, when you interview several people about a single matter, you sometimes discover interesting coincidences. For example, regarding Pikachu, there were three people, including Yuyama, who first suggested that Pikachu be the Pokémon that Satoshi would take with him. Besides Yuyama, the other two proposers were Kubo and Iwata Keisuke of TV Tokyo's Film Department. Iwata said that when the anime adaptation was decided, he asked the animation team to make Pikachu Satoshi's partner, and Kubo said that although Pippi is the main character in the "CoroCoro Comic" serial manga, he thought it would be nice to have a yellow character as the main character in the anime, since he also appears in the manga. Yellow is one of the three primary colors and the color that does not overlap with other characters, and since the meaning of yellow in traffic lights is "warning" and all Japanese people must be imprinted with the idea that yellow is warning, it should naturally attract a lot of attention. It was thought that Pikachu would satisfy these conditions. Of course, it is not out of irony or ill will that I present this story here; each of the three thought about the animated Pokemon, and probably each of them got the same idea by chance. I wanted to tell you that the Pokémon animated project is so much a part of each of the participating staff members that it has become their own thing.
[Iwata Keisuke]
Chief Producer of TV Tokyo's Film Department. Born in Shizuoka Prefecture in 1955, he joined the company in 1979 and worked in sales, organization, and news reporting before becoming the chief producer of animation programs in the Film Department in 1993. His major works include "Neon Genesis Evangelion," "Love Hina" and many others.
In any case, the game team accepted the major changes proposed by the animation team to the setting of the game world. Not only that, but the setting of the anime world, where the main character Satoshi takes Pikachu on a journey, was fed back into the game and adopted as one of the game's frameworks in the fourth version of Pokémon, the Yellow version, also known as the Pikachu version.
"That kind of experience is exceedingly rare. I feel that the game side is enjoying the animation on the game side, and I'm very happy to work on it." (Yuyama)
Kanda also said something along these lines.
"On the contrary, when I think about whether there were any proposals that were rejected, there were none that made me ponder."
Yoshikawa also made many important suggestions at the meetings, one of which was to change the traits of Team Rocket. In the game, Team Rocket are a gang led by Tokiwa Town gym leader Sakaki, who plan to make a fortune by catching and trafficking Pokémon from around the world, which was the trait in the Red and Green versions that the anime was based on. For the anime, the idea was conceived by Shudou Takeshi, the main writer of the scriptwriter group, and with the adaptation by Yoshikawa Chouji, they created a charming gang of villains consisting of a girl with a beautiful voice named Musashi (voiced by Hayashibara Megumi), a handsome boy named Kojirou (voiced by Miki Shinichirou), and a monster cat Pokemon named Meowth (voiced by Inuyama Inuko).
"I asked them to let only Meowth speak. Because I wanted to make Team Rocket look like, well, let's just say, Time Bokan, and I thought it would be better to have one like Muttley. From the beginning, I wanted to make Meowth the bad guy and make him talk." (Yoshikawa)
The name "Time Bokan" may have made some of you nostalgic.
Incidentally, Team Rocket also have a motto, "If you ask us about 'this' or 'that,' we'll answer out of the world's kindness..."
In the anime story, just like in the game, Team Rocket hunts Pokemon, but their favorite is Pikachu, and they follow Satoshi and his friends in an attempt to steal him. This, along with the main story that follows Satoshi and his friends on their journey to become a Pokémon master, is an important sub-story of the anime, as is the interaction between Satoshi and Team Rocket. Team Rocket's popularity has increased with each episode, and it is commonly believed that its existence, along with Pikachu, is one of the two main reasons for the success of the animated Pokemon.
However, the success of this combination of the talking Pokemon Meowth and Team Rocket was actually a coincidence. Yuyama explains the situation this way.
"We didn't think too much about it, but when we started with the idea that Pokémon could talk, we decided that since he was a cat, we would let him talk early on."
The animated Meowth, borrowing the distinctive voice of voice actor Inuyama Inuko, begins talking in the second episode of the anime, when Team Rocket makes its appearance. So by the time the policy of not having Pokémon speak was established, it was already finished to the point where it could no longer be modified.
However, once the broadcast began, children naturally realized that the only Pokémon that could speak was Meowth. And they began to inquire why.
"We established Meowth to show that there are Pokémon that can talk, but when we noticed and looked at it, it was only Meowth that could talk. It turned out to be the other way around. So we had a scenario written to sort out that made him talk, and we told the children how he came to be able to talk."
That was broadcast as Episode 66, "Meowth's ABCs," and the children were convinced.
[Shudou Takeshi]
Scenario writer.
Born on August 18, 1949 in Fukuoka Prefecture.
His notable works are GoShogun, Idol Angel Youkoso Youko, Manga Hajimete Monogatari, Space Warrior Baldios, Sasuga no Sarutobi, I'll Make a Habit of It, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and Martian Successor Nadesico.
[Oohashi Yukiyoshi]
Scenario writer.
Born on April 10, 1959.
His notable works are GeGeGe no Kitarou, YuYu Hakusho, Kimagure Orange Road, Fist of the North Star, The Secrets of Akko-chan, and Macross 7.
[Sonoda Hideki]
Scenario writer.
Born in Saga Prefecture in 1957. He is the president of Kien Fuujinsha Theater Company. His notable works are Space-Time Detective Genshi, Trouble Chocolate, Matchless Raijin-Oh, Brave Exkaiser, Dirty Pair, Ninja Senshi Tobikage, and Aim for the Ace! 2.