Who ever thought Pokémon was from America when they were younger?

M

Midnight Blue

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When i was younger when i first started playing Red and Blue And watching the anime. I thought Pokémon really came from the United States. It was b/c I was so little i did not understand the concept that there was other countries out there. I actually like Pokémon more when i thought its was from the USA. Is that crazy?
 
I always thought that it was from Japan but then i got really confused during the episodes which were set in western stylised towns with cowboys and guns. Not being American this was the stereotypical image i had of America as a kid, therefore i got really confused when there were these images i associated with America in a Japanese show.
 
guilty as charged. Took me a while to learn it was from Japan, since I know Nintendo has offices in Redmond.
 
ya, i figured out Pokemon was from japan during the first time i EVER played Pokemon in RSE years, ahh yes RSE, anyway i looked up Pokemon on Wiki when i was stuck at a spot and i found out it was japan ^^, ahhh yes Japan XD
 
To be honest when I was younger, I didn't have one idea about where video games came from, I mean country wise. I think I figured that they were created and put on the market, without thinking where they originated from. It could also because I didn't really care where they originated from.

All I knew is Pokemon came from somewhere. I didn't know though that the games I played at the time were actually released months earlier in Japan. To be honest, I don't remember when I found out they were in Japan, possibly when Munchlax was revealed in Japan possibly, but maybe earlier than that.

It's not as bad though as getting slightly miffed about the third gen when no new Pokemon had appeared in the anime (Note- Because I had no cable/satellite there was no way I could keep with the anime). I must've thought the anime came first or something at one point and I remember getting mad when a commercial for Ruby and Sapphire came out.

I remember thinking something like "What they can't just make up Pokemon like that?" Luckily that type of thinking didn't last long at all, and I tolerated the 3rd gen more and more and didn't mind it. And when Munchlax was revealed I was actually excited because "Hey New Pokemon, Sweet"
 
Guilty as charged ^^" I only found out about 3 years ago when I discovered the internet...
 
Erm, no, I was taught about other countries and wasn't too arrogant to think that America was the centre of the universe (even though I don't live there)
 
Sort of, I really didn't think about it. Then my friend told me that Pokémon was made in China, and I was surprised (didn't know anything about Japan). XD I learned about Japanese animation a little after Digimon started airing here, I think.
 
Like I ever thought of that. First it just was on tv and cards (some of which were english, others Dutch), and when I started playing the games it was just "english" (because of the language). I never have thought of it as American.
 
I knew right from the start that Pokémon was Japanese. My introduction to it came courtesy of a quick blurb in the September 1998 issue of Disney Adventures, which mentioned that the video games and anime were already big in Japan and were about to be introduced to America that month. Thus, even when I was a kid, it always bugged me when people tried to pretend that Pokémon was anything other than American. I remember I'd read up on Japanese culture, then draw my own Pokémon stories that referenced things like oden stands and tea ceremonies and the annual Bon Festival and stuff like that. I always felt that Pokémon should embrace its heritage, not try to conceal it.
 
Jesse GS the II said:
I knew right from the start that Pokémon was Japanese. My introduction to it came courtesy of a quick blurb in the September 1998 issue of Disney Adventures, which mentioned that the video games and anime were already big in Japan and were about to be introduced to America that month. Thus, even when I was a kid, it always bugged me when people tried to pretend that Pokémon was anything other than American. I remember I'd read up on Japanese culture, then draw my own Pokémon stories that referenced things like oden stands and tea ceremonies and the annual Bon Festival and stuff like that. I always felt that Pokémon should embrace its heritage, not try to conceal it.
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I agree with you, I generally dislike it whenever things make themselves American.
 
ii kanji said:
ITA. I think I can single-handedly blame 4Kids and their stupid dub of the anime on my ignorance.
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This.



I knew it was a Japanese show from the beginning since I watched the English dub and Chinese dub pretty much simultaneously. And "Mezase Pokemon Master" played in the beginning of the Chinese dub x]

Then maybe 2-3 years ago I just started watching raws.
 
I'm in the "always knew it was Japanese" camp. Were Japanese card imports big in the areas you guys lived? It was here, and Japanese cards were always considered something valuable* so everyone was aware Pokémon originated from Japan and its original title was "Pocket Monsters".

There's also the fact that I've always been a research nerd who needs to know everything about everything and there were about one million unofficial Pokémon magazines and guidebooks on the shelves during the fad stage, many of which gave a recap of the franchise's history up to that point. At the age of eight or nine, I began using the Internet to learn more and ended up finding a bunch of spoilers about the anime. Guess things don't change that much.

*I stole one from a kid for God's sake; as well as American cards from different kids. I was a brat as a little kid. :p
 
I might have known it was Japanese to begin with, but Pokemon was the first game I recognized as being from there, it wasn't until later that I found out almost all my games came from there. I was introduced to Pokemon by the anime, so that might've been why I knew. I knew anime was inherently Japanese. The first time I actually saw screenies of the orginal Japanese version of the games, it was in an issue of Nintendo Power, I think. It was for the second gen. I did not see the raw Japanese anime until much later, searching Youtube and Filb.de.
 
I'm not sure...I don't think I ever really paid attention to or cared about where Pokemon came from back then. I'm sure a part of me assumed it was from America since I was only, like...seven years old when I first got into Pokemon, and I had no idea about the concept of anime or that TV shows could even come from other countries. ^_^; But like I said, I don't think I even paid attention all that much.
 
I always knew it was from Japan, mainly because the games were made by Nintendo and Nintendo is in Japan.
 
When I first started watching the anime and playing RBY I didn't know where it came from. I knew it wasn't from America or Finland, but aside from that I didn't really care.

I have no idea when I realized it's from Japan, but I remember playing the Japanese version of Crystal (in which I never got far due to not being able to understand a thing).
 
Yeah, I made this mistake a couple of times while playing the games. It wasn't until I started watching the anime on TV where I thought "Woah, that looks strangly Japanese for some reason...".
 
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