In the waning days of the 20th century the world was taken by storm by the phenomenon of Pokémon, a multi-platform cultural commodity aimed at children between the ages of 4 and 14 (a previously almost unprecedented age range for a toy or amusement). … As Anne Allison (2004, 47) notes, even the most fearsome Pokémon obey an aesthetic imperative of "cuteness" (or kawaisa in Japanese), which, as she puts it, is Japan's "millennial product," a means of reconciling and negotiating the ambivalences of (disappearing) nature, (troubled) gender, (post-innocent) childhood and (cultural) capitalism in a moment of neoliberal insecurity and cultural drift.

Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, loc. 352