The Pocket Monsters (1997) animated series' original trio of Satoshi, Kasumi, and Takeshi was broken up in 1999 when the gang went to the Orange Islands, with Takeshi being swapped out for a young Pokémon Watcher named Kenji. Rumor has it Takeshi got the boot because the show's producers were afraid the Pokémon Breeder would be rejected for being a racist stereotype of Japanese people, but is that really the full story?

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The timeline

Let's establish a timeline real quick before we dive into the reasons for Takeshi's departure.


We know that negotiations to bring the Pokémon franchise over to the U.S. -- including its animated series -- wrapped up shortly after New Year's 1998 thanks to the Japanese book Pokémon Story. From Page 414:

The teams were in the middle of negotiations when that incident with Episode 38 of the Pokémon TV series took place. しかし、その交渉の最中に、ポケモンのテレビア ニメによる事故が発生したのです。

Later, on the same page:

When it comes to the press, Americans have a saying "there is no such thing as bad publicity." And so ironically, the fact that more than 700 children fell ill from watching an animated TV show ended up thrusting words like "Pokémon" and "TV-Tokyo" onto the world stage, albeit not in the way production would have preferred. ア メリカのメディアは 「良いニュースも悪いニュースもニュースはニュース」 という考え方が一般的です。皮肉な事実ですが、テレビアニメの放送を見ていた子ど もたち700人以上が倒れたという事実は、ポケモンとテレビ東京の名を、一気に世界中に認知させるという、制作グループの気持ちとは裏腹の効果があったの です。 And so the negotiations were settled. Things were to get rolling after the new year, in 1998. そして、交渉は妥結しました。年が明けて 1998年になってからのことでした。

With that, the Pocket Monsters animated series is now officially headed to America. By mid-January The Summit Media Group, the subsidiary 4Kids Entertainment assigned to actually sell the show to the various TV stations across the country, was already getting to work. From Pages 428 and 429:

"We got right to work as soon as the ink had dried on the contracts with Nintendo of Japan, ShoPro, and Nintendo of America. The sales team took the animated series with them to NATPE (pronounced "Nappy"), a video contents convention held in New Orleans on January 19th, 1998. Animation is a big seller at this convention, you know. The goal was to sell 'Pokémon' to each syndication network, one by one, until the show was airing on enough networks to cover at least 90% of the country." 「NCLと小プロとNOAの間の契約合意後、す ぐに活動を始めました。セールスは、1998年1月19日からニューオーリンズで開かれた、NATPEと書いてナッピと呼ばれる映像関係のコンベンション に、アニメを持っていって始めました。アニメの売買が盛んなんですよ。目標は、シンジケーションの放送局一つずつに売っていって、全米90パーセント以上 をカバーしようということでした。広大なエリアですけど、やる以上はそうしないと効果がないんでしょう」

Back in Japan, production on the franchise's first movie and the later half of the Kanto portion of the TV series all continued onward, and it wasn't long before the cartoon started thinking about the American version that was about to come out. The episode "It's Children's Day! Everyone Gather Around!," for example, embraces Nyarth's newly revealed localized name several months before the English dub was even a thing.


Once Kanto started to wrap up it was time to start thinking about the next chapter of the TV series. The Memorial Book of Orange Islands, a guide book to the 30-ish episodes that make up the Orange Islands portion of the first Pocket Monsters series, has a section in the back featuring production artwork for nearly every episode of the saga.


The one for the episode where Takeshi's replacement first appears, "Go Help Laplace," includes this character sheet for Kenji.


The date printed on the bottom left-hand side of the sheet reads "August 27th, 1998," meaning production of that episode started in the Summer of 1998. The completed episode would end up debuting on February 18th, 1999, roughly six months later.


So, the decision to officially bring Pocket Monsters to the U.S. happens in January 1998, and the design of Takeshi's replacement is completed sometime before the end of that summer (though the character himself was likely conceived well before then). The English dub didn't debut until September of that year, so that means Takeshi's departure was put into motion months before the show had even had a chance to debut in the U.S.

Now that we have a timeline established, let's figure out what it is exactly that happened that caused the powers that be to want to replace Takeshi with Kenji.

The claim

The claim, like a lot of the rumors on this site's Rumor Guide, come from a game of telephone involving people vaguely remembering a summary of a translation of something someone once said.

Let's start with Wikipedia:

In the anime, Brock was one of the companions to protagonist Ash Ketchum. However, he was eventually replaced with the character Tracey Sketchit. His removal was controversial, leading to fan outcry that caused him to be reintroduced to the anime. Despite them noting that they like to change up the cast in general, it was also clarified that they were worried that fans may perceive Brock as a racist stereotype by Americans, namely due to his thin eyes. This was a worry they had since the beginning of the series, and while there were no complaints, they anticipated controversy. Furthermore, the company specifically included Tracey, wanting to include a "tall, Anglo-Saxon looking person to be on the safe side." They ultimately decided to introduce Brock again due to the lack of complaints and their personal affinity for him

A lot of this seems to be lifted directly from a two-part article posted on the Pokémon fansite PokéBeach entitled Interview with Masamitsu Hidaka at Anime Expo and Second Interview with Masamitsu Hidaka – Many Interesting Points! In this interview, conducted at the Anime Expo convention back in July 2008, Pocket Monsters (1997) director Masamitsu Hidaka is asked various questions about the animated series, and Takeshi's departure from the show was one such topic.

I would state my question, the translator would tell him what I was asking, he would give a long response, and then they would summarize his answer in a few sentences. So, the responses I post here are based off the translator's summary of what he was stating, and are not too in-depth.

This level of transparency is commendable. And when you read the article in its entirety (and not just the snippets included in this write-up), the casual, conversational style of the writing makes it clear this is meant to be a fun read that makes you go "huh, I didn't know that" before moving on with your day.

In Part Two, Second Interview with Masamitsu Hidaka – Many Interesting Points!, a summary of the translator's summary of what Mr. Hidaka had to say about Takeshi's departure from the show is provided:

This next paragraph is rather interesting. I asked him why they dropped Brock like a rock in the Orange Islands, and if they ever intended on his absence being temporary. He started to explain that they like to "switch up" the cast once in a while, and that was their first time doing it. Then I made sort of a "that's obvious" face, and he started to talk for quite some time to the translator. The translator began to explain that the Japanese crew felt that Brock might be viewed as racist by the American people because of his eyes, and that they were even fearful of it when Pokemon first came to America. I asked if anyone ever complained, and he said no, but it was just that they were worried someone might eventually. So, they brought in a tall, white, Anglo-looking character to replace him, just to be on the safe side. Going back to the first interview with Mr. Hidaka, he had said they had to consider other countries when Pokemon started to go global, so this mentality fits even here, especially with the whole Jynx incident. So then I asked, "Why did you bring him back?" and he responded that "we realized no one really cared about it and liked Brock, so we brought him back." It appears that if they had not changed their decision, Professor Ivy might have been Brock's true soul mate.

This kind of telephone game is fine for the quick little read the post is obviously meant to be, sure, but as a primary source of information it just doesn't quite cut the mustard. Without being able to go back to the original source -- Mr. Hidaka's own words, either translated word-for word or presented in their original Japanese -- we aren't able to really say how much of this is accurate and how much of this may have been tweaked by any one of the several filters placed before us. The only direct quote we get from Mr. Hidaka is "we realized no one really cared about it and liked Brock, so we brought him back," but the rest of this is, when you get down to it, is really a case of "just trust me, bro."


What did Mr. Hidaka say that ended up getting summarized as him feeling "that Brock might be viewed as racist by the American people because of his eyes," exactly? Did he use words like 白 人 (white person) or 外国人 (foreigner) or 欧米人 (Caucasian or Anglo-Saxon) or maybe some other word entirely? Did Mr. Hidaka really list being "tall" as one of Kenji's "advantages" over Takeshi, despite the fact that Takeshi is generally depicted as being the tallest in the group? We simply do not know, and because of that there are a lot of questions about how much of this we should really be taking at face value.

In Part One, it's worth noting, we do get this comment:

Luckily, I recorded the entire interview and have a friend like Bangiras who can translate Japanese, so she is going to hopefully translate his full-blown responses at a later time if there is anything significant he mentioned.

As far as I know, this recording -- or a transcript/translation of said recording -- has never been made public. I'd be more than happy to take a listen to it and update this write-up if it ever ends up seeing the light of day, but until then I'm afraid we're going to need to look elsewhere for solid evidence of why Takeshi left the show.

So why was Takeshi removed?

When it comes to the sources we actually can verify for ourselves, we've got a few leads. One is the article "Pikachu Wandering over the World" from the June 2000 issue of the magazine Bungei Shunjuu. The article, written by animated series producer Masakazu Kubo, has a section called ”Completely Localized" (撤底したローカライ ズ) that talks about the changes made to the animated series when it was brought over to the U.S.


From Pages 347 - 348:

We had this character, Takeshi, and it was pointed out that he's not going to be popular in the U.S. because of his small eyes, so he was taken out of the show, even in Japan, before the series started airing in America. But after the show debuted we saw that Takeshi was actually pretty well liked and so he was brought back a little while later. This is a pretty well-known story among fans. タケシというキャラクターが、あまりに目が細い という理由でアメリカでは人気がでないと指摘され、アメリカ放送前だったにもかかわらず日本でも途中降板させたことがありました。放送後、実は好評である ことがわかり、しばらくして復活したというのは、ファンの間では有名なはなしです。

Here, we have a few elements of the Wikipedia entry, broadly, but a lot of the major details -- the idea there was any "fan outcry," the worry that Takeshi would be received as "a racist stereotype by Americans," the desire to include a "tall, Anglo-Saxon looking person," the idea that Takeshi was brought back because of the staff's "personal affinity for him" -- are all missing from this account.

The other piece of evidence we have comes from former head writer Mr. Takeshi Shudo's blog How to Craft a Story: Takeshi Shudo, How Anyone Can Become a Screenplay Writer (シナリオえーだば創作術 だれでもできる脚本家 首藤剛志).  Here's what Mr. Shudo had to say about the subject in an entry from the year 2009, No. 185 Onward to the Second "Pokémon" Movie:

And then another issue came up. We got word that the show's upper management wanted to remove Takeshi as a regular member of the cast. The reason they gave was because of the shape of Takeshi's eyes. Almond-shaped eyes make people aware that he's an Asian, and an anime where Asians appear can't be successful in the West. So make it so he doesn't appear, they said. But I wouldn't say this was racism or anything like that. I just think the idea that Westerners wouldn't accept Asian-looking characters to be old-fashioned. I don't know who ordered it but I remember thinking the whole thing was stupid. Later, upper management noticed that Takeshi was surprisingly popular in the West and so they allowed him to be brought back. さらに困ったことが起こった。 レギュラーメンバーのタケシが、上層部の意向で 消されてしまったのである。 理由は、タケシの目が細いということである。 細目は東洋人を意識させる。 東洋人の出るアニメは、欧米では受けない。だか ら登場させるな、である。 人種差別とはいわない。しかし、僕は、東洋人が 欧米で受けないという感覚が古いと思った。 だれが言い出したか知らないが、馬鹿じゃないか と思った。 その後、タケシが意外に欧米人に人気があること に気がついた上層部は、タケシを復活させた。

This blog entry is also, for what it's worth, the quote most Japanese fans use when discussing the topic online.

The original claim, the one believed by so many fans in the West, is that Takeshi was removed from the show because the powers-that-be were afraid Americans would think Japan was being racist by drawing Takeshi with "Japanese-y" eyes, that they would think he looked too much like one of those racist World War 2 cartoons from the 1940s and then reject the show because of that. But Mr. Shudo's comment here paints a different picture entirely; they thought Americans themselves were too racist to accept a Japanese looking person as a main character.

Character ethnicities

This whole line of thinking comes down to the age old debate about the ethnicities of the characters in Japanese animation.


To your average Westerner, the characters in most Japanese cartoons simply do not look "Japanese," and there are a lot of theories as to why that is. "Japanese animators have an unhealthy amount of self-loathing," or "White beauty standards are just so incredibly pervasive in much of Asia," or "there's this thing called "mukokuseki" that Japanese animators strive for"...the list goes on and on. And as someone who's been talking about Japanese animation in some form or another for over a quarter of a century, I've seen pretty much every explanation in the book, but a deep dive into these arguments reveals that they always, without fail, boil down to the fact that Japanese animators just do not draw Asian people the same way Western animators draw Asian people. It honestly isn't any more complicated than that.

Still, to most Westerners, Sailor Moon is a blonde haired blue eyed white girl. To most Westerners, Goku being played by a white guy in that one live action movie wasn't that big a deal because it's not like the characters in Dragon Ball even look Asian to begin with. To most Westerners, Scarlett Johansson as Major Kusanagi works because c'mon, she's just a cyborg. And to most Westerners, it's easy to project "Whiteness" onto Ash Ketchum because he certainly doesn't look Japanese.

Characters like Satoshi are generally seen as "safe" because most Western viewers don't think he "looks" Japanese. But Takeshi? Takeshi actually does look like a Japanese person, or at least the way Westerners draw Japanese people anyway. And, well, it seems that the Japanese producers of Pocket Monsters saw that as a potential roadblock to the show becoming successful in the West.

We all know now that they were completely off the mark, but in the context of 1998 it's easy to see how those Japanese bigwigs might have stumbled toward that conclusion. Whitewashing in Western media is still very much a thing. And in the late 90s you could probably count on one hand the number of Hollywood movies or TV shows that featured Japanese people (or Asians in general) in anything even close to a leading role. Asians weren't getting cast as leading actors; they were getting cast as the nerdy sidekicks, or the wise martial artists who impart wisdom to the film's (white) main characters, or the femme fatales. And even when they were in lead roles, they often found themselves as the butt of a lot of racist jokes. The month Pokémon debuted in the U.S., for example, the number one movie in America was Rush Hour, a film packed with so many offensive stereotypes that it now airs on TV with a disclaimer. Things are getting better, little by little, but we've still got a ways to go.

Takeshi Strikes Back

Thankfully, the overly anxious Japanese men Mr. Shudo talks about on his blog were dead wrong about how Westerners would react to Takeshi. It soon became obvious that the Japanese side greatly misread the way Americans would react to the character and so, in an episode that would have gone into production in the middle of 4Kids' first season, Takeshi was brought back to the show, where he would remain as one of its main characters for years and years to come.


As for why he was removed in the first place? Well, based on what we are able to independently verify, at least, the answer seems to be a bit different from what Western fans have been believing all this time.