A recent viral reddit post claimed that when Pokémon was being localized for the overseas market, the staff at Nintendo of America proposed a design of a Pikachu with “huge breasts.” However, many users pointed out that the story was likely based on a mistranslation, and the post has since been removed by the moderators of the subreddit due to the information being “not verifiable.” However, Japanese media outlet Game*Spark went on to investigate whether the claim was actually true – and they suggest that the “huge breasts” bit may not be a mistranslation after all.
As many Reddit users claimed that there was a possibility of the Japanese word mune (胸), which can mean both “chest” and “breasts,” being mistranslated given the context, Game*Spark searched for the original source of the statement. They found an old interview from around the Gold and Silver era, in which The Pokémon Company CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara shared an interesting episode about the time they were trying to localize Pokémon for the US.
“When I first showed Pokémon to them, they told me it was too cute. The staff at Nintendo of America then suggested their own designs for the characters – I won’t show those illustrations to anyone as long as I live, but they kind of looked like the characters from the Cats musical. So, for example, Pikachu was changed into a character shaped like a kind of a tabby cat with huge breasts.” At this point, it’s still not clear whether the Japanese “mune” simply refers to pronounced pecs or feminine breasts, but the continuation gives important context. The interviewer proceeds to ask whether the proposed design was “like those girls who do Pikachu cosplays at anime conventions.” Ishihara replied, “Yes, exactly, they presented that kind of design to us for real. I thought it was interesting, in a sense of appreciating such cultural differences. However, I didn’t want to compete in the [overseas] market with that kind of thing.”
Based on the exchange, Game*Spark suggests that the “Pikachu could have had boobs” story wasn’t a misunderstanding, and that Ishihara was actually shown a Pikachu design reminiscent of a “sexualized cosplay.” On the flip side, during Nintendo’s financial results briefing in 2008, late president Satoru Iwata stated that during the initial discussions regarding bringing Pokémon to overseas audiences, they were shown an image of an extremely muscular Pikachu, with an explanation that “Monsters should look stronger and scarier.” Game*Spark notes that this statement contradicts what Ishihara said in his interview, suggesting that there were possibly two different designs presented by Nintendo or America, or perhaps that the design had both of the features mentioned – muscles and large feminine breasts. It seems, though, like those illustrations were quite traumatic for the staff at GameFreak and Nintendo, so it is very unlikely that we’ll ever be getting to see them.
