Pokémon

"Kamo Yoshinori (2000), a U.S.-based sociologist, observes that American children who love Pokémon believe that Japan is a very cool nation that produces wonderful characters, imaginary worlds, and commodities. He sees in Pokémons success a very hopeful sign that American audiences are becoming more open to Japanese cultural values and that they are changing their image of Japan from a land that is strange and workaholic to someplace that is humane and cool. Sakurai Tetsuo (2001) also reads the success of Pokémon as a sign of hopefulness in what was otherwise a decade in Japan dominated by negative occurrences. According to Sakurai, in just a couple of years Pokémon has done more for Japans image than was accomplished up till now by Japanese literature and films or by the Japanese governments public relations initiatives abroad. Sakurai, too, describes Pokémons global appeal in terms of it being "cool."

"Although the Pokémon animation series and its Game Boy game were not created primarily for the global market, their domestic success quickly convinced producers of Pokémons potential to succeed overseas. Kubo Masakazu explains that he and the other producers of the television series believed that Pokémon would be relatively easy to localize for a global market because "the setting of the adventure explored by Satoshi and Pikachu looks mukokuseki and religion-free. It appeared easy to produce international versions by erasing Japanese language signs as much as possible" (2000b:345)."