Zepper's Anime Discussion

Hey this is Zach and i'll be talking about Pokémon (ポケモン Pokemon^?, /ˈpoʊkeɪmɒn/ poh-kay-mon^[1][2]) is a media franchise published and owned by Japanese video game company Nintendo and created by Satoshi Tajiri in 1996. Originally released as a pair of interlinkableGame Boy role-playing video games developed by Game Freak, Pokémon has since become the second-most successful and lucrative video game-based media franchise in the world, behind only Nintendo's own Mario franchise.^[3] Pokémon properties have since been merchandised into anime, manga, trading cards, toys, books, and other media. The franchise celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2006,^[4]and as of 28 May 2010, cumulative sales of the video games (including home console versions, such as the "Pikachu" Nintendo 64) have reached more than 200 million copies.^[5] In November 2005, 4Kids Entertainment, which had managed the non-game related licensing of Pokémon, announced that it had agreed not to renew the Pokémon representation agreement. Pokémon USA Inc. (now The Pokémon Company International), a subsidiary of Japan's Pokémon Co., now oversees all Pokémon licensing outside of Asia.

The name Pokémon is the romanized contraction of the Japanese brand Pocket Monsters (ポケットモンスター Poketto Monsutā^?).^[7] The term Pokémon, in addition to referring to the Pokémon franchise itself, also collectively refers to the 718 known fictional species that have made appearances in Pokémon media as of the release of the sixth generation titles Pokémon X and Y. "Pokémon" is identical in both the singular and plural, as is each individual species name; it is grammatically correct to say "one Pokémon" and "many Pokémon", as well as "one Pikachu" and "many Pikachu".^[8] However, Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow feature NPCs referring to the plurals of Clefairy and Diglett with an "s" at the end, shown "CLEFAIRYs" and "DIGLETTs", respectively. This was fixed in FireRed andLeafGreen.

The concept of the Pokémon universe, in both the video games and the general fictional world of Pokémon, stems from the hobby ofinsect collecting, a popular pastime which Pokémon executive director Satoshi Tajiri enjoyed as a child.^[9] Players of the games are designated as Pokémon Trainers, and the two general goals (in most Pokémon games) for such Trainers are: to complete the Pokédexby collecting all of the available Pokémon species found in the fictional region where that game takes place; and to train a team of powerful Pokémon from those they have caught to compete against teams owned by other Trainers, and eventually become the strongest Trainer: the Pokémon Master. These themes of collecting, training, and battling are present in almost every version of the Pokémon franchise, including the video games, the anime and manga series, and the Pokémon Trading Card Game.