Sometimes you hear about something and realize the trajectory of your life could have completely changed if one thing had happened differently. Or, I guess in this case, two things had happened differently. For years now, there’s been a story circulating online in Pokémon spaces about Nintendo of America allegedly asking Game Freak to give Pikachu, the lovable little yellow guy who would go on to become one of the most prominent pop culture mascots of all time, human-like breasts when bringing Pokémon over to the west. If that had happened, the world would be different, and I probably wouldn’t have a job here at Kotaku because I would have likely never been allowed near Pokémon as a child and gone on to become hyperfixated on the rest of nerd culture. This story has been disputed because of what some deemed a questionable translation, but Japanese outlet Game*Spark went looking and found the original interview and it sounds like, yeah, someone at Nintendo wanted Pikachu to have giant bazongas to appeal to Americans.
Automaton’s translation breaks down the findings and the translation disputes. The 25-year-old interview with Pokémon Company CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara includes a story about how Nintendo of America thought that Pikachu and company were “too cute” and might need a redesign to appeal to Americans’ edgy sensibilities. Pikachu’s redesign was described as “a tabby cat with huge breasts,” similar to what you might see in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats, but the Japanese word “mune” is used here, which can be used to refer to either pronounced pecs or the presumed mommy milkers, which led to the aforementioned dispute. However, when the interviewer asked if this design was “like those girls who do Pikachu cosplays at anime conventions,” Ishihara said, “Yes, exactly.”
Ishihara said that it was an interesting thought experiment and made him appreciate the cultural differences between the Eastern and Western audiences, but he thankfully turned down the design, we got the little yellow guy unchanged, and Pokémon still became a cultural phenomenon over here. That’s not to say that monster taming franchises can’t also have sexualized designs and be successful. Digimon has several humanoid monsters like Angemon and Angewomon that appeal to people looking for that, but Pokémon’s longevity is tied to how timeless its characters are and how every new generation of kids can jump into it from anywhere. That certainly hasn’t stopped them from creating humanoid Pokémon over the years, but the visual identity of those characters has remained child-appropriate. The franchise already had to weather enough bullshit from people trying to paint it as some kind of gateway to evil. Imagine if it was also having to fight against parents accusing it of trying to corrupt children’s minds with sexual imagery. Good thing that never happened, right?
