Pokémon
Japanese media franchise
Pokémon is a Japanese media franchise consisting of video games, animated series and films, a trading card game, and other related media. The franchise takes place in a shared universe in which humans co-exist with the eponymous creatures, a large variety of species endowed with special powers. The franchise's primary target audience is children aged 5 to 12, but it is known to attract people of all ages. Pokémon is estimated to be the world's highest-grossing media franchise, with the video games in particular being among the best-selling.
The franchise originated as a pair of role-playing games developed by Game Freak, from an original concept by its founder, Satoshi Tajiri. Released on the Game Boy on 27 February 1996, the games became sleeper hits and were followed by manga series, a trading card game, and anime series and films. From 1998 to 2000, Pokémon was exported to the rest of the world, creating an unprecedented global phenomenon dubbed "Pokémania". By 2002, the craze had ended, after which Pokémon became a fixture in popular culture, with new products releasing to this day. In 2016, the franchise spawned a second craze with the release of the AR game Pokémon Go, developed by Niantic.
The franchise is managed by the Pokémon Company (TPC), which was established in 2000 by the joint owners of the franchise: original video game series publisher Nintendo, Trading Card Game developer Creatures, and Game Freak.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Pokémon” is japanese media franchise. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Pokémon, Japanese and media, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q864. VIAF identifies the subject as 192610673. The Library of Congress control number is no99066432. 1 of 9 selected statements include explicit references; 7 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pokémon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.