2009年12月号（10月23日発売）のAERA Englishでアン・アリソンのインタビュ ーを掲載 しています。ぜひ、ご覧ください。

12月号の詳細はこちら：
http://www.aera-net.jp/english/091023_001225.html
購入はこちら：
http://publications.asahi.com/ecs/detail/?item_id=10876

Anne Allison Interview Transcript

Q: I read your thesis on Pokemon and it's really fascinating. And, we were very surprised actually that Pokemon is so popular in the States... We don't know much.

A: It was popular. I mean, I think it peaked. The real peak was 2000, but it's still, I mean, like, in Japan the cartoons are still on television there are still fans, there are still cards. But it was an incredible boom. And, I think for some kids, I mean, anime and manga have been popular for a while, but Pokemon, you know, reached kids that were even younger. So kids who started with Pokemon have grew up already familiar with, you know, Japanese popular culture and then maybe diversified and went into other, you know, properties. So commercially it was a much bigger thing than most anime or manga. But still, I mean, the word otaku is used in America too, but for little kids you're not going to call them otaku. We have fandam, right you know, and fandam was really pretty massive. And so it was, I think, for that reason it was really important in Japan. But there was a property that crossed over into the mass audience, so it wasn't just peripheral, I mean pop culture wasn't just peripheral, it was really mass. So that is, in part, what my book was about.

Q: So you couldn't call children otaku, American children? (laughs)

A: Well what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think that would be weird, wouldn't it? To call... I mean it is almost as if you start playing when you're four or five, you can't... it's almost as if you don't have that much consciousness about being a fan. I would imagine that otaku wouldn't start until.. you know the word... you wouldn't identity as an otaku, until you are about nine or ten. Right? I think that would be my sense, yeah.

Q: Well, how do you, well, it was written in your thesis, but could you please explain why Pokemon had such a mass appeal in the States, to kids in the States.

A: Well, that's a really important question. I've interviewed a lot of people and people had different answers. So it is uh.. so what people would say... and then I can tell you what I think... but a lot of people have said it's a good property. I mean it was a good property, and it was elastic. I mean it.. it stretched over cartoons and cards and games, gameboy games. And so it had... it was a media mix, is what they call it. Also it went, because it had these different kinds of media, portals to it. Kids could start playing, they could start playing one media at a certain age and stick with it four or five years later. And, you know, usually kids start with cartoons, cause it's a story, it's a narrative and then they would jump usually to the games or to the cards, which, you know, is collective. It's... so that's a different kind of fantasy that's a different kind of game. It then attracted girls and boys, young kids and older kids, some adults, so it was elastic in that sense. And I think the marketing was really smart. I mean, I think they marketed it really well. So when it was first was launched in the United States, they launched it not in New York not in California-that are kind of cool places and much more cosmopolitan-but in the heart of America, in Kansas.

Q: In Kansas!?

A: Well, get this, they launched it in Kansas, in Topeka and they renamed Topeka, Topikachu, for one day, for one day.

Q: Oh really? For one day!? Who has the authority to do that!? (laughs)

A: Well, you know, isn't that funny, it was launched by Nintendo, isn't that kind of clever. So they launched it in Kansas and they had Pikachu flying down from, you know, they launched these parachuting Pikachu. They had VW Buses that were called, what were they called, like Pikachu or Poke... I can't remember now what they were called... there were VWs that went all over the country promoting Pokemon. Then they sent off to Toys R Us a promotional video that was also explaining what this is... it is a Japanese property, but this is how you play it. So it was very clever. The marketing was very clever. They didn't try to Americanize it, because everyone knew it was Japanese. I mean, unlike previous properties like, you know, Power Rangers was totally Americanized and a lot of American kids didn't even know that it was Japanese. Everyone knew that Pokemon was Japanese. But the promotion was trying to explain Japanese pop culture to American kids and to American parents. So they wouldn't be freaked out about it. And I think that's, to answer your question, I think all of that was clever and it was careful and so people found Japanese, the introduction to Japanese culture, not intimidating which was incredibly important. I think previous generations, you know, Americans are pretty ethnocentric and Americans really cling to their own version of pop culture because they are so proud of Hollywood and Disney. And so there is kind of... if you look at American television there are not a lot of foreign television not a lot of foreign shows, it doesn't happen. But Pokemon kind of started, I mean, it wasn't Pokemon alone, there were other shows before that, but Pokemon was on primetime television Saturday morning and it opened up the gates, so after that if you turned on Saturday morning television, which is the time that's kids television, you'll find a lot of shows that are either Japanese or Korean or Chinese or American shows but they are set in "the Orient." Yeah so well that's good, but it's also like America is making "the Orient," or "Asia," which is sometimes what it is called, Pokemon was, I think, really important. It really kind of massified what had before been a small, narrow interest in Japanese popular culture.