As I mentioned in my Life Log for 21 November, I've been getting back into the DS library. I've since ordered and received a DSi, but since that wasn't in the best condition and is now being repaired by a friend of a friend, I've yet to truly delve into the games from my childhood or any of the other games I might want to play in that library. However, I did end up looking up certain games within the Pokémon series in particular, namely Pokémon Ranger, and eventually decided to look up Pokémon manga on my manga reading site of choice. Lo and behold, I found out that they had a bunch of Pokémon manga, including the subject of today's article. I remember hearing about it in the past, but I had no idea there was a translation and, after seeing it was only 7 chapters long.
"Satoshi Tajiri: The Man Who Made Pokémon" was originally published in 2018 and is entirely told from Tajiri's perspective. From what I could find online, it was not written by him, but, given the style and earnestness with which it was written, there is very little doubt he at least had a hand in its creation. Shigeru Miyamoyo wrote the final chapter, which acts as an epilogue to the main story, which at least confirms that someone close to Tajiri was involved with the creation of this manga. It follows the story of Tajiri's liife, placing emphasis on his love of bugs in childhood, his love of video games as a teenager, and eventually the creation of Game Freak followed shortly by the creation of their most famous video game: Pokémon Red Version and Green Version for the original Game Boy.
The narrative is told very well, with some slight exaggeration in terms of tone and dialogue which is somewhat in line with what you might find in a slice-of-life manga or something which similarly may aim to inspire the reader. Given 2018 was a celebratory year for Pokémon, if my memory serves me correctly, it is likely that this was made in order to celebrate said anniversary by looking back at the series' roots, but it also feels like one of those inspirational movies you see all the time about creatives 'fighting against all odds' and all that. It is equally sappy and somewhat cheesy, but I think it is short enough that it doesn't feel as trite as those films might. I think the manga, in keeping closely to the points of the story as it has been told for years, ends up being a lot better off, since it doesn't feel like it's bending over backwards to turn something mundane or awful into something inspiring. Given the usage of humor and such, I am almost certain it isn't completely accurate to how the events actually occurred, but the lack of deviation and the confirmed involvement of at least one of the people within the story leads me to believe it is at least mostly accurate. As a result of this accuracy, the narrative ends up feeling stronger and is truly inspiring, as opposed to being fake and self-centered like those so-called "inspiring true stories" are.
Accuracy, of course, isn't the only important thing, and it is with that in mind that I shall move onto the art. The art is very well-done, exaggerating when needed and keeping things grounded when it is more important to do that, instead. Everything is framed very well and I saw nothing that seemed particularly awkward or out of place. The people were expressive and pretty accurate caricatures of their real-life counterparts. Ot probably helps that I know what most of these people look like from photos and that this is a manga and not a film, thus allowing the representations of each person to be more accurate to their real world counterparts. Shigeru Miyamoto, however, looks kind of cursed, for reasons I can't exactly explain. He looks a lot more... handsome, I suppose, than he did in any of his photos from the 90s (or from the present-day, even). Perhaps his involvement in the manga meant he was allowed to demand that he look super handsome, I know I'd do the same thing if I was working on a manga featuring me in it!
Overall, this is a very fun, very sweet, and very inspiring manga, and I'd give it a recommendation to anyone interested in Pokémon, its history, or in game development in general. Honestly, it's genuinely inspiring in a way these "inspiring true stories" seldom are, it even makes me want to go out and work on a creative project with my friends. Which I would do, if I had people who wanted to collaborate with me, the time to do so, and any actual skill to back up my ideas.
On an unrelated note, here's an update regarding the blog: yes, I'm now going to classify manga under "Literary Lunatic" instead of "Media Maniac," as I did when I was discussing Death Note. I think it's more fitting that way. As for American comics and webcomics, well, that remains to be seen, since I haven't been reading much of those lately, but I suppose I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.
Further update: I am now at Chapter 25 of Death Note and will write a Literary Lunatic entry on it once I've finished the first "arc" of that manga, since I think that's a decent point to write a more in-depth entry about the story and characters up until that point.
Until then, this is Cosmos, signing out.