In How Japanese is Pokemon, there seems to be a sociologist’s point of view on how audiovisual culture was an area dominated by the United States, but then the focus turned to Japan. This dawned the era we experience now through Japan being a technological powerhouse. Japanese animation, or anime, is interesting to follow. Tobin takes note of the use of Caucasian people in anime and manga, something that I had wondered for a long time. Why would they draw or animate their heritage into that Caucasian power that draws a lot of different types of animation? Are we a dominant driving force to sell animation and comics? Some of the best comics and animations have different ethnicities, but why did Japan focus on the Caucasian ethnicity? Tobin’s use of a “cultural odor” hit another point that Americans are becoming interested in the Japanese lifestyle, but not the actual Japanese lifestyle. They are very focused how anime boys and girls are. The overabundance of the use “arigato” and “kawaii” with the blushing face isn’t Japanese. This assimilation of cultures was bound to happen, but it didn’t go with the actual culture from both sides.

On the note of Pokemon though, Tobin uses it as the example of how this cultural fusion happened. The humor I find out of this document is that Pippi was the first main Pokemon you receive in the game. Imagining a Clefairy instead of a Pikachu representing Pokemon is just unheard of. Pikachu is now a brand name for Pokemon. Anyone who sees him knows it is Pokemon.

The view on Japanese media was to integrate Hollywood and expand its global reach, along with expanding (dare I say it) capitalism. The NOA mentioned in Tobin’s work focused on most of the people involved with it are American, therefore they pick, choose, and adapt things for American distribution. I found this interesting considering that NOA is a Japanese company. Does the NOA purposely change the items being sold to either Japan or America from “cute” to “cool” and vice versa?