Cram Adventures Into a Pocket

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

This page goes highlights the statements made by the show's staff when Cram Adventures Into a Pocket was first announced on August 30th, 2023. The statements below are translations of the ones that can be found on the show's official website.

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."

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