Cram Adventures Into a Pocket

Dogasu's Backpack | Features | Cram Adventures Into a Pocket

On August 30th, 2023 The Pokémon Company announced, seemingly out of nowhere, that a live action series "Cram Adventures Into a Pocket" (ポケットに冒険をつめこんで), or "PokéTsume" for short, will begin airing on TV-Tokyo starting October 20th.

TV-Tokyo's official site for the new series describes the series:

Starting October 20th and airing every Friday morning at 12:30 am

"The first original live action drama based on the Pokémon video games!"

The main character in this Pokémon-themed human drama, "Cram Adventures Into a Pocket," moves to Tokyo to follow her dreams and begins a journey of grown when she starts playing the "Pocket Monsters" video game for the first time in 20 years.

That main character is played by the Pokémon super fan Nanase Nishino!

If you're looking at the Japanese version of this announcement, you may notice it states the show's Airedale as October 19th at 24:30. This is a unique quirk of late night TV in Japan, where they'll allow airtime listings to go past the 24:00 mark to convey what we in the West would simply convert to "12:30 am." For simplicity's sake, I've converted all the times in my translations to the Western style.

Ever since the video games went on sale in 1996, Pocket Monsters, or "Pokémon" for short, has grown into this huge multimedia franchise that covers things like animated series and trading card games beloved by people of all ages. And now, TV-Tokyo has joined forces with The Pokémon Company to develop the very first live action Pokémon-themed drama!

Pokémon is something everyone's heard of, something that people encounter every single day. The main character of our story is a young woman named Madoka who grew up playing Pocket Monsters Red with her older brother ever since she was little. Now that she's an adult, she gets her hands on the Pokémon video game for the first time in a long while and it's through that chance encounter that small changes begin to occur in her life. Playing the role of Madoka is someone who's been keeping up with the Pocket Monsters series ever since she was a kid, the Pokémon super fan Nanase Nishino. Ms. Nishino is a former member of the girl group Nogizaka 46 who has gone on to appear in numerous video projects and stage shows in the years since. She's had remarkable success as an actor, including winning the Best Supporting Actress Award and Best New Actor Award at the 45th Japan Academy Awards show. This show links the Pokémon video games to the everyday encounters we have with friends and with our own growth and is the kind of heart-warming, comical show that only the Pokémon loving Nishino is able to deliver.

One Piece fans may recognize Ms. Nishino's name; she played the role of Alba in One Piece Film: Gold.

The story starts here! Madoka starts playing Pocket Monsters Red again after 20 years

Madoka Akagi (Nanase Nishino) grew up in Masshiro, a port town in the Kanto Region of Japan. After graduating from local university, Madoka starts working at a company that makes fish paste, but her long-held aspirations to one day be a creator leads her to start working at a small ad agency in Tokyo called ADventure. Madoka came to the big city with lofty dreams, but it turns out that real life isn't so easy...her days end up being completely different from the sparkling wonderland she had envisioned. And if that wasn't enough, she's assigned to give a presentation at work that'll decide the fate of the very company itself! One day, Madoka receives a package from her mother who's still back home. Inside is the Game Boy Pocket she used to play with as a kid and her copy of Pocket Monsters Red...

And so she starts playing Pocket Monsters Red for the first time in 20 years. And the game seems like it's jam packed with the things that make life so important!? It's here that the curtains rise on the world's very first "Pokémon Human Drama," a show where its main character learns and grows through Pokémon!

The show "Cram Adventures Into a Pocket," or "PokéTsume" for short, is both filled with enough Pokémon to excite any Pokémon fan and is also able to be enjoyed by those who maybe aren't so familiar with it but who may want to start Pokémon on their own.

The name of Madoka's hometown, "Masshiro" (真っ白), translates to "pure white." It's not at all unlike Masara Town ("Pallet Town" in the English localization), which means "brand new."

Actor's Comment: Nanase Nishino (Madoka Akagi)

I was talking with my friends one day about how "Someday, I wanna work on something to do with Pokémon" and so imagine my shock when I heard about this show just a few days later.

I've played most of the games from the first generation all the way to the newest games, and so as one of the members of the generation of adults who've grown up with Pokémon I was just ecstatic.

The character I play, Madoka Akagi, is someone who mobilizes into action and who can take shocking developments and grow from them. The first time I talked with the producers they told me that they "want to stress that you're not the 'star' of the show, you're its 'main character," and I thought that was so interesting. I made sure to keep that in mind whenever I stepped onto set.

The people at the company Madoka works at, ADventure, are all very friendly and have a good time laughing it up, both out in the field and in the break room. Each and every employee has a strong personality that also fits in well with the others to make them an unbeatable team! To borrow a phrase Madoka uses, I think her colleagues might be some of the "select few."

As the show's title suggests, "Cram Adventures Into a Pocket" has "adventure" as one of its themes, and so during this adventure those of you who've played Pokémon before will be able to see Madoka and her friends evolve while also saying things like "that takes me back" or "is that...!?" while also noticing all the small references hidden here and there. We hope you'll enjoy it.

Producer Koichi Uruma (TV-Tokyo)

The world famous Pocket Monsters is becoming a live action TV series! There've been a lot of original series based on all sorts of things over the years but I never thought I'd see the day we'd get one based on Pokémon of all things! I'm so incredibly grateful!

Our show is centered around the video games Pocket Monsters Red & Green that came out 27 years ago. Through its main character Madoka Akagi, played by Ms. Nanase Nishino, we'll see a human story about how her coming in contact with Pokémon for the first time in a long while gradually changes both her work and personal life. When I was a kid I remember playing video games with other kids my age on the stairwells of the apartment complex we lived in, and how those video games were what got us talking to each other. Communication is a very important aspect to TV shows as well and so we made ours about the adventures Madoka and her friends have on a day-to-day basis.

Since everybody knows Pokémon we felt a lot of pressure about creating something its fans will like. But when we were in our writers' meetings we'd have a lot of fun talking about the Pokémon video games, and the first time I met Ms. Nishino we also got really excited talking about Pokémon! It was just like a TV show, where two people could use Pokémon to bridge the age gap between them and become friends.

If you've never played Red and Green before we've put in references to later entries as well, and of course those of you who've never even touched a Pokémon game in your life can enjoy the show based on its story.

We hope you'll enjoy this story of friends, adventure, and personal growth!

Planning / Screenplay / Producer Shota Hatanaka (Babel Label)

I still remember going to my local game shop 27 years ago to buy a copy of Pocket Monsters Green the day it came out. I started from Green and have been playing the new games as they come out, all the way up to Scarlet, but I never thought the day would come where I'd get to both plan and write for the first live action television series based on the Pokémon games.

Our story centers around a young woman named Madoka Akagi who comes across her old copy of Pocket Monsters Red for the first time in 20 years. After dusting it off and picking it up again she's able to discover some of "life's small hints" in the game, gradually changing her daily life into a series of little "adventures." Types, training, evolutions, trading...a "Pokémon/Human drama" is born out of the wild idea that it may be "possible there are all these important life lessons crammed into this tiny Game Boy cart?" The colorful cast of characters our hero Madoka's surrounded by share some of the same backgrounds at the characters in Pokémon, filling the show with all sorts of things fans of the games can enjoy and creating a TV show like no other!

The main character is played by Ms. Nanase Nishino. When we all first got together to go over the show's story I was struck by how she started talking to everyone about their favorite Pokémon more than the actual show itself. It made me feel like we absolutely made the right choice in casting Ms. Nishino to play our Madoka Akagi.

Everyone on the show's staff, from the entire cast to the directors to the screenplay writers to the producers, we've all come together to make this show as huge fans of Pokémon. We hope you're excited for the show that made us feel like we were kids again, "Cram Adventures Into a Pocket."

Show Name

Thursday Midnight Drama "Cram Adventures Into a Pocket"

TV Network / Air Time

TV-Tokyo, TV-Osaka, TV-Aichi, TV-Setouchi, TV-Hokkaido, TVQ Kyushu
Starts October 20th, airing every Friday morning from 12:30 am ~ 1:00 am JST

BS TV-Tokyo, BS TV-Tokyo 4K
Starts October 25th, airing every Wednesday morning from 12:00 midnight - 12:30 am JST

Streaming

Streaming exclusively on U-Next
U-Next: https://t.unext.jp/r/tv-tokyo_pr

Streams with ads on the free service "TV-Tokyo on the 'Net" (TV-Tokyo's homepage, TVer)
TV-Tokyo's homepage: https://video.tv-tokyo.co.jp/
TVer: https://tver.jp/

Starring

Nanase Nishino

Based on

The "Pocket Monsters" video game series

Planning / Production

Shota Hatanaka

Screenplay

Shota Hatanaka
(TV-Tokyo "Mass Produced Liko," "The Truth is in your Ears," "Zetsumeshi Road"

Atsuki Tomori
(TV-Tokyo "The Truth is in your Ears," "Eating Crabs with the Snow Woman," "If It Suits Your Ears")

Tomohiro Otoshi
(TV-Tokyo "The Bullet Train That Saves the World," "If It Suits Your Ears")

Directors

Paul Young
(TV-Tokyo "Mass Produced Liko - The Story of the Assembly of Another Plastic Girl," "Train Nerd Michiko - 20,000 Kilometers," Movie "Ghost Master")

Takayuki Hayashi
(Movie "From Dawn to Midday at Sea," Movie "Mirrorliar Films / I Think I'll Be There," ABEMA "Lemmings in the Miniature Garden")

Takeshi Matsuura
(TV-Tokyo "I'll Be Fine in the Afterlife 3," "Would You Like to Da Capo?" BS TV-Tokyo "Twilight Yusaku")

Producers

Koichi Uruma (TV-Tokyo), Ayaka Masai (TV-Tokyo) Hideyuki Wakuta (C&I Entertainment)

Production

TV-Tokyo, C&I Entertainment

Production Committee

The "Cram Adventures Into a Pocket" Production Committee

Official X (Twitter)

@poketsume　https://twitter.com/poketsume

Official Instagram

@tx_poketsume　https://www.instgram.com/tx_poketsume/

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