[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.]
The Cartoon Goes Into Production
While ShoPro was, of course, preparing for the licensing agreement with Nintendo as described earlier, production of the anime was underway. The Licensing Department is in charge of licensing operations, while the TV Planning Department is responsible for producing TV programs, and both sections belong to the Media Division.
Pokémon's animation production is unique in two ways. One is that there is an independent producer system and the other is that there are production meetings. First, let us start with the production meeting.
The production meeting is the highest decision-making body in the production of Pokémon animation. At the center of this meeting were six members consisting of Ishihara Tsunekazu of Creatures, Sugimori Ken of Game Freak, and Kotabe Youichi of Nintendo, three members of the original creator group, plus Yoshikawa Chouji, an independent producer, director Yuyama Kunihiko, and Ichiishi Sayuri, an animation director of OLM, an animation production company ordered by ShoPro, as well as many others. All important matters such as the worldbuilding, character traits, and story structure of the animated Pokémon were decided at this meeting.
The purpose of establishing this conference was to ensure that the show would be created in a way that would not detract from the universe of the game software. This was part of the institutional guarantee to "make a good product," which Kubo assured the original creator side when proposing the animation project. Of course, in hindsight, the creation of a good product would also generate profits from the secondary use rights, which would increase ShoPro's licensing commissions, but it was a big gamble in a situation where the future was uncertain before the broadcast.
[Production Meeting]
The above could be taken to imply that the six people took the lead in making decisions regarding all aspects of the Pokémon anime, but in reality, the nuances are a bit different.
Before starting the animation, we had a number of meetings called "production meetings," which were attended by a large group of people, including Tajiri and people from ShoPro and OLM. Important decisions were made there.
When we started the meetings, it was mostly a Q&A style where we asked Tajiri and Ishihara about the Pokémon universe, but as the animation production team gradually gained a deeper understanding, we were able to exchange many different opinions.
This big production meeting was held before deciding on the major series structure for the Pokémon animation, and since the members in attendance were almost the same as those at the movie production meeting, they were sometimes combined with the movie and TV meeting.
Next is the independent producer system, which appropriates the full-time series construction producer system first adopted by Kubo during the production of "Racing Brothers Let's & Go." As I mentioned before, Yoshikawa was involved in Pokémon from the planning stages of the animated series, and he and Kubo traveled to Nintendo's headquarters in Kyoto for the presentation in September.
For Pokémon, that title has changed to "independent producer." Regarding the meaning of the word "independent," Yoshikawa said the following.
"The word 'independent' means a human pillar."
So Yoshikawa broke the ice.
"Kubo thought that Pokemon would definitely be popular if it were made into an animation, so he and Ishihara and others negotiated with each other in various ways. In the process, if President Yamauchi of Nintendo said that the finished animation was not good enough, or even after it started, he said it was boring, who would take the responsibility? At that time, I was told that I was in charge of the animation project, and and I was put up to the task. In other words, everyone, including Kubo, whether at an agency, toy store, or animation production company, appoints someone in the position of producer. If the animation project failed, all the companies involved would be fighting over who was to blame, and if all of them were to break off, they would lose their relationship with Nintendo. If that were to happen, it would have a great impact on each of them as a company. That is why they decided to appoint someone who was not carrying the company on his back as chief producer. That person was me. Kubo wanted to say that he would protect the producers of other companies, so let's do it. Kubo told me that if things went well, it would be my credit, and if things didn't go well, it would be my fault."
[Producer Yoshikawa's Position]
In the above, it appears that I told Yoshikawa various things and forced him to become a producer and ask me to work for him, but in reality that is... completely right.
However, since Yoshikawa does not seem to be talking about his own abilities, I will add this point.
Generally speaking, when creators and creators try to work together on an equal footing, they are bound to clash. It is natural for them to clash, since they do not have the same tastes. Furthermore, when creators with strong personalities clash with each other, the people around them become increasingly exhausted. Yoshikawa himself has a strong element of a creator, but he is a master at coordinating opinions between creators. He is easily trusted by creators. I am more of a sales producer, but Yoshikawa is by far the most creative producer.
I have been working with Yoshikawa since I started working with him on the Mini 4WD animation project, and I feel that I have found a really good and capable person. He also attends my weekly meetings, and we have worked together on animations such as "Bikkuriman 2000."
This story could be a scene from a corporate drama. Is it inappropriate to be amused by this story? However, the person who was telling the story, Yoshikawa, was also laughing.
"At that time, Kubo told me that if I failed, I would be the only one who would not be able to work with Nintendo, and if that happened, he would introduce me to Sony. So I was a plain human pillar producer. In the opening of the anime, the name of the original creator, Tajiri, is listed, followed by Ishihara's name, and then mine, in the form of associate producer. After me, there was Kotabe of Nintendo. Kotabe is the person in the animation world who can call Miyazaki Hayao, "Hey you, Miyazaki!" No, actually, he's not the kind of person that acts big. Why my name is shown before such a person is to say, "This is the guy responsible." He is not a laudable producer at all."
Animation producer Yoshikawa Chouji, in whom Kubo has complete confidence, was born in 1958, making him one year older than Kubo. He was born in Machida City, Tokyo, the same city as Tajiri. Inspired by Tezuka Osamu's "The Firebird," which he read as a boy, he aspired to become a cartoonist and apprenticed himself to Kobayashi Makoto, famous for "1-2 Sanshirou," and then Miura Mitsuru for "The Pumpkin Wine."
"Miura Mitsuru was around toward the end of Tezuka's Mushi Productions. Therefore, Miura's use of effect lines and the like were directly handed down from Tezuka. I think I learned a lot from him too."
However, at the age of 26, Yoshikawa decided to switch careers.
"Manga is special, you know. There's such a thing as just being able to draw the main character. It is enough if you can depict a hero with flair. A spunky protagonist. I couldn't draw that. I thought that was my weak point, so I broke off writing."
Since then, he has been producing "freebies" for a long time.
"I joined a planning company that specialized in Lotte's 'freebies' and worked on 'Neclos Fortress.' From there, I moved to a company called Red Company, which had produced the 'freebie' project called 'Neclos Fortress,' and I stayed there for a long time. At that time, 'freebies' were in their heyday, and Bikkuriman chocolates were being produced at a rate of 30 million per month. That was when I was working with Neclos Fortress. That is why I am from a 'freebie' background. It was with 'freebies' that I came out into the world."
At Red Company, Yoshikawa became involved not only in freebies, but also in video game software and animation. His first animated project was "Magic God Hero Legend Wataru."
[Red Company]
As a planning company, it was a pioneer in Japan. The president of the company is Hiroi Ouji, the famous producer of "Sakura Wars." Yoshikawa stayed and worked at the company as the production manager.
"Takara made small robots similar to Gundam SD, and we made a cartoon that was linked to it. We ran it for a year, and although it got off to a disastrous start, it picked up dramatically in the summer and ended up with a viewer rating of over 10%. That's how I became in charge of animation at Red Company."
After this hit animation, Yoshikawa went on to work on three more, the third of which was "Cyber Formula" for TV Tokyo, which was sponsored by Takara.
"It was right around the time when F1 was popular, and this anime is also a racing one. I did the direction for its series construction. It was broadcast every Friday, and Takara wanted to have races on Fridays and release the winning cars on Saturdays. So, from the beginning, we had to ask ourselves how many races we could run in a year. But as a production company, we would come up with the idea that we could do 12 races for a year, one race a month. In fact, in animation, the drawing ability is more important for car animations than for robot animations. Cars are real, and the four wheels have to be on the ground, and the perspective and other aspects are quite difficult because they are real. So, when it comes to racing, it is very difficult, so that was the limit. Once it was decided that there will be 12 races for a year, I could talk with the director and make various decisions. Who will win here, who will win next, and so on. In the end, the main character had to win the race, and the ranking tables at the end of the races were made at the beginning. At that time, I knew, to some extent, that if we did this, it would become the anime's series structure. That's when I realized how interesting anime is."
Kubo had just started work on the "Racing Brothers Let's & Go" animated television series when Yoshikawa left Red Company to start his own company in 1995, and he hired Yoshikawa to be the full-time producer of the series construction. Kubo and Yoshikawa had known each other since CoroCoro Comic picked up the project for expansion when Yoshikawa was working on the "Magic God Hero Legend Wataru" anime.
"I am a bit proud to say that when I was working on 'Racing Brothers Let's & Go,' a game was released by ASCII, and the game included the main character's car, which had just been upgraded one month earlier in the anime. This is something that is normally not possible. Because we start making both the anime and the game a long time in advance."
Kubo was deeply impressed by Yoshikawa's ability to structure the series and coordinate timing. Kubo cited this vignette in his presentation to Nintendo as an example of the success of having a producer dedicated to series construction for "Racing Brothers Let's & Go."
[Mini 4WD game released by ASCII]
"Shining Scorpion" for Super Famicom
This is an image reproduced in the book.
Yoshikawa continued to work on series construction for 'Racing Brothers Let's & Go' until the anime ended in 1998, but in the midst of that, in the summer of 1996, he also became the producer of Pokemon. Yoshikawa's ability to structure a series for an animated program would be put to full use on Pokemon.
"As soon as I heard about it, I played the game and beat it. But I didn't collect all the Pokemon. I think I got about 50. My wife has collected all of them, though. But I had to know the outline of the game, so I played it over and over again."
When I heard this story, I asked Yoshikawa what he thought of the Pokemon games.
"To be frank, it was frustrating. I mean, I've been doing children's stuff myself for a long time, you know. When I was at Red Company, I had thought about the same thing. However, I have been making various monster-related works for a long time, and when there are so many monsters, I usually don't think about collecting all of them. That's always been the case, no matter what kind of series I've done. I could feel that the creators had a lot of love for all the Pokémon as they made it. And the way of carrying them was very clever. And, to be honest, I felt frustrated that I couldn't make something like this."
Some time later, Yoshikawa had a chance to talk with Tajiri. In that talk, Yoshikawa again experienced frustration and shock.
"When I heard about it, I thought, 'Yeah, they got me.' In the Pokemon world, there are no inns. You travel from town to town, and each town has an inn, and if you stay at the inn, you regain your strength—it's not made according to the RPG formula. In a normal RPG, the Pokémon Center would be an inn. I wondered why we called it a Pokémon Center instead of an inn. Then, Tajiri told me that it was a story about a boy's summer day. When I heard that, I thought, 'Oh, yeah, they beat me.' I was shocked. When he was a child, he used to feel very lonely at dusk. He was very sad when night fell. He wished the time he spent playing would last forever. That's what he wanted to express with Pokemon. So it doesn't actually have a night."
It was not this story that shocked Yoshikawa.
"When I heard that, I thought it was amazing that a game could be made that reflected such strong feelings. That made me look back at myself. It was more like I contemplated, and I thought it was amazing that he did that."
Yoshikawa decided to put all of his creativity into this job after that day. He did not want to be outdone by Tajiri's game.
Among the members of the production council, director Yuyama Kunihiko was one of the major influences in shaping the universe of the animated Pokemon.
"When I heard about Pokemon, I knew I wanted to do this for sure. I knew about it because my kids were playing it. So until everyone started playing the game, I was the one who knew the most about Pokémon among the staff."
[Yuyama Kunihiko]
Chief director.
Also known as "Nerima's Great Will." Born in 1952.
He is known for Magical Princess Minky Momo, the Slayers films, Jura Tripper, Leda: The Fantastic Adventure of Yohko, TWD Express: Rolling Takeoff, Wedding Peach, Shin Kimagure Orange Road, and Windaria.
Director Yuyama Kunihiko was born in Tokyo in 1952 and grew up in Osaka. He is six years older than Yoshikawa, but like Yoshikawa, he was fascinated by Tezuka Osamu's animations and aspired first to become a manga artist and then an animator. The series that inspired Yuyama was "Mighty Atom." He later joined Reed Productions, an animation production company. Ashi Productions is a production company that produces animation for children linked to toys, such as "Machine Robo."
"I did my first directing job at Ashi Pro. The series was 'Galaxy Express 999.' After that, my first series of works as a director were 'Princess Minky Momo' for TV Tokyo and 'The Three Musketeers: The Animation' for NHK. Then there was 'Yaiba,' which Aoyama Goushou was working on before 'Detective Conan,' and 'Wedding Peach' at OLM when there was talk of Pokemon."
OLM is an animation production company that produces animation on order from ShoPro. The company name, OLM, is an acronym for Oriental Light & Magic. OLM was the newly selected animation production company by Kubo after receiving objections from Creatures' Itou Asura Benimaru.
Generally, anime directors receive work from production companies that take orders for animation production sets, and Yuyama was no exception, and was asked by OLM to direct Pokémon. Therefore, if Itou had not objected to the production company that Kubo originally had in mind, OLM would not have been chosen, and therefore, Yuyama would not have become the director of the Pokémon animation. It is impossible for anyone to say what would have happened if Yuyama had not been the director. However, it is an undeniable fact that the animated Pokemon series directed by Yuyama was a success. Let us hear what ShoPro, the company that placed the order with OLM, has to say about Yuyama. Mori Takemoto, a producer in the TV Planning Department of the Media Division at ShoPro, speaks with us.
[Mori Takemoto]
Producer (affiliated with Shogakukan Productions).
Born on February 28, 1963. In 1988, his affiliated company, Video Japonica, Inc. merged with ShoPro. After the merger, he was assigned to the Production Department. After producing video tapes such as "Doraemon's English Conversation Class," he was put in charge of "Pocket Monsters."
"Yuyama is an experienced and accomplished director with a long history in the animation industry, but he also listens to our opinions. He is very flexible. He also understands digital imaging and the importance of games. I think he is a rare director and superintendent with a proven track record in the animation world."
And then Yuyama came across Pokémon, and he started playing the game as soon as he came across it.
"I knew a lot about it from watching my children play it, but I didn't really get into it until I was told about it. I hadn't played many games before. It was the first time in my life that I played games that much. I played it over and over again. It was fun. I beat it, and I caught 'em all, too."
[Kanda Shuukichi]
Animation producer.
Born in Kagawa, 1959. Company director of OLM. Notable works include The Three Musketeers: The Animation, ToHeart, Steel Angel Kurumi, Berserk: Legend of the Way of the Sword, Legend of the Angel of Love: Wedding Peach, Highschool Aurabuster, and QUEEN EMERALDAS。
[Okuno Toshiaki]
President and CEO of OLM (Oriental Light & Magic). Born on December 30, 1959 in Hokkaido. He and Kubo are from the same hometown and the same grade. Dropped out of Hosei University. Worked for a planning and production company while still in school. Established OLM in 1993 and OLM Digital in 1995.
Regretting the name of the company that he gave with a light heart, he continues to this day.
Here's what Yuyama had to say about it.
"I think the game is a combination of the sorts things that children used to love in manga, anime, and novels, as well as what Tajiri put into it when he made it. Things that were in the monster cartoons and adventure novels. When I made it into animation, I felt that it was the culmination of everything I had done up to that point. I feel that everything I have cultivated, all my know-how, and everything I have wanted to do, is all in Pokemon."
At that time, Yuyama became a big fan of Fushigidane, the first Pokémon he chose.
The reason I have presented here the side-by-side impressions of the game by the two people in charge, producer Yoshikawa and director Yuyama, is that their words seem to me to be a true representation of the situation on the production site of the Pokémon animation. Kubo's instruction to the production site to "play the game first," as promised to Tajiri, was thoroughly and admirably followed, and not only that, but after playing the game, they were all saying, "Touché." Kanda Shuukichi, co-owner of the animation production company OLM, which was commissioned by ShoPro to produce the animation, and the animation producer on the show, also had this to say.
"I didn't have a Game Boy, so I bought one for the first time because I was going to play this game. I played it so much that I probably won't use that many AAA batteries in my lifetime. In terms of exhausting it, I played through all the Red, Green, and Blue games. I was the last to start, but I was the first to collect them all. When I told Ishihara that I had collected them all, he gave me a Mew as a reward. I also went all out with Gold and Silver. Yes, I collected 250 of them. Celebi? No, I don't have it. I'm too busy to go to events."
As a result, Kanda also became a big fan of Fushigidane, the first Pokémon he chose when playing the Red version. Celebi, the mythical Pokémon in the Gold and Silver versions like Mew in the Red, Green, and Blue versions, was given away to 100,000 children at Space World 2000, a Nintendo event held at Makuhari Messe from August 25 to 27, 2000. Kanda also mentions AAA batteries because he bought a Game Boy Pocket shortly after its release. Here is what Kanda had to say about the game.
"In terms of games that can be played on that Game Boy hardware, I think Pokemon is groundbreakingly amazing. Since I went to the trouble of buying it, I later bought and played many other games that could be played on the Game Boy. It was hard for me to keep playing them. No game has that kind of scope on such a small screen."
He also made this point.
"Pokemon is very gentle. Usually, in RPGs and strategy games, you can sense the meanness of the developer or the creator. In RPGs, there are times when you really get into trouble and can't do anything about it. There's none of that here. It's great that you don't feel that kind of cruelty."
While wandering through the Pokémon world of the game in this way, Yuyama and the rest of the animation staff were able to formulate their own interpretation of Pokémon.
"We came to the conclusion that Pokémon is an abstraction, a gamified day in the life of a summer vacation, no matter how far you go. It looks like you are going very far away, but it is just an extension of your morning trip to catch insects. Various things like that came up during the scenario reading stage, and the interpretation was decided. For example, how to handle the mother character. The game is very light on the traces of parents. The children are traveling freely. Normally, if a 10-year-old child is traveling, the parents should be worried, but they are not. That sensation is one day of summer vacation. It is that feeling of children going somewhere, to the backwoods or to town for a bit. When you think about it that way, it also defines the mother's position."
Kanda also added to the interpretation of this aspect, saying.
"The interpretation is that the parents don't feel like the child is doing such a dangerous thing or that they have to follow them."
Yuyama also discussed the differences between the Pokémon anime and the movies.
"The movies, you know, are more like a summer vacation excursion. I think of them as going to the next town over, or visiting a haunted house in a town you don't know. From our generation's point of view, there is a certain nostalgia for those boyhood days. There was that impression of running around in the fields as a child. That's what I'm trying to create from that impression."
I wonder if there are any other video games that have been taken into consideration by the production staff and made into animation with this level of empathy. The author does not know.
"We Can't Give In"
Gradually, Yoshikawa, Yuyama, Kanda, and the rest of the staff came to have their own impression of the Pokemon world. From there, various proposals were born. At the first production meeting, Yoshikawa immediately made a proposal.
"The first suggestion I made at the production meeting was whether Pokémon could talk. Because when animating, if they don't talk, they can't communicate or convey their intentions, can they? I thought it would be very difficult to 'eat into the runtime' to explain that. Then, Tajiri and Ishihara made a chart with all 150 Pokémon marked with an O, X, or △. It was a classification chart that said these ones are allowed to talk, these are not, and these may possibly be able to talk."
[Meowth]
One of the few Pokémon in anime that can speak human language.
Yuyama remembered this chart well. And it was the most basic idea that he had in mind when he was animating Pokemon.
"When you look at it, there are very few Pokémon that are allowed to talk. In our minds, we were surprised by that, because at first we thought they would talk. But after actually making the animation, I came to believe that their understanding was correct. You see Pokémon as being on the side of animals. You are happy because Pokémon are on the side of animals and you can communicate with them. Like anything else, I think the most important theme of the animation is communication. I believe the most fundamental theme is how to communicate with various things you encounter. If they can speak, they are communicating through words, and that is where it ends. I think true charm of Pokemon is how children understand each other with something different that can't speak." (Yuyama)
The universe of the Pokémon video game software has captivated even the hearts of the animation production staff. They are all of Kubo's generation, but Pokémon is a game that touches people across generations, from school children to those in their 30s and 40s, and is nothing short of magical.
That is why Yoshikawa felt that they could not give in.
"I told the animation staff exactly how I felt. I told them that we must not be outdone by the game. First of all, I recognized that the game was amazing. So I told them that we mustn't let it beat us. The reason for this is that there was an RPG game that I thought was great, and when it was decided to make an animation for it, the game was so amazing that the animation did not properly express that amazingness. For example, the music of that game was also great, and it became so famous that you could enter the game just by listening to the music, but that's why, for example, from a music standpoint, if you use that song, the vibe is that of the game, and the game and the animation were separated. I thought we shouldn't make it like that. The first thing I said to Yuyama and Kanda was that Pokémon are in the game, and because it is a Game Boy, they are displayed on the screen but do not move. So, I told them that if they could make them move, the animation would win out. To the question of 'How do they cry?', I said that if they make them make sounds and move, then the animation wins."
Yoshikawa did not reveal the title of the animated work he cited here as an example of failure and the title of the game on which it was based, as a courtesy to those in the same sphere, but I can think of only one RPG that is famous for both its content and its music that has been adapted into animation. Indeed, that animation was very poorly received.
"In that sense, it was important that the staff had all played the game. Because we had played the game so hard, everyone imagined what this Pokémon would be like if it were moved in this way. This naturally led to the awareness that we wanted to create something like this." (Yoshikawa)
Yoshikawa points out that this kind of enthusiasm among the staff was born, in part, because of the favorable production environment.
"When you're constantly working for low pay, you get scared of having gaps, or rather, you can't have any. It doesn't happen, like, 'Oh, I've got a month free this month,' or rather, it won't. Whenever there appears to be a gap, you fill it by doing this part of a completely unrelated work. If you keep doing that, you will never get to the point where you are seriously thinking about how you are going to create this project. I think there is a problem with the system, but that is something that OLM has improved a lot."
In other words, in the case of Pokémon, there was an environment in which the staff could enjoy the creative process of animation. Incidentally, the environment here means, in other words, the availability of financial leeway, and the main reason OLM was able to provide the staff with the favorable production environment that Yoshikawa pointed out from the pre-broadcast production stage, when it was still unclear whether it would be a hit or not, was that ShoPro, the client for Pokemon, was a production company that, in principle, paid production costs in advance.
Normally, production fees for animation are paid by the TV station to the production company at the end of the month following the broadcast date, via an advertising agency. Many companies wait until the production fee is paid before paying the production fee to the animation production company, which is responsible for the actual production of the animation. In such cases, however, the actual production of the animation usually begins five to six months before the broadcast date, so the animation production company has to endure six to seven months of personal funds until the first production fee is paid.
However, ShoPro took on this responsibility and made the first payment as early as December 1996. The total amount of production costs that ShoPro paid in advance before the start of broadcasting amounted to just under 200 million yen. Moreover, these advance payments are not recoverable until after the program has aired. This is something that no production company can imitate.
[OLM]
OLM Inc. is the official name of the company. It is headquartered in Komazawa, Tokyo. The president is the aforementioned Mr. Okuno. Although an emerging force in animation production companies, the company has assembled a top-notch staff for the Pokémon cartoon and is producing under ShoPro. In the case of animation, directors and scriptwriters are often hired on a contractual basis from freelance workers, and the production company does not need to be large to produce the work. OLM Digital, a digital video production company, is an affiliate company.
As for the production fee that ShoPro paid to OLM, Kanda said the following.
"Generally speaking, when making animation for television, there is a point where emphasis is placed, and it is usually on the number of animation cels. In the case of Pokemon, there are 3,500 sheets in 30 minutes. This number is a kind of industry-wide standard line for TV animation production. Depending on the episode of Pokemon, there are instances that require a lot of sheets, but there is no need to squeeze into the 3,500 sheet line. And, what is extravagant is that in addition to Yuyama, there is another director, Hidaka Masamitsu, so we have two directors. Yuyama is the chief director. There are six episode directors. What was really good about having this structure was that even when we were working on theatrical animations or special shows, there was always TV work to be done every week. It is impossible for one person to do both film and TV work at the same time. In that sense, I think we are blessed that we have a situation where key personnel overlap to some extent. Animation is absolutely manual work, so it is impossible to reduce the number of staff, and if there is room, we would like to have a large number of staff. I believe that the more staff we have, the better."
[Hidaka Masamitsu]
Director and episode director.
Born on October 19, 1960. His notable works are POWER DoLLS, Buttobi! CPU, and Wild Knights Gulkeeva. Robot action is his specialty genre. He lives and breathes Pokemon battles.
This story from Kanda suggests that the production costs are at least not cheaper than the market rate, but at the same time, it also suggests that they can afford to take measures to build a system to protect the quality of the work. However, the fact that there is talk of films, etc., suggests that, with the exception of the talk of the number of animation cels, this is not limited to the beginning of the project, but should be considered the current situation. It may have been that production costs increased after the series became a hit.
Furthermore, ShoPro would make up the difference between the production costs paid by TV Tokyo and the actual production costs required once the program was broadcast, which amounted to almost one-half of the actual production costs required. In other words, the production cost paid by TV Tokyo was only one-half of the production cost of the animated Pokemon. This is another testament to the extraordinary enthusiasm that ShoPro and Shogakukan put into the production of the anime.
As we have said many times, there was no guarantee that Pokémon would be a great success in the field of character merchandising. The large expenditure by ShoPro was already foreseeable at the planning stage of the animated series, and even further back, it would have been a big gamble to see if it would be profitable. As Itou Asura Benimaru of Creatures, who was initially opposed to the animated series, said:
"By the time the broadcast began, I had the impression that Pokémon's popularity had stabilized."
ShoPro must have been relieved to see that, but up until then, they had continued to invest upfront, taking a huge risk.
Given that, I can only assume that someone was still quite strongly convinced of Pokémon's success. In Shogakukan, that would be Kubo. I asked Kubo about it.
"Yes, I was convinced. I have a list of 21 checkpoints that must be in place for characters to be a hit, and Pokémon fit all of them. When I played the game myself, I thought it was excellent, and even looking at it objectively, I knew there was no way Pokemon would not be a hit. If you put up high-level visuals against that, it would be a landslide victory."
So said Kubo with a smile, and added a few more words.
"Still, the scale of the landslide victory I imagined at the time was very modest compared to the actual success."
[Animation Production Costs]
For animated television series programs, production costs are paid in a variety of ways. However, there are different systems of payment, which I will introduce below.
System 1
The TV station pays the entire production cost. This is a common practice among NTV affiliates. In return, the TV station often asks for a share of royalties and copyrights. While the production company is grateful for this, the TV station also has a stronger say in the matter, which can be a mixed blessing?
System 2
The TV station's production costs do not cover all the actual production expenses. This is a common practive among TV Tokyo affiliates. In many cases, the production cost from the TV station is about half of the total production cost, and Pokemon is a similar example. An animated program cannot be made unless the agency provides the commercial fee from the program sponsors. If the name of the advertising agency is included in the copyright, it is safe to assume that the program is being produced under this system.
System 3
The animation production company or its production investment group produces the program with full production costs. This is a common practice among projects by major studios such as Hollywood and late-night animation programs. Since late-night programs have low sponsorship amounts to begin with, production costs from TV stations cannot be expected. Therefore, many productions rely on profits from video sales. Since the distribution of profits from video sales to the various rights holders would make the scheme untenable, the production side inevitably has to fully fund the production. In the case of imports of foreign productions, the only production costs in Japan are for dubbing and rights handling. Since there is no way to receive production costs from TV stations, in many cases the production side fully funds it.