Pikachu was originally going to have 'huge breasts' like the movie Cats
It might be one of the biggest merchandising brands in the world today but when Pokémon was first being released no one had a clue it would be so popular.
Or at least that was true in Japan, but by the time the initial Game Boy games made it to the US they were already two and a half years old (it'd be another year beyond that before they got to Europe). To be fair, they were difficult titles to localise, with all the different names and puns, but it wasn't just that which Nintendo of America intended to change.
According to a newly surfaced interview with Pokémon Company CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara, the American marketeers wanted to make changes to how some of the pokémon looked and that included… giving Pikachu 'huge breasts'.
The interview was originally from close to the launch of Pokémon Gold and Silver, so around 1999, and according to a translation by Automaton, Ishihara's initial discussions with Nintendo of America were not what he expected:
'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.'
Nintendo of America, particularly in that period, are notorious for trying to make Nintendo characters look edgier than their original Japanese designs, most obviously Kirby, who is always scowling and angry on US box art but not anywhere else.
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Ishihara implies that major redesigns were suggested for a number of characters: '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.'
We'll let that sink in for a moment, while you thank your lucky stars that Ishihara refuses to release the pics.
Automaton notes that there's some uncertainty over the translation, and that Ishihara could've meant pecs, as in Pikachu would've been some kind of roided out nightmare monster. But his subsequent comments, when asked whether Pikachu would've looked like 'girls who do Pikachu cosplays' implies that Nintendo of America did in fact want to give Pikachu breasts.
'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.' More Trending
It's worth noting that Pokémon didn't introduce genders and breeding for all creatures until Gold and Silver and the only gendered pokémon in the original Pokémon games were Nidoran♂ and Nidoran♀. So why Nintendo of America was trying to turn Pikachu into a sexy lady is a mystery on several levels.
It's not clear when these conversations were taking place, but the Pokémon anime started in April 1997, at which point it would've been very clear that Pikachu did not look like anyone out of Cats.
Pikachu does have an unusual history though, as in the original game he was of no particular significance. It's only the anime that chose him to be the companion of protagonist Ash, thereby making him the most famous pokémon of all.
The original Japanese illustrations for him, and the other original generation of pokémon, are quite different to how they've looked in every subsequent game. Although apparently Nintendo of America wanted that difference to be even more pronounced…
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