Why do you think Pokemon in Japan decided to release their ‘old back’ series TCG cards with English script on the back?
Correct me if i’m wrong, but wasn’t their release intended solely for the Japanese market?If so, i can’t see the point behind the decision to place English script on their cards. I wonder if the Japanese player/collector base were annoyed at that fact.
What do you guys think?
Maybe it was a “cool” thing to do, similar to how non-mandarin speaking people like to get random mandarin words tattooed?
Or maybe they recognized the need to be identified on an international level, hence opting to have the english writing on the back. It is worth noting that even in Japan, the franchise is known as Pokemon (Pocket Monsters); if they had not anticipated an international audience, they could have easily just used the nippongo equivalent of those words.
English is pretty ubiquitous in Japan and around the world for that matter. Every major street sign is subtitled in English. It’s also a common way to stylize logos, similar to how a Chinese restaurant stateside might have the characters paired with the English name. Lots of Japanese media uses English in the title, especially anime and manga. Check out the original Japanese logo:
Yeah, it’s kinda cool thinking about it. I actually like how they have adapted it into their title in this particular case, it just feels like it fits and i guess the Japanese themselves probably feel so too. I think it is a contrast to how Western, English speaking cultures would accept it if the shoe was on the other foot though. Personally, i never was much of a fan of the Japanese script that was added to the M Charizard and Venusaur EX’s from Evolutions for example, it just didn’t feel right.