The bodies on the streets of San Francisco, USA, are tired, but the faces hide a fire that shows that the physical is not enough to stop them: you can always carry one more bag, there is always something more to discover. Small white bags with drawings of Eevee, medium yellow ones with Pikachu, or the largest and blue ones decorated with Snorlax. The straps of all of them hang from the shoulders of the 50,000 attendees over three days at two points in the city. From the bags peek out the softest and most colorful plush toys of any Pokémon, skateboards, hoodies, jewelry, and industrial quantities of card packs ready to be opened — in front of a camera, sharing the experience or before the expectant eyes of passersby — and reveal with what little treasure, or not, they will bless the collectors. The city by the bay holds its breath for a moment, to see if it lets itself be overwhelmed by these passionate fans, but it holds: this is PokémonXP, the first official fan event that this year has celebrated three decades of cultural domination.
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In the central neighborhood of South of Market, or SoMa, crowds crowd into endless lines at the various entrances to the different buildings of the Moscone Center, a huge convention center that this year the pocket monsters have decided to call their home for a duo of events, PokémonXP and the Pokémon World Championship (from August 28 to 30). The global esports director of the Pokémon Company and organizer of events like XP, Chris Brown, explains to EL PAÍS that the intention behind this convention is to appeal to “those more distant fans, who think that big tournaments like this World Championship are not for them.” “Every year we invest more in this competition (…); ten years ago [the last time it was held in San Francisco] we had four thousand attendees, now there are fifty thousand,” he highlights, while considering how the numbers will continue to grow in the next 30 years of the saga, although he acknowledges that the next stage will be up to his successor.
What D23 is to Disney and Marvel, XP is to Pokémon. A space for fans to dress up, meet their favorite creatures, participate in panels, and shout announcements. Like the collaboration with the British studio Aardman, the stop motion studio behind Wallace and Gromit, to create The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d and Pichu, a silent series that shows the titular duo in a knightly adventure.
Cosplay, travelers, and Pokémon professors
In the intricate hallways and expansive rooms of the Moscone Center, people run from one side to the other; shouts of excitement at every little discovered detail are constant; every pin — just among those that can be obtained for free, Pokémon has made more than 300,000 — obtained and traded is a triumph. Among those crowds who seek to discover everything are people like Julia and Gabriel Wright, a local duo from San Francisco who walk around cosplaying as members of Team Rocket. “We wanted to make one costume per day and started with Rocket because they are iconic and also it’s something fun to do as a couple.” They plan to close the Sunday finale dressed as the couple of pokéfans, although she confesses that the real fan is her boyfriend, who has played since the Game Boy Advance era, while she is “more into all things adorable.”
A convention of this scale would not be complete without the endless possibilities to buy, like those in a Pokémon Center, huge exclusive and always crowded stores that emulate their equivalents in the games — they serve, for example, as attendance identifiers for each saga follower by the special backpacks they carry: here a Honolulu 2024, there a London 2022 —. There are also those who are debuting in the scene, like the Ávila Gonzales, a family from Veracruz, Mexico, who wait in a long line in the shade of the convention center to enter the megastore. They explain that they are very excited because it is the first time they can make the trip: their two children have qualified in the seniors category (ages 13 to 15) of the card game and compete in the World Championship.
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If collecting is such an important indicator of how seriously one takes their belonging to the fandom, there are people like Audrey Violet (20) from northwest Arkansas, who travels the world collecting products, often only available in Japan, to be able to trade them with others. This is done in specific “collection and trading” spaces, according to the young woman, who is quick to point out that trades are agreed upon between people and cannot involve money. She specializes in bringing some small plastic tokens called mezastars, which for now can only be obtained in Pokémon’s native Japan, and some other Asian countries.
The question is, with tens of thousands of people buzzing everywhere, how is this controlled? With “more than 2,000 people,” according to Chris Brown of Pokémon Company. Security teams, translators, international saga staff, and Pokémon professors. Like Natalia Rubio (30), from Barcelona, who already has a decade of experience as a Pokémon professor. Specialized in the card game, she still remembers with a smile the exam she had to take to earn her official title, the same as characters like the foundational Professor Oak.
In the universe, professors guide trainers who take their first steps and here Rubio does the same. “What I like is helping children leave the tournaments happy,” Rubio recounts while her eyes scan the room where she speaks with EL PAÍS. It only takes a few moments until she meets the expectant gaze of a young player who looks confused at a card.
She immediately resumes her work, something she will do throughout the event, attentive to her surroundings: “I like helping the competition grow,” that more people join, because it reminds her of how she was helped by two friends to “get my professor title.” Pokémon keeps growing because its fans want it to grow, and if in 30 years it has reached this point, who knows how high Pikachu’s house will grow.
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