Manga Mondays: Magical Pokémon Journey

In honor of me getting the newest Pokémon game (friend code swap, anyone?), I figured it was about time to dedicate a post to my first Pokémon manga. For many people, their first exposure to this series in printed form was the well-known Electric Tale of Pikachu, however mine was a little more… well, shoujo. Indeed, while I did purchase Electric Tale later on, the series I was drawn to was Yumi Tsukirino’s Magical Pokémon Journey. As with most games, if I don’t have the option to play as a female player character then the draw of the game is severely reduced and with each new Pokémon game that came out—up until Sapphire (I didn’t play Crystal)—I wondered why there was only a male I could play as. It’s not as though it would have been terribly difficult to add a female option in, but I digress. Even in other forms of media these stories followed the adventures of the boys, Ash and Red, with female characters only being secondary. So, to see such a change, to see a story focus on a girl’s Pokémon adventure, was so exciting to me and so long coming.