The Pokemon Movie: The Phenomenon - The Pokemon Phenomonon Explained - Pokemon - http://maxpages.com/poketowncheats/The

The worldwide phenomenon of Pokémon encompasses the fastest-selling Game Boy game as well as the #1 rated TV show on Kids WB! along with best-selling books, music and videos. The phenomenon continues to spill over into sales of licensed merchandise, including a best-selling toy line and a hugely popular card game seen in notebooks of kids all across America. Fan excitement thrives on the Internet - web sites, official and otherwise, proliferate. Pokémon" is the sixth most-searched-for word on the Internet.
Now, "Pokémon: The First Movie" brings the Pokémon experience to American movie screens for the first time.
Originally animated in Japan, Pokémon: The First Movie" had to be virtually reimagined for American audiences. Nintendo, which owns all rights to Pokémon in America, brought 4Kids Entertainment on board to handle all the creative aspects of essentially "Americanizing" the movie.
4Kids Entertainment's Norman Grossfeld, along with Michael Haigney and John Touhey, dramatically rewrote the script, incorporating all-new story elements. Grossfeld explains, "Our first challenge was to rewrite the film and dub the new script over the footage. We also rescored the entire movie with all new music that would better reflect what American kids would respond to."
The all-new musical score was produced by John Loeffler for Rave Music. Loeffler composed the score with Ralph Schuckett. John Lissauer and Manny Corallo collaborated with Loeffler on the score for the short "Pikachu's Vacation." The soundtrack for "Pokémon The First Movie" will feature a soon-to-be-announced line-up of some of the hottest-selling young recording artists of 1999, including M2M.
With time available to fine-tune, Shogakukan Production Co., Ltd. digitally enhanced the backgrounds exclusively for the American release to give the story a more striking and dramatic presentation.
Additionally, the filmmakers worked to translate everything on the screen to English, from signs on buildings to street names, to ensure that American moviegoers would not miss out on any part of the Pokémon experience.
"The resulting film," continues Grossfeld, "combines the visual sense of the best Japanese animation with the musical sensibility of Western pop culture."
The Pokémon phenomenon began in Japan in 1996, with Nintendo inciting a national craze when it introduced software for its Game Boy portable video game system called "Pocket Monsters." Created by the young award-winning game software designers Satoshi Tajiri and Tsunekazu Ishihara, the game quickly rose to the top of the highly competitive Japanese game market.
The interactive, role-playing game of Pokémon (its officially shortened name) offered young players (called "trainers") a chance to capture an ever-increasing number of collectible species (now officially 151 with Mew) and engage in Pokémon battles with other trainers. The trainer's goal is to increase his status through battles with other trainers until he earns the ultimate badge of honor by becoming "The World's Greatest Pokémon Master."
The simple task of capture becomes less so in the complex world of Pokémon, as each creature possesses its own special powers and abilities based on its connection with certain elements (earth, wind, fire, water). Trainers must not only exhibit manual dexterity, problem solving and strategizing skills to win battles, but must commit to memory an ever-growing catalogue of arcana about which strategies best which. Trainers are also admonished to teach and care for their captured Pokémon in order to become more successful. To complicate matters, captured Pokémon can evolve and become even more powerful.

What differentiated this game from software games past was the imaginative and multi-layered world (and its inherent mythology) created for the players/trainers, which itself was based on 20th century tools of advanced technology. Also, although trainers engage in "battles" with their captured species, vanquished Pokémon are simply knocked unconscious, not killed. Industry watchdogs likened the game to "a Mensa version of rock/paper/scissors."
The wildly successful game spawned a series of Japanese comic books in Japan and in turn a line of toys, trading cards and eventually, a smash-hit television series. Nintendo of America purchased the rights to the entire Pokémon franchise.
Gail Tilden, Vice President, Product Acquisition and Development for Nintendo of America, remembers, "We saw the fervor this game generated in its young players and the genuine affection they felt for the Pokémon, such as Ash's favorite, Pikachu. It also encouraged teamwork and cooperation among trainers. Nintendo felt that American children could appreciate the same qualities that made Pokémon such a tidal wave experience in Japan-it literally saturated their cultural landscape." The unstoppable force of Pokémon was about to hit American shores. Immediately after Nintendo imported the show, 4Kids Entertainment, Nintendo's exclusive agent for the television series, home video and merchandising, dubbed it into English.
It began showing in syndication in September 1998 and within a few months shot to the top of the ratings chart for children's programs. Nintendo strategically launched the Pokémon video game to American consumers a few weeks later. Other merchandise (trading cards, comic books, videos, compact disks) followed. The video game has sold upwards of 4 million Nintendo Game Boy games in the United States, with the Pokémon game cartridges topping all others in the first and second best-selling slots.
Pokémon has since become the largest child-driven phenomenon of the decade, striking American shores with the force of a tsunami. Kids' WB! purchased the television show and debuted it on February 13, 1999. Until recently, the show aired in syndication and now runs exclusively on the network. It is the #1 series on broadcast television among Kids 2-11, 6-11, Boys 2-11 and Boys 6-11.
Back in Japan, the first Pokémon feature film (produced by Shogakukan Production Co., Ltd.) was released. Surpassing "Godzilla" at the Japanese box office, it scored fourth in total box-office receipts for the year.
On November 12, American kids got their first glimpse of Ash, Pikachu and the rest of the gang's first big-screen adventure in America. Pokémon: The First Movie' brings the popular Pokémon characters to an even wider group of viewers, who will learn for themselves what makes Pokémon red-hot," comments Alfred Kahn, Chairman and CEO of 4Kids Entertainment and Executive Producer of Pokémon: The First Movie."

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Page Updated Wed Apr 5, 2000 4:40pm EDT