Spotify and Higher Ground’s new podcast The Big Hit Show is totally dedicated to pop-culture historical past, and little is as historic because the historical past of the Pokémon franchise. That’s the place they set their websites in season three, exploring varied distinctive anecdotes.

One surprising-in-hindsight however not-actually-that-surprising anecdote is the truth that no American networks needed to choose up the Pokémon anime. With a normal concern of international stuff seeming to be the primary cause, it’s solely a shock contemplating how large Pokémon has since turn into.

As author/producer Norman Grossfeld says: “One of the things we had to do once just looking at the show is that there were a million signs in Japanese in the background. We said we had to take that out and just make it some nonspecific language or use graphics so that kids in Germany would not think it’s an American show, kids in Italy would not think it was a German show. It just had to work for kids everywhere. They could believe that this was their land.”

Host Alex Pappademas follows up: “Norman and 4Kids produced a pilot for the American version, but even with the obviously Japanese visual elements sanded down, they ran into trouble. Despite the show’s success in Japan, American TV networks didn’t want it. Norman went to Fox Kids. To Kids WB. To Nickelodeon. To the Cartoon Network. No one was interested. Without a network on board, they decided to syndicate the show, which meant they had to hand-sell Pokémon to one TV station in one market at a time.”

You can take a look at the podcast right here, or, for one thing completely different, take a look at our Splatoon 3 preview.