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Precis: " Portable monsters and commodity cuteness: Pokemon as Japan's new global power" (2003) by Anne Allison

In her work, “Portable monsters and commodity cuteness: Pokemon as Japan’s new global power” (2003), Anne Allison traces how the distinctiveness of this phenomenon’s playscape (Pokemon), just like other kid-oriented products such as anime (sailor Moon), tv shows (Power Rangers), digital toys (tamagotchi), and gadgets (Walkman) among the few which originated from Japan over the recent years, is often encapsulated in a notion that Japanese call ‘kawaisa’ (cuteness), which in turn became the image brand sought in a Pokemon era capital. She explains this by defining the position of ‘cuteness’ as national export and cultural capital, particularly in Pokemon where the game has been marketed successfully without the restrictions of gender, being open-ended which allows for multiple ways to play the game as well as personal customisation, and that the game’s narrative and mechanics allow for an “international common culture” which captured the interest of the international market. This is supported by historical analysis that the children’s entertainment industry not only survived, but expanded, in the post-Bubble period. And the increasing awareness of Pokemon as product of Japan allowed for an emergence of interest towards Japanese culture. In the end, Allison concludes that Pokemon has been and continues to be a success among Japan’s cultural industries as it combines imagination and cyber-technology to attract and captivate its targeted market (kids), whom are presented with challenges and strategies that mirror the new global workplace and millennial landscape, though presented with a cute factor, thus garnering the approval of the parents or guardians as somehow educational even if it is exotic to their own generation. This made it more known that children entertainment and marketing has spread deeper into the global economy, pioneered (to the effect of creating a huge impact) by the cuteness that is presented by Pokemon. This work was written with the intention of explaining a phenomenon that shows the relationship of social acceptance, economy, and cultural capital that it may have been written for future researchers or students of international studies, economics, media studies, and socio-anthropology.

(December 12, 2016)

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