Pikachu

• 1. Introduction

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  Pikachu, the yellow mouse at the center of the Pokémon franchise, finished second in Time magazine's 1999 person of the year ranking. Only the singer Ricky Martin placed higher, and the author J.K. Rowling came in behind it. Time called Pikachu the most beloved animated character since Hello Kitty. The magazine said the ranking reflected the franchise's profits that year, which had grown from Nintendo's fastest selling video game into a trading-card empire. Nobody expected that from a creature first seen on a Game Boy screen in Pokémon Red and Blue. How did a small sprite become the public face of a phenomenon? Why did people argue over its shape, its name and even its voice? And can a character be so successful that people start to resent it?

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• 2. Squirrels and Cheeks

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  Midway through the making of Pokémon Red and Blue, lead designer Ken Sugimori realized the game needed more cute creatures. He could not think of any himself. He blamed his male perspective and brought in women from the Game Freak staff, including Atsuko Nishida.

  Nishida was given three firm guidelines. The new species had to be Electric-type, it had to evolve twice, and its last form had to look strong. That last form became Raichu, which Pikachu reaches with the Thunderstone item. A further creature called Gorochu was planned to follow Raichu, but it was cut because the cartridge lacked space. Years later, Sugimori created Pichu for the sequels Pokémon Gold and Silver, so that the line became a trio.

  Nishida's early sketches drew on mice and rabbits. Rattata already filled the mouse role, so she turned to squirrels. She was obsessed with their comical movement at the time. Squirrels carry food in their cheeks, so she gave her creature cheeks that store electricity. The stripes on its back came from a practical thought. The back faces the player during play, and she felt something should be there rather than smooth fur. Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri later overruled the squirrel idea and made the species a mouse while he designed the setting.

  Nishida drew the original sprites in a single color identity chosen to suit the limits of the Super Game Boy. Sugimori finalized the design. Near the end of development he also drew promotional art for every species, so that they shared a unified look.

  Fellow developer Koji Nishino fell in love with the character and kept urging Nishida to make it cuter. She was happy to comply. He also made Pikachu harder to find in the original games, joking that he wanted to keep it for himself. Some on the team worried that players would not bother hunting for it. Then Sugimori showed the design to the development team, and it was instantly popular.

  The Pikachu of Red and Blue was pudgier than the one fans know now. Over time it gained a slimmer waist, a straighter spine and a sharper face and neck. Sugimori said these changes began in the anime, where the new build was easier to animate, and the games adopted it for consistency. Fans nicknamed the older shape Fat Pikachu. In Pokémon Sword and Shield, art director James Turner designed a Gigantamax form that brought that original shape back.

  Before any of those later tweaks, though, American publishers nearly changed Pikachu far more drastically.

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• 3. A Name for Two Audiences

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  Series director Junichi Masuda said that Pikachu's name was one of the hardest to invent. The team wanted a word that would charm both Japanese and American ears. The result joins two Japanese sound words. Pika is the sound of a sparkle, and chū is the squeak a mouse makes.

  When the games were prepared for the United States, staff at Nintendo of America first suggested redesigning the cute Pokémon. Tsunekazu Ishihara, now president of The Pokémon Company, recalled what they proposed for Pikachu. He described a tiger-like creature that looked to him like a character from the musical Cats. He asked how it could still be Pikachu, and they pointed to its tail. The idea was dropped, and Pikachu looked the same in the west as in Japan.

  Satoru Iwata, later Nintendo's CEO, remembered the episode differently. At the time he worked at HAL Laboratory. One of the localizers saw the Pokémon art and said that something so cute could not be called a monster, since monsters should be muscular and fearsome. The localization team drew a muscular Pikachu and asked Iwata to pass it to Game Freak. He refused. In his words, "There's no way we can show this to the people who made Pokémon."

  The two accounts disagree on who made the pitch and what the redesign looked like. They agree on the outcome. The original character survived, and the people deciding its future were already thinking about which creature should represent the whole franchise.

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• 4. The Mascot Checklist

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  Pikachu was not the only candidate for the spotlight. Clefairy was initially considered alongside it as a lead character for merchandise. Pikachu won the anime mascot role because schoolchildren loved it and it appealed to both boys and girls. Sugimori told Famimaga 64 magazine, "Some girls just collect 50 different Pikachu."

  The team also saw Pikachu as closer to a pet than a monster. They reasoned that people buying merchandise would want something they could imagine in their home. Masakazu Kubo, a member of the anime's development team, said a checklist guided the decision. The character needed a warm design, a non-threatening color, a face that could show emotion, a sound children could pronounce, and a cute look. Pikachu met every item.

  There was also a practical problem with the alternatives. The first games offered three starter Pokémon, Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle. Choosing one would have left a gap with the children who had picked a different starter.

  Commentators later added their own explanations. Yellow is a primary color, so small children recognize it easily. Pikachu's only yellow rival among mascots at the time was Winnie-the-Pooh. Susan Napier, a professor at Tufts University, linked yellow with sunshine, warmth and happiness. She said Pikachu belonged to an adventurous world that was also fundamentally reassuring. Unlike other cute mascots such as Hello Kitty, Napier noted, Pikachu leaned toward neither a masculine nor a feminine audience, which made it a more universal symbol.

  Rarity may have helped too. Matthew Byrd of Den of Geek pointed out that Pikachu was hard to find in the first games, which fed rumors passed on by word of mouth. Of all the items on Kubo's list, the sound a child could pronounce turned out to have the most unusual consequences.

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• 5. One Word, One Voice

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  Ikue Ōtani has voiced Pikachu since the character first appeared in the anime. She records new lines even when a scene sounds similar to an earlier one. Her reasoning is that without a clear plan for a performance, you convey nothing, and reusing old recordings would only make sense if the nuance were identical.

  In the anime, Pikachu says only its own name. The writers once planned for it to gradually speak human language better as the series went on, but they dropped that idea during production. Dubbing is where Ōtani stands apart. Most Pokémon voice actors change from country to country, yet she plays Pikachu in every language. Masuda explained that this keeps the name universal around the world.

  In the games, her role is more limited. Digitized recreations of her anime performance were used in Pokémon Yellow. She voiced the character again from the 2013 games Pokémon X and Y until the 2022 game Pokémon Legends: Arceus. She has also performed Pikachu for every installment of the crossover fighting series Super Smash Bros. In other appearances the game uses a digitized cry, the same kind of sound effect that represents animals throughout the series.

  Other actors have occasionally taken the role in English. Kate Bristol performed one line in Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You!, where Pikachu speaks to Ash, and she tried to copy Ōtani's style. Abby Espiritu played Pikachu in the web series Pokémon: Path to the Peak. She first assumed she was recording a scratch tape, and only later learned that she was in the actual series.

  Critics have admired how much feeling comes out of a single word. Children can tell Pikachu's emotion just from its sound. The book Anime Impact argued that the inflections helped audiences treat an animal-like character as its own person. Pikachu's most famous pairing with a human, though, depended on more than sound.

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• 6. Companion Across Screens

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  In the anime, Ash Ketchum's Pikachu starts out disobedient. After Ash saves it from a flock of Spearow, it warms to him, and the two become friends. Ash travels to train and capture Pokémon while Team Rocket keeps trying to steal his Pikachu.

  The games borrowed that relationship. In Pokémon Yellow, the player's first Pokémon is a Pikachu modeled on Ash's. It refuses to stay in its Poké Ball and follows the player around on screen, with reactions that depend on how it is treated. Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!, inspired by Yellow, make Pikachu the starter in one of their two versions. Special event distributions in Pokémon Sun and Moon gave players seven Pikachu wearing caps that Ash wore across different seasons. Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire introduced five Cosplay Pikachu with different outfits for Pokémon Contests. One of those outfits became Pikachu Libre in the fighting game Pokkén Tournament.

  Outside the main series, Pikachu has often been the star. On the Nintendo 64, Hey You, Pikachu! had players speak commands into a microphone. Pokémon Channel offered a similar premise without the microphone. A Pikachu is the main protagonist of PokéPark Wii: Pikachu's Adventure and its sequel. In Detective Pikachu, a talking Pikachu helps the protagonist Tim Goodman solve mysteries. Pikachu has also been a playable character in all five Super Smash Bros. games.

  The 2019 live-action film Detective Pikachu cast Ryan Reynolds, who gave the voice and also performed motion capture for the face and movement. Because he was not on set, co-star Justice Smith acted opposite an eyeline marker such as a puppet or a tennis ball. The effects team built Pikachu as if it were a real animal, with detailed skeletal and muscular systems, and visited zoos to consult animal experts. Its movement began rabbit-like and drifted toward marsupials and marmosets. Its eyes were inspired by the sugar glider. Fur colors were tested by taking patches to filming locations to see how the light affected them.

  Hidetoshi Nishijima voiced the Japanese version of the film's Pikachu, and Pierre Tessier the French one. Ōtani appeared in a short cameo, kept in every language except the German dub, which used a deeper and more out-of-breath version of the line.

  Pikachu's screen life continues without Ash. After the anime season Pokémon Ultimate Journeys retired Ash and his Pikachu as main cast members, a new character named Captain Pikachu became a major figure in the follow-up series Pokémon Horizons. Ōtani plays that role as well. Taito Okiura of The Pokémon Company International said Pikachu would continue to have a significant presence in the animated series and remain an icon for the brand.

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• 7. Pikachu in the Wild

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  In 1998, Topeka, Kansas, became ToPikachu for a day when Mayor Joan Wagnon renamed it. Mayor Michelle De La Isla repeated the stunt in 2018 for the release of the Pokémon Let's Go games. Another stunt for the franchise's American debut dropped 700 Pikachu plushes into a field from a plane, while skydivers jumped out and drove away in Pikachu-themed cars.

  A got milk? advertisement featured Pikachu on the 25th of April 2000. A Pikachu balloon has floated in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade since 2001, with new designs introduced over the years. Years later, a screenshot of a shocked Pikachu from the anime became the reaction meme known as Surprised Pikachu.

  Cards turned the character into a collector's prize. Pikachu has appeared on cards since the Pokémon Trading Card Game launched in October 1996, including limited promotional ones. Pikachu Illustrator, printed in 1998 in a run of roughly 20 to 40, sold at auction for about $55,000 in 2016. In 2021 it sold for $375,000. A different card sold in 2022 for nearly a million dollars. For the franchise's 25th anniversary in 2021, The Pokémon Company announced cards each showing 25 Pikachu drawn by 25 artists.

  A card featuring Pikachu in Van Gogh's grey felt hat went on sale at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and scalpers mobbed the store. The cards were pulled from the exhibition for safety reasons. Several employees were suspended over reported embezzlement of a large number of them. The card was later restocked to discourage resellers.

  Pikachu has also traveled far from toy aisles. Fast-food chains such as McDonald's, Wendy's and Burger King used it in promotions. Pikachu and ten other Pokémon were Japan's mascots for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. ANA Boeing 747-400 aircraft, including one numbered JA8962, have carried Pokémon artwork since 1998, and in 2021 the first Pokémon Jet debuted, covered entirely in Pikachu. At the 2025 Tokyo Series opener in Major League Baseball, Pikachu entered the field in a Los Angeles Dodgers jersey. On the 27th of February 2024, La Poste in France issued a Pikachu stamp.

  Science and politics borrowed the name. In 2008, researchers at the Osaka Bioscience Institute Foundation named a ligand believed to improve visual acuity Pikachurin, after the nimbleness of Pikachu's lightning-fast moves. In 2021, Giovanna Grandón, who had worn an inflatable Pikachu suit to many of the 2019-2021 Chilean protests, was elected to the Constitutional Convention and became known as Aunt Pikachu, Tía Pikachú. That same year, protesters in Pikachu costumes appeared at the Group of Seven climate summit on Gyllyngvase Beach, Falmouth, and activists in costume at COP26 protested Japan's refusal to reduce coal use.

  In 2016, a fiberglass Pikachu sculpture by an unknown artist, called the Pokemonument, appeared in New Orleans' Lower Garden District. Within days someone attacked it with a baseball bat, and it was repaired. About two weeks after installation it was removed, and the artist said online that it would be auctioned to help restore the park's fountains.

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• 8. The Backlash

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  A 2024 BAFTA poll of around 4,000 respondents ranked Pikachu the twelfth most iconic video-game character of all time. Polygon's Tracey Lien compared it to Disney's Mickey Mouse, the Japanese answer to a global icon. Its success has also been described as part of a movement of cute capitalism.

  Zack Zwiezen of Kotaku called Pikachu possibly one of the most iconic characters on the planet, praising how simple and instantly identifiable it is. Dale Bishir of IGN went further and wrote that if your mom calls every Pokémon Pikachu, you know in your heart it is the most important Pokémon of all time.

  The friendship with Ash drew scholarly attention. One analysis compared it to Aristotle's values of friendship, suggesting the equality between the pair explained their success. Professor and author Northrop Davis said the anime made Pikachu a three-dimensional character with several traits, which made it more appealing. When Ash and Pikachu were retired from the anime, the reaction was positive, partly because it eased worries about how Pikachu's strength would be handled as the series went on. The hashtag #ThankYouAshAndPikachu trended on Twitter after the announcement.

  Not every writer was pleased. Patricia Hernandez of Kotaku criticized how often Pikachu appears in Pokémon media and marketing. She argued that the overuse pushed other Pokémon aside and was unoriginal. TheGamer's Stacey Henley agreed, saying that constant exposure had made Pikachu uninteresting and an ineffective mascot.

  Hernandez pointed to Mimikyu as evidence. This Pokémon disguises itself as Pikachu in the hope of being loved. In her view, people love Mimikyu largely because they are subconsciously aware of how overused Pikachu is. A creature that exists to imitate Pikachu, and that people like for that reason, shows just how large the original's shadow has grown.

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