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In December 2000, Japanese publisher Nikkei BP released the book Pokémon Story (ポケモンストーリー) in Japan. This hefty 543 page beast of a book goes through the early history of the franchise, from the formation of Game Freakthrough Pocket Monsters Red & Green's development, the franchise becoming a national sensation, and Pokémon's break into a worldwide phenomenon. Pokémon Story was put together from interviews with various people related to the franchise conducted by author Kenji Hatakeyama, with an early portion of the book stating that just the interview transcripts alone come in at over 800 pages. Masakazu Kubo, one of the producers of the animated series, also contributes.
Pokémon Storydedicates three whole chapters to the Pokémon Shock incident. The first chapter, "Children fall ill -- The Incident Occurs," gives a detailed timeline of what happened both leading up to and then immediately after the airing of Pocket Monsters Episode 38. The second chapter, "Hiatus," deals with the aftermath of the show getting taken off the air and how all the people involved with the franchise found out about the incident. The third chapter, "Wrapping Up the Incident," describes the work required to get Pokémon back on TV and what effects (if any) the scandal had on the brand's reputation.
There is such a huge amount of information in those three chapters that I thought trying to consolidate it all into a single website page wouldn't quite be enough. So I decided it'd be easier to just translate the whole thing directly.
And so that's exactly what I did! Click on the link below to open a PDF file with English translations of all three of the chapters of Pokémon Story related to the Pokémon Shock incident. This book contains the most comprehensive history of the incident I have ever come across and so I am confident you'll come away from this knowing way more about the events of December 1997 - April 1998 than ever before.
Back to the front page of the "Pokémon Shock" Feature
