In a recent episode of their podcast, former Nintendo of America staffers Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang discussed details about what they called the “adversarial relationship” between NOA and the US arm of The Pokémon Company.
The pair discussed tensions between the US teams while looking back on the origins of the first Pokémon Day in 2016 on episode 159 of the Kit & Krysta Podcast (thanks, NintendoEverything).
The result of various factors — including Pokémon pronunciation issues — the former Nintendo employees describe an “adversarial energy” and a “layer of competition” that produced a “tug of war for control” around brand messaging and other details. One amusing point of contention apparently involved former president of NOA Reggie Fils-Aimé’s pronunciation of a particular Pokémon in a video which irked TPC, but the NOA team refused to re-record. Another episode involved Pokémon ice sculptures which also didn’t meet with the company’s approval.
Here’s a transcript from the relevant section of the conversation (check out the time-stamped video below if you’d like to watch and listen yourself):
Kit: We really can’t undersell the kind of at times adversarial relationship that there was because, you know, like [it] kind of depended on what branch you were dealing with because like we would interact with Game Freak developers when they would come over and they were great and wonderful and very sweet and nice. Even like The Pokémon Company in Japan, when you would get a glimpse of them, they seemed okay, but it was really the US teams that were very [*hits fists together], and there were really a lot of butting heads moments.
Krysta: Well, some of the people that were on the US Pokémon team used to work at Nintendo. There were several of them that had to leave their jobs at Nintendo because they moved the Sales and Marketing Office […] There was a little bit of salt, a little bit, I think, at some times. And there’s this layer of adversarial energy, but also this layer of competition, which was very prevalent throughout the NOA regions. We talked about and we joked around a lot about how it was always NOE and NOA [*hits fists together], like fighting to the death for attention from daddy NCL or whatever, like sibling rivalry.
But there was definitely that kind of energy a little bit between the US Pokémon Company and NOA as well. There was this kind of tug of war for control. It was like, ‘Well, if you guys are talking about video games, you got to involve us. We need to be able to make sure that this shows properly on our systems. We need to make sure that we have involvement.’ And they’re like, ‘Well, we’re not talking about video games, we’re talking about the brand, so you can’t be involved. So go away, stop talking to us.’ So it was like that relationship around it that made it a little tension.Kit: It was also, again, this is something that changed around this time, but , you know, ‘Letter of the Law’ versus ‘Spirit of the Law’, where we were cracking down on your pronunciations, and we would have Reggie do a video, and they’re like, ‘Reggie needs to re-record this.’ We’re not going to re-record. It’s close, it’s Reggie, like we can’t get on his schedule again. You’re just going to have to deal with it. ‘Oh, we’re going to hold a grudge about this! Oh, we’re really mad!’ And they were melting down my beautiful ice sculptures! Like, ‘Oh, Oshawott’s toenail isn’t quite to proportion. Melt ’em all down.’ […] There was a lot of stuff of that ilk.
Nothing wrong with a little healthy competition, although in this case it seems to have caused upset on both sides. We must say, we’d be intrigued to see pictures of the offending sculptures!
Check out the full episode below for more behind-the-scenes peeks at the origins of the Pokémon Day presentation, the most recent of which gave us a better look at the upcoming Pokémon Legends: Z-A.
