Thread: Is anyone else bothered by this?

I was recently on the official Pokemon website when I noticed something rather disturbing:
nowhere on the website is there ANY mention of Pokemon Adventures.

There are large sections for the games (of course), the anime and even the TCG, yet there is no place (that I'm aware of, or if it does exist it must be in a very obscure location) that promotes Pokemon Adventures. Considering it's well-established and relatively popular outside of Japan, I'm surprised that it doesn't have a section.

Part of Pokemon Adventure's licensing belongs to Viz Media. It may not seem like it matters much, but it actually does with a lot of things (Example: Like how UDON couldn't include Mega Man Battle Network and Starforce tribute art in their tribute art book because of related manga and anime licensing owned by other companies, including Viz). That's probably one of the reasons why, or at least what I think. That or they simply don't care enough, but I think it's mostly because of Viz.

Not really. While Pokemon Adventures is probably the most popular Pokemon manga in the U.S., it isn't really the one Pokemon manga series out there. Part of the issue why it isn't up on the site could be from Viz, but it's also possible that Adventures just isn't as popular, or profitable, compared to the video games, anime and the card game. It would be cool if it was mentioned on the official site, but it doesn't bother me that it isn't there.

Yeah, it's not like there's going to be a lot of news updates about it (compared to the games, anime and cards anyway), so I don't mind too much that there's no section for it on the website. I do wish it would get a little more recognition though. I absolutely adore the Pokémon Adventures series, and wish more people did too. Idk about in the US or Japan, but in the UK most Pokémon fans I know of don't really know about the manga.

Originally Posted by chella182

Yeah, it's not like there's going to be a lot of news updates about it (compared to the games, anime and cards anyway), so I don't mind too much that there's no section for it on the website. I do wish it would get a little more recognition though. I absolutely adore the Pokémon Adventures series, and wish more people did too. Idk about in the US or Japan, but in the UK most Pokémon fans I know of don't really know about the manga.

It already gets enough recognition.

So much that it completely overshadows all other Pokemon manga, making people think that there's only one.

Originally Posted by Eitarou

Originally Posted by chella182

Yeah, it's not like there's going to be a lot of news updates about it (compared to the games, anime and cards anyway), so I don't mind too much that there's no section for it on the website. I do wish it would get a little more recognition though. I absolutely adore the Pokémon Adventures series, and wish more people did too. Idk about in the US or Japan, but in the UK most Pokémon fans I know of don't really know about the manga.

It already gets enough recognition.

So much that it completely overshadows all other Pokemon manga, making people think that there's only one.

That's because of poor localization and marketing. Pokemon Adventures overshadows all other Pokemon manga because there's plenty of Pokemon manga that didn't get translated into languages other than Japanese, and there's also quite a few manga that did get translated by Chuang Yi that still had very limited releases.

For what it's worth, the official Japanese Pokemon site doesn't mention any of the manga either. So it's not just a North American thing.

Last year I asked pokemon.com through their support system if they could add a manga section. I said that they would only have to add those Pokémon mangas that are currently in print by VIZ (which at the time was Pokémon Adventures, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Adventure! and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Ginji's Rescue Team.) (I forgot about the movie mangas, because I have never cared about those). I also said that they would only have to copy the same description that is found at the back of the volume in question, add the volume's cover and it's release date. My arguments were that if Pokémon fans knew that Pokémon mangas existed the sales would increase and it would promote reading.

Pokemon.com gave me the same generic copy-paste answer as in my three other unreleated support questions. Unfortunately the support request has expired and is no longer available in my support history, but if I remember correctly the answer was exactly the same as this:

Originally Posted by Pokemon.com staff

Hello, [insert first name here]!

Thank you for contacting Pokémon Support. We see you have some feedback for us.
We value our customers’ opinions and appreciate your feedback. We have taken note of it but cannot guarantee that it will be implemented or put into practice. We appreciate your enthusiasm and dedication to Pokémon. If you have any further issues please create a new ticket and submit it through our Support Center.

Thank you for playing Pokémon!

Sincerely,

Pokémon Support Team

But yes, I definetly think that there should be a manga section at pokemon.com that gives equal attention to all Pokémon mangas (and by that I mean that all mangas have their own subsection visible from the main manga page).

As I said before I don't think it would be much work maintaining a manga section at pokemon.com. Just copy the description from the volumes, add the volumes cover, release date and possibly a link to store.viz.com and / or Amazon.com. It's minimum work that could probably be done by one worker in a day and i think that the increased profits in manga sales that the section would generate would be higher than that one employee's daily wage. (I'd love if they'd also add VIZ's out of print Pokémon manga series too, like The Electric Tale of Pikachu, Magical Pokémon Journey and the previous movie mangas. But the one thing I hope they never add to the site is the bs known as ani-mangas.)

Originally Posted by Isamu Akai

Part of Pokemon Adventure's licensing belongs to Viz Media. It may not seem like it matters much, but it actually does with a lot of things (Example: Like how UDON couldn't include Mega Man Battle Network and Starforce tribute art in their tribute art book because of related manga and anime licensing owned by other companies, including Viz). That's probably one of the reasons why, or at least what I think. That or they simply don't care enough, but I think it's mostly because of Viz.

Originally Posted by Hidden Mew

Part of the issue why it isn't up on the site could be from Viz

And about VIZ being the problem:
The Pokémon Company benefits from manga sales because they get a cut of the profits. It's their franchise after all. VIZ might not be the smartest publishing company out there but I don't think they'd say: "No, we absolutely don't want our Pokémon mangas to be featured in their own section on one of the world's largest Pokémon websites for free." Besides, if I'm not mistaken, VIZ is the company that owns the rights to th Pokémon anime DVDs and those rights might be worth even more than the rights to the mangas, yet pokemon.com has never had any problem advertising Pokémon anime DVDs.
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Ginji's Rescue Team has been featured on pokemon.com around the time of it's volume release. In it's article they linked to VIZ's website. And look they also had a section on pokemon.com named VIZ Comics back in 1999 that featured The Electric Tale of Pikachu.

Originally Posted by PokeAwesome94

Last year I asked pokemon.com through their support system if they could add a manga section. I said that they would only have to add those Pokémon mangas that are currently in print by VIZ (which at the time was Pokémon Adventures, Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Adventure! and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Ginji's Rescue Team.) (I forgot about the movie mangas, because I have never cared about those). I also said that they would only have to copy the same description that is found at the back of the volume in question, add the volume's cover and it's release date. My arguments were that if Pokémon fans knew that Pokémon mangas existed the sales would increase and it would promote reading.

Pokemon.com gave me the same generic copy-paste answer as in my three other unreleated support questions. Unfortunately the support request has expired and is no longer available in my support history, but if I remember correctly the answer was exactly the same as this:

Originally Posted by Pokemon.com staff

Hello, [insert first name here]!

Thank you for contacting Pokémon Support. We see you have some feedback for us.
We value our customers’ opinions and appreciate your feedback. We have taken note of it but cannot guarantee that it will be implemented or put into practice. We appreciate your enthusiasm and dedication to Pokémon. If you have any further issues please create a new ticket and submit it through our Support Center.

Thank you for playing Pokémon!

Sincerely,

Pokémon Support Team

But yes, I definetly think that there should be a manga section at pokemon.com that gives equal attention to all Pokémon mangas (and by that I mean that all mangas have their own subsection visible from the main manga page).

As I said before I don't think it would be much work maintaining a manga section at pokemon.com. Just copy the description from the volumes, add the volumes cover, release date and possibly a link to store.viz.com and / or Amazon.com. It's minimum work that could probably be done by one worker in a day and i think that the increased profits in manga sales that the section would generate would be higher than that one employee's daily wage. (I'd love if they'd also add VIZ's out of print Pokémon manga series too, like The Electric Tale of Pikachu, Magical Pokémon Journey and the previous movie mangas. But the one thing I hope they never add to the site is the bs known as ani-mangas.)

That's an extremely good point. As someone who does web design for part of her job, I can say that it would probably take about a day's work (or less) for a good web designer to implement that. The amount of work/pay it would take would definitely be outweighed by the amount of money Game Freak would make off it.

Originally Posted by Isamu Akai

Part of Pokemon Adventure's licensing belongs to Viz Media. It may not seem like it matters much, but it actually does with a lot of things (Example: Like how UDON couldn't include Mega Man Battle Network and Starforce tribute art in their tribute art book because of related manga and anime licensing owned by other companies, including Viz). That's probably one of the reasons why, or at least what I think. That or they simply don't care enough, but I think it's mostly because of Viz.

Originally Posted by Hidden Mew

Part of the issue why it isn't up on the site could be from Viz

And about VIZ being the problem:
The Pokémon Company benefits from manga sales because they get a cut of the profits. It's their franchise after all. VIZ might not be the smartest publishing company out there but I don't think they'd say: "No, we absolutely don't want our Pokémon mangas to be featured in their own section on one of the world's largest Pokémon websites for free." Besides, if I'm not mistaken, VIZ is the company that owns the rights to th Pokémon anime DVDs and those rights might be worth even more than the rights to the mangas, yet pokemon.com has never had any problem advertising Pokémon anime DVDs.
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Ginji's Rescue Team has been featured on pokemon.com around the time of it's volume release. In it's article they linked to VIZ's website. And look they also had a section on pokemon.com named VIZ Comics back in 1999 that featured The Electric Tale of Pikachu.

Another extremely good point. I forgot all about the fact that VIZ owns the rights to the anime DVDs.

Originally Posted by Dogasu

For what it's worth, the official Japanese Pokemon site doesn't mention any of the manga either. So it's not just a North American thing.

*looks at site*
Interesting. I really want to check out that "N" thing, but Firefox doesn't automatically translate things like IE does (it got "quarantined" by my college since I was using it for torrenting, even though I didn't actually do anything with the torrent or the torrenting program...long story) and I'm too lazy to look up a translator, since it's late at night, I haven't gotten much sleep lately and I have an exam tomorrow.

By the way, your icon is SO adorable! Where did you get it?