As of next year, the Pokémon series will have been around for 30 years. As Nintendo and The Pokémon Company begin to transition to properly adult care of this venerated franchise, one thing is becoming abundantly clear: Pokémon still appeals to audiences of all ages.
Some fans (like yours truly) have been attached to the pocket-sized monsters since 1999, when Pokémon Red and Blue first released in the West. Others have come later. Notable landmarks are: Generation 5, which debuted with Black & White, released for the Nintendo DS in 2010 and introduced a whole new PokéDex; the release of Pokémon Go in 2016 that took the entire world by storm because of its low barrier to entry in terms of series knowledge and cost to play; Generation 8, lionised by Sword & Shield in 2019, which released for Nintendo Switch and reached a whole new audience thanks to the console’s obscene reach; and just last year – 2024 – thanks to the barnstorming success of card-game revamp, Pokémon TCG Pocket.
To see this content please enable targeting cookies.
You’ve effectively got three to four whole generations of gamer invested in Pokémon right now; from people in their mid-30s and older that tried searching under trucks for Mews on their Game Boys to the kids that experienced the giddy thrill of tearing open a booster pack of cards on their phone as their parents lament at the bills IAPs rack up on their credit cards. The result? A franchise that is worth an estimated $101.9 billion as it splits into three distinct categories: $91.6 billion for ‘retail sales’, $8.93 billion in mobile games, and $1.156 billion from box office takings. Pokémon is worth more than Star Wars, Marvel, and Call of Duty put together.
And more than Detective Pikachu, more than the animated films, more than the endless anime series that use its name, there is one piece of cross-media genius that I think sums up the Pokémon ethos more than any other: the relatively new Pokémon Concierge. Where the anime series wrestle with mild peril and some paper-thin character development, and the films are focus-tested to within an inch of their lives, Pokémon Concierge takes it slow.
The show – realised in gorgeous stop-motion thanks to the work of long-time Netflix collaborators Dwarf Studios – is plot-light and easy-going. It’s an inspired and artisanal bit of artistic craft (like all stop-motion, in my opinion), and gives us the most ‘dirt under the fingernails’ look at the Pokémon world I think we’ve ever had. Instead of following the events of a world-threatening calamity, or zeroing in on the coming-of-age foibles of a young boy and his pet mouse, the show simply takes nearly 80 minutes to soak in the everyday lives of Pokémon as a very tired woman tries to recover from burnout.