My friends from LinkedIn will know that I’ve become obsessed with Roblox in-game animation. This strange new art form is difficult for anyone over 18 to understand.

YouTube channels like ShanePlays earn millions of views per upload (the creator of which I just interviewed for an upcoming piece so be sure to subscribe!) and shows like Twilight Daycare are winning industry awards.

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But why would anyone in their right mind use Roblox as an animation engine?

Especially when “professional” software like Blender, Unity, and Unreal Engine have never been cheaper, better-looking, or easier to learn and use?

WHEN BEAUTY IS CHEAP…

I think the appeal of Roblox’s limited aesthetic is a direct consequence of the democratization of beauty. Good-looking animation still isn’t cheap but it’s cheaper than ever before.

Kids are flooded with endless choices of gorgeous animation to watch. On YouTube, most of it is soulless garbage. So much is pandering, algorithmically designed, driven, and juiced to earn clicks and make ad revenue, or—worse—presented as “educational” with dubious qualifications.

Everything has an agenda. And kids can smell an agenda miles away.

On the other hand there’s Roblox. So much on the platform is made by children for children. Content made by kids don’t have the same kinds of agendas.

And content with no agenda can be very hard for an adult to understand…

UGLINESS CAN BE NOVEL.

From the outside, Roblox in-game animation can appear low-fi, buggy, and ugly as a computer virus from hell. But the janky stuff has a voice. It has a soul. It doesn’t pretend to teach you anything. It is what it is.

Soon I’ll publish an essay that dives into the relatability and authenticity of the medium, two reasons why I find it mesmerizing. But today I’ll focus on a third reason why kids love Roblox in-game animation: because older people don’t understand it.

ON THE “DELIBERATE MYSTIFICATION” OF CHILDHOOD

If you’re a ‘90s kid like me, you probably remember these Cinnamon Toast Crunch commercials. Their formula was as simple as it was unforgettable:

Kids encounter an adult with the ability to “see” things others can’t (telescope, microscope, magnifying glass, etc).

But for the life of them, these dumb grown-ups can’t “see” why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch…

This dynamic—savvy kids vs oblivious adults—aimed to flatter a kid’s sense of self and to associate breakfast cereal with a mildly rebellious spirit. It’s as harmless as it is silly. But its roots reach deep into something more fundemental.

Us vs Them

Most children go through a gross-out phase, obsessed with bugs, poop jokes, and talk about other subjects unfit for the dinner table.

Making your mom go “eww,” can feel like an act of power especially at an age when you have so little control. Harmless taboos are an essential instrument for the formation of young identity. “Children are always experimenting with power, and getting adults to laugh or be awkward, that’s a very powerful thing to a child,” said author and psychologist Lawrence Cohen in a New York Times piece about poop and farts.

This is the appeal of the playful Us v Them attitude at the heart of these classic Cinnamon Toast Crunch ads. But General Mills didn’t stumble upon the brilliance of this cultivated dynamic themselves. It was a TV network’s corporate mandate which nudged them in this direction.

Flashback to early Nickelodeon…

At the end of the 1980s, kids’ TV was being reborn. Sesame Street’s proven model of educational content dominated the industry for a decade, regurgitated by imitators with a fraction of Henson’s talent.

Reagan had recently lifted restrictions allowing for toy companies to advertise with cartoons, unleashing a flood of sponsored content on the airwaves.

And the early proliferation of cable TV allowed networks to fractionalize advertising revenue across many sponsors rather than few. This meant advertisers had less power over programming, as they shared ad space with their competitors, which enabled more creative freedom than what was typically seen on broadcast TV.

Executives and artists were suddenly given a much wider canvas to try things out.

MTV had recently become a cultural institution, touted as a “place” for teenagers to spend their free time. Nick’s stakeholders (originally called Pinwheel) wanted to do the same for children and after a few years of false starts they found their president.

Geraldine Laybourne, a program manager and one of Pinwheel’s first five employees, was chosen to lead the studio. She immediately infused the channel with its now-iconic playful irreverence.

Laybourne had strong, contrarian beliefs about children’s media. To her, most of it was pandering. Stuff made for kids usually “wanted” something from them, she thought, whether that was a sale (to please a corporation) or to learn something (to please a parent). Both paths were equally unacceptable at Nickelodeon.

Instead, she wanted to create an MTV for children; a metaphorical place where kids can be kids, safe from the demands and obligations of grown-ups.

That meant a commitment against overt commercialism and edutainment, two forces which are, in my opinion, dominating the children’s media landscape today.

She did this by going against the grain of other channels. By committing to creators over brand, fun over education, and—most importantly—kids over parents in order to give children a rare sense of psychological autonomy, Laybourne created the Nickelodeon ‘90s kids remember so fondly.

1. CREATORS OVER BRAND

At the time, Nickelodeon’s closest competitor was The Disney Channel, who had a very consistent look to all their animated and live action programming. Laybourne took an opposite approach.

She wanted an eclectic mix of visual styles from all over the world and headhunted creators—from Joe Murray to the avant garde Igor Kovalyoy—to develop original programming.

Creators had power at early Nickelodeon (as is evidenced by the Kricfalusci fiasco during the production of Ren & Stimpy which Laybourne commissioned and later retooled with Bob Camp to helm) and turned Nicktoons into an iconic brand.

This is how Doug, Rugrats, Ren & Stimpy, Rocko’s Modern Life, Aaahhh!!! Real Monsters, Catdog and other Nicktoons came to be. Without them there would be no Spongebob.

2. NO PANDERING

Instead of allowing her network to use kids for the commercial demands of companies and the educational demands of their parents, Laybourne insisted on a company-wide recognition of the unalienable rights of children, and to observe these rights (drafted by her team with a literal Bill of Rights) in all the channel’s deliverables.

This set the tone for creators, executives, and advertisers alike. NOBODY was to pander to kids at Nickelodeon, the only network where kids reigned supreme.

3. COMMITMENT TO AUTONOMY

While many companies make bold declarations, Laybourne implemented them. She took the playful Us vs Them schtick and created guidelines for all programming and ads to follow.

This meant that if a company wanted to advertise on Nick, they had to play by Nick’s rules, aka, respecting kids.

This is why so many Nickelodeon old commercials—from breakfast cereal to silicon insect molds—have a similar vibe. Agencies worked along Laybourne’s guidelines; proliferating Us vs Them was a prerequisite of business. She insisted that the tone of the channel be consistent, even during ad breaks.

But for all of Laybourne’s innovations, it was a show she licensed from Australia that gave Nickelodeon its most iconic image.

On You Can’t Do That on Television, gameshow contestants would have a bucket of green slime dumped on their heads. It was a well-known prank to anyone familiar with the show. But to Laybourne, slime was the key to something deeper.

Slime grew into all aspects of the channel’s core. Idents, promos, and stickers inherited the shape of green or orange splats.

An official employee handbook of the time states that “mess, slime, and gak are more than a gag or theme, they are the Nickelodeon mascot” which carry the spirit of “rebellion and totally gross-out adults…”

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In her book Kids Rule! Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship, Sarah Banet-Weiser writes that slime’s appeal isn’t necessarily that kids “get it,” it’s that “adults don’t; that is the crucial importance of the symbol.”

Slime symbolized the threshold between adult and kid tastes; it saluted the in-crowd (kids) while repelling the uninitiated (adults)…

Banet-Weiser quotes Allison James, talking about the “deliberate mystification of childhood” by children themselves, and how “the true nature of the culture of childhood frequently remains hidden from adults, form the semantic cues which permit social recognition have been manipulated and disguised by children in terms of their alternate society… By confusing the adult order children create for themselves considerable room for movement within the limits imposed on them by adult society.”

And that sums up what I think is special about Roblox in-game animation. Like slime, poop jokes, and the irreverent spirit of early Nickelodeon, ugly computer graphics confuse adults just enough to make room for kids to be themselves.

Okay, let’s zoom back out to the present.

Back when Laybourne took over Nickelodeon, the notion of kids’ entertainment as a place was a radical and somewhat abstract idea. Television is a passive medium with a fraction of the power of our phones, tablets, and computers.

Today, thinking of entertainment as a place is a reality for many hundreds of millions of children. Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite and other games/platforms (or games which are becoming platforms) are where kids spend the majority of their leisure time.

Entertainment-as-a-place is wonderful in many ways. But it’s a double-edged sword. Never has the internet been more addictive, dangerous, and regulated—all of which are contributing reasons why kids have so little autonomy in the digital world.

Work that respects kids autonomy by letting them mystify adults—with fart jokes, toy bugs, or janky graphics—is a quality undervalued by the market and desperately needed by kids’ as they grow up in a hyper-connected world.

As Laybourne said—as Roblox demonstrates—kids need space to be themselves. And media that grosses out their parents is a fun and safe way to do it.

Thanks for reading! I’m working on some exciting new projects at the corner of Roblox and animation, so if you’re interested in exploring this space, please reach out.

And be sure to subscribe for my ShanePlays interview next installment!

A gigantic thanks to everyone who read Media Tribes last month, I was humbled by the number of people who signed up.

Today I’m diving into a subject I’m particularly fond of—apps for preschoolers and the problems (and solutions) this wonderful space faces. Drawing from the thinking of Björn Jeffery, Mimi Ito, and my own experience co-designing/directing an app of my own, I have a lot of strong opinions about its future.

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“Where is the Pixar of apps?” wrote Björn Jeffery on his blog in 2019.

The cofounder and former CEO of Toca Boca was talking about interactive touchscreen media for preschoolers, an industry that straddles a line between gaming, education, and entertainment.

“Where are the studios that have that amount of care and attention to detail? The app studios that love their craft like Pixar loves movies? I understand the financial reality of this space… But ambition is free. And I rarely see an experiment with a sense of curiosity and adventurousness.”

He’s right. Innovation in kids’ apps is rarer than you might think.

Fifteen years ago, this market was the wild west.

Early app developers came from different backgrounds — picture books, animation, advertising, online publishing — and influential titles like Nighty Night and Toca Hair Salon were created as experiments.

Now the industry has coalesced around the sensibilities and practices of a few market leaders. App “genres” have hardened into formulas used by studios across the globe. “One of the reasons it is hard to find great apps is that so many of them are going for the exact same concept,” wrote Jeffery. “Everything looks and feels the same, and it creates the impression of a non-differentiated market.”

So why are so many developers imitating each other?

A GAME OF NUMBERS

For starters, most apps have a very short lifespan. Only during a narrow window of time is a well-designed product likely to catch fire, be lifted by curators or by a snowballing success algorithm, and rescued from Apple’s and Google’s uncurated wastelands.

Salvation depends on a combination of strategy and luck, and publishers hedge their bets by placing many at once.

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Most air is sucked up by global media companies with very little reason to innovate in the first place. For them kids’ apps are a means to an end; content marketing for already-popular franchises. Whereas animation and console games may be overseen with more scrutiny, app production is more quickly parsed and outsourced to studios in developing countries where titles are cranked out at breakneck speed with templates and algorithmically-driven tools of creation.

Boutique studios and sole creators, on the other hand, must compete with this onslaught. Most don’t have the edge of pre-existing IP so they’re playing a very different game from the get-go. For them, success means scoring enough points against the big guys to pay the bills.

And because smash hits are rare in this business, creators of all sizes are incentivized to spread their risk across many titles instead of incubating one single project to near-perfection. This makes for a game of quantity over quality, from international brands to indie creators. Survival is a matter of quickly developing reliable frameworks of repeatable success, which must come at the expense of experimentation and exploration.

There is very little margin for anyone in this business, and this is why very few kids’ apps feel alive the way a great cartoon or children’s book does. It’s very difficult to take artistic risks when you’re busy treading water.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

Next, there’s the subject of ASO, or App Store Optimization.

This market is built entirely on Apple’s and Google’s proprietary stores, and success depends on adherence to the rules of both companies. For years apps have lived or died by category rankings, the “top” lists you see on the first and second pages.

Because parents aren’t expected to spend much time browsing or researching apps for their kids — and why would they when so few kids’ apps are visually arresting, or exciting to adult ears and eyes? — they are most likely to download only what they see on their App Store homepage, or pick from the very tip of their own search results.

This all-powerful fact of consumer behavior has a perverse effect on the creation of kids’ apps that trickles upward into every part of the creative process. Ranking is so crucial that apps are reverse-engineered and designed, from the ground up, with ASO in mind. Creators hang their concepts, gameplay mechanics, stories, and characters around keywords parents are already punching into their keypads.

And if that doesn’t sound like building a pyramid upside-down, consider if other art forms adopted similar methods.

Forget Green Eggs and Ham, Stellaluna, The Little Prince, and Where the Wild Things Are, those would all be non-starters by the doctrine of ASO. Janell Cannon and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry would be told by their publishers to instead think along the lines of Firetruck ABCs, or Puppy-Dogs-Sing-Along-Learn-and-Dance-Parties.

Worse, App Store rules are always changing and studios must roll with the punches.

They must routinely update catalogues of content as new operating systems go live. It’s a cyclical, never-ending process that grows in proportion to one’s library.

Apps of unique construction  ( those that contain code not shared by other apps )  are a liability because the labor of bug-fixing can’t be “batched” with dozens of other products grown from the same template. Studios are further incentivized to play it safe wherever possible, color within the lines, and allow their back catalogue to share as many interchangeable parts as possible.

ABCs and 123s

Finally, there’s the dubious label of “education” which is haphazardly slapped on apps with the hope of riding search results in multiple categories. This silliness exists thanks to outdated quirks in Apple’s and Google’s categories; there is no meaningful distinction between kids’ apps and educational apps. As a result, lines are blurred to the disadvantage of studio, parent, and child alike.

Let’s take this apart one piece at a time…

First, studios.

As I mentioned, it’s mission-critical for studios to have their apps rank high in search results. But when app stores draw no serious line between entertainment and education, then racecar games must compete with ABC lessons because they share the same leaderboard.

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That’s why you see so many kids’ apps twisting themselves into pretzels to look “educational,” shoehorning pre-k curricular content into otherwise charming digital experiences for toddlers. Teachers and child development experts are paid as consultants to lend their names and stamps of approval. Creative teams must serve multiple masters at once.

Not only must they start from a simple, ASO-friendly concept, develop eye-catching visuals, delightfully intuitive controls, streamlined and maintainable code, cute characters, animations, jokes, music, and capture an elusive quality called replay value; they must also teach something.

What should an app teach, you ask? How about the alphabet, or the names of animals, states, or basic arithmetic?

Any lessons of rote memorization the child will soon encounter at school anyway will do. Simple facts lifted from an educational coloring book, or from a kindergarten class curriculum. It’s very difficult for any studio or creator to make something exciting and fun while juggling so many priorities.

Second, parents.

Now that we’ve established the economic impetus for Trojan-horsing ABCs lessons into kids’ apps where they don’t belong, it’s easy to see why parents get the short end of the stick.

Parents carry a lot of guilt about the amount of time their children spend looking at screens. While experts debate whether this guilt is well-founded or hyperbole, they almost all agree on one point: it’s not screen-time itself that we should focus on, but the quality of content on those screens.

This is where it gets sticky. Consumer research has found that most parents don’t treat apps like they would other forms of media like books, movies, or even video games.

Apps are tools to be deployed on children — they are distractions for long car rides, waiting at the airport, or dining out. As long as parents consider apps a last resort tool, they will be more interested in their utility than their cultural value.

This motivates studios and publishers to make hollow promises about an app’s educational utility, use a parent’s guilt to their advantage, and — as Mimi Ito describes the larger problem with edutainment in her incredible book about the history of children’s software — stoke fears of classism by implicitly selling the idea that educational apps can give a child “the edge” over others.

It would be one thing if edutainment apps delivered on this promise, but the jury is very much out. And it doesn’t take much imagination to see how bogus most offerings are. Just open your App Store, search “learning apps for kids” and scroll down for a bit. Soon you’ll see what I’m talking about: nowhere is the gulf between educational and curricular more pronounced than in a second-rate kids’ app.

These joyless touchscreen lessons are enough to make any kid hate the concept of learning before they ever set foot in a classroom.

Third, children.

At the bottom of this hierarchy, kids lose the most.

Think back to the most exciting and formative experiences you had with media as a young child. I think about going to see The Lion King, Toy Story, watching Wallace and Gromit with my mom at home, or playing Spyro the Dragon for the first time with my sister. Now imagine if Disney, Pixar, and Aardman Animations felt obligated to stuff math problems into their masterpieces.

Imagine if in Toy Story, Woody and Buzz’s poignant character arcs were formed around a teachable lesson about sharing which could be traced back to a four-page report commissioned by an expert on child development.

Imagine if Disney’s classic films — Snow White, Bambi, The Jungle Book, The Little Mermaid — were interrupted by songs about the alphabet, created for the purpose of reassuring parents that cartoons can be “good” for their kids.

Education, child psychology, and market research are all crucially important, but I believe a lot of studios have put the cart before the horse. Storytellers are needed to breathe new life into this medium.

So where are they? Where are the Walt Disneys, the Pete Docters, the Maurice Sendaks of kids’ apps? Where are the mavericks?

A CALL FOR MORE EXPERIMENTS

Dave Martell and I started CUDO with no funding, no connections to the games industry, and no experience in kids’ media. But we had a conviction that touchscreen media for children should be as awesome as the stuff we loved as kids.

Dave created an iOS sticker pack called Duncan the Silly Duck which was one of iMessage’s most downloaded stickers upon its release. People around the world loved the look of Duncan. So we got to work expanding Duncan’s world as an interactive storybook.

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But what started as a side project grew and grew—as our characters, stories, and ideas for adventures took shape—we pivoted to slowly build something bigger: the basis for an animated series and line of toys.

This app has been on the back burner for several years. Now we’re circling back to release it. Even though it’s a few years old, it’s our first wholehearted attempt to work within a familiar formula while planting the seeds for something new.

Nothing you’ll find in Wake Up, Duncan! was copied/pasted from a kindergartner’s workbook. Nothing was born from market research. Nothing was suggested by a consulting schoolteacher or psychologist.

We didn’t pay anyone to bless this project as “educational” so we can rank against ABCs lessons. But we did pay for an original orchestral score.

In short, we wanted this app to feel like the media we loved as children while existing as an example of this art form we love. And I couldn’t be prouder of our small team.

WHY APPS ARE STILL IMPORTANT

It’s easy to overlook apps these days. But they are a magical, intermediate step for many children in their journey of growing; between picture books and Roblox are interactive touchscreen experiences they will remember forever.

Few app designers appreciate the gravity and duty of this.

A few years ago, Björn Jeffery pointed out the party will start only when parents take apps as seriously as they do movies, television, or books. In order for that to happen, more people need to make exciting work that appeals to parents and children alike.

So if you’re an artist or illustrator, consider making a kids’ app.

If you’re a game developer, consider making a kids’ app.

If you’re a forward-thinking entrepreneur looking for blue waters, hire the best artists, storytellers, and programmers you can find and make kids’ apps.

There’s a well-known phenomenon in the history of art that suggests a form’s best days are toward the end of its cultural relevance. You can see this even with gaming consoles; many systems see their most beloved titles released only after a successor console has hit the market. The same can be true for kids’ apps. It’s a beautiful art form that has not (yet) had its due.

Hey everyone, thanks for reading!

Last month I posted my first essay about Pokemon Concierge and was humbled by the amount of new subscribers. If you like this piece, please consider subscribing and sharing as that really helps in these early days. Thank you!

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Media Tribes is a home for my thoughts about building classic multi-generational franchises in the age of streaming, YouTube, Roblox, AI, and web3. It’s about the art of developing characters, stories, and worlds that bring people together despite the uncertainty of today’s increasingly fast-paced digital world.

This essay is about Pokémon Concierge, a show that embodies the art of generational fan retention. In the future I’ll alternate between deep dive essays about my favorite IP and nuts-and-bolts pieces about stuff we’re creating at CUDO.

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Great stories are like mirrors to our lives. We’re moved by relatable characters who navigate uncertainty, fight obstacles, and succeed in extraordinary circumstances because it gives us hope for our own.

Great storytellers have always understood this. But great story-driven franchises, those that appeal to legions of fans for many years, take it a step further.

They must touch the hearts of millions, not just once, but again and again for decades.

THE PROBLEM

Let’s say you create a hit TV show for elementary schoolers. What happens when your core audience grows up?

Do they outgrow your stories, or do your stories ‘grow up’ with them?

If your stories do grow up with them, will those same stories appeal to younger viewers who are now the age of your original core audience?

Or will you craft new stories for different ages? Where is there overlap and where is there separation? Will one group of fans ‘grow into’ another group of stories?

Most importantly, how can you speak to the same individual fan over decades as their own place in life changes?

MANY SOLUTIONS, MANY TRADE-OFFS

Look at the world’s most popular franchises and you’ll see many fixes to this problem, each with their own unique trade-offs.

Some, like PAW Patrol, remain fixed on one demographic at the cost of attrition. The franchise allows fans to ‘outgrow’ and exit the reach of the property as long as each fan is immediately replaced by at least one newcomer.

But this means the franchise must always reach more and more fans within the same age demographic in order to grow.

Others, like Star Wars, divide their fans into younger and older camps, make different content for each demo, and serve them along exclusive channels.

But this is complicated, expensive, and very few IPs are well-suited for content that exclusively serves fans of different ages.

A small handful like Bluey achieve the rare feat of double-coding their most poignant set pieces to mean one thing to a preschooler and another to a parent.

Not only is this approach beautiful, it is a recipe for superfandom as evidenced by the amount of adult Bluey evangelists online as Sleepytime climbs the ranks as one of the most written about and beloved episodes of television ever.

But not only is it an artistic accomplishment difficult to replicate, but it was an uphill battle for Bluey’s creator, Joe Brumm, who fought for years to convince industry gatekeepers of his vision. Innovative work this always goes against the grain.

And of course there’s the gold standard of multi-generational appeal, Pixar, who routinely craft movies which are wonderful the first time around and somehow become more and more meaningful each time you revisit them.

But aspiring to do things The Pixar Way is like telling a young tech company to be “like Apple.” It’s what everyone wants to do and very few succeed in doing.

SO WHICH IS THE BEST?

If you’re like me and you’re trying to optimize new IP, from the ground up, for cross-generational appeal (or if you’re managing preexisting IP and wish to break into a new age demographic) which is the best path forward?

Everyone’s answer will be different, but my favorite approach belongs to these guys:

Nintendo’s games have always been optimized for different ages (for example, the programing of Mario Kart to allow for first-time players to compete with experienced gamers without getting clobbered is amazing). And their approach to narrative is just as inventive, as evidenced by Nintendo's four-part series for Netflix, Pokémon Concierge, which practices a technique I call peripheral storytelling.

But before I dive into peripheral storytelling, here’s a rundown of this show.

AN ODD AND PEACEFUL SERIES

Pokémon Concierge follows Haru, an overworked young professional who leaves the big city to care for Pokémon at a peaceful resort.

Very little happens in terms of plot—the protagonist arrives, struggles to adjust to the slower pace of life at the facility, and in the process (re)learns how to relax, have fun, and care for the Pokemon guests. And that’s kind of it.

There are no gyms, no training, no fighting, and no violence. No beloved heroes and no familiar locations. Pikachu and Psyduck are featured heavily, but neither are characters from the original anime—they are new members of the same species.

These unconventional decisions help Concierge bring the world of Pokémon come alive more than anything else I’ve watched or played in the last twenty-five years.

My fondest memories of Red and Blue stand in the way my enjoyment of anything that’s come out since—from Saphire to Pokemon Indigo—because I know these canon entries won’t hold a candle to my own nostalgia for exploring Pallet Town when I was the age of Ash Ketchum.

Yet Concierge makes me feel as if Pokémon have been real this whole time.

The show’s approach is so delicate and tasteful that it leverages all my associations in this new series, inviting my imagination into the world beyond the frame, coloring the peripheries of the story. And this is what I mean by peripheral; stories set on the peripheries of a franchise instead of its dead center.

Pokémon Concierge does this on three levels: aesthetic, narrative, and contextual.

LEVEL 1 - AESTHETIC

Most obvious is Pokémon Concierge’s unique aesthetic. It’s the franchise’s first foray into stop-motion animation, gorgeously produced by Dwarf Studios.

Humans are made from vinyl and silicon while the pocket monsters themselves are felt, plastic, and paper.

These real-world elements give Pokemon a tactility unachievable by hand-drawn or computer-generated animation and make you feel like you can reach into the screen and pet them. Lighting falls on them in complex and beautiful ways.

These layers of aesthetic realism make them appear ‘real’ almost as if previous depictions were mere representations of each Pokémon and these puppets now represent the creatures as they exist in the world.

The Verge wrote about how the light bounces “off a Mudkip’s skin so effectively that it makes the show seem like it has captured their essences in a way that would never be possible in any other medium.” This is stop-motion’s novelty, and it’s paired with other playful elements of form.

There are hand-painted silhouettes used as introductions and interstitials to keep the busy urban world from which Haru arrives off-screen and therefore in the territory of our imaginations. There are unusual black and white transitions that feel more experimental than a franchise as massive and popular as Pokémon.

2. NARRATIVE

Instead of a traditional narrative structure, the series unfolds as a series of evocative moments and naturalistic routines.

It’s closer to an early Miyazaki movie than to any previous Pokémon series, and the fantasy at the heart of the story—slowing down when life gets stressful—has more in common with Stardew Valley than any Pokémon game.

Conflicts are so mild that you’d think Concierge was a pre-school show by their descriptions; a Psydyck has a headache. A Wingull steals an inner-tube. A Pikachu is shy. These aren’t just plot points, these are summaries of episodes. Yet Concierge doesn’t feel like a show for young children (although it could exist as one).

Taken together, these thoughtful breaks from convention stand in sharp contrast to any previous Pokémon series and, as a result make you feel as if you’re peeking into the world of Pokémon while nobody’s looking—these are the quiet moments between the franchise’s signature fights, tournaments, and epic quests.

3. CONTEXT

Finally, there’s the contextual ways Concierge defines its relationship with the Pokémon franchise as a whole.

None of the characters are canon, which makes Concierge seem more like a gently-paced example of Pokémon fan fiction than something by Nintendo.

Across the world of Concierge are little self-conscious elements of the world beyond the frame, like a Pokéball teapot, a household object shaped and hand-painted like a famous Pokémon, or a painting someone crafted of a Pikachu.

These objects invite you to wonder at the humans’ relationship to the creatures; to picture how these objects are designed, created, bought, and sold in peoples’ homes.

This approach appeals to me because it works thoughtfully alongside my nostalgia instead of trying to resurrect or replace it. Concierge isn’t competing with my memories, it’s using them to make the world of Pokémon feel richer.

WAIT, AREN’T WE JUST TALKING ABOUT SPIN-OFFS?

Don’t other examples like The Mandalorian, Fantastic Beasts, and Puss in Boots do variations of the same thing as Concierge?

There are some key differences between spin-offs and peripheral storytelling and using these popular examples as counterpoints:

1. Peripheral storytelling must create contrast with genre.
   
   Whereas the show The Mandalorian has some innovative touches, it is a spacefaring adventure much like the first three trilogies and other spin-offs, each of which expands the world of Star Wars without subverting audience expectations.
   
   Lucasfilm does however have a history of unfinished and abandoned works that play with genre in a way that feels closer to peripheral storytelling. Most notable is 1313, an M-rated sandbox which sounded more like Cyberpunk 2077 for its dark approach to the source material.

   

   Sadly this game was dissolved when Disney yanked the plug on it, and now any adults-only Star Wars games seem indefinitely postponed.
   
   Concierge, on the other hand, goes against the grain of the franchises’ trademarks genre—RPG-like adventures by aspirational protagonists punctuated by battles—and made a story that could be considered the polar opposite.
   

2. Peripheral storytelling must create contrast with scope.
   
   When the Harry Potter movies made a combined $7.7 billion, it seemed another saga was inevitable. Warner Brothers contrived a tangle of backstory and plot points based primarily on a fictional Hogwarts book and tried to imitate the epic scope of the original eight films.
   
   The results were mixed and many fans tuned out by the 2022 release of the final installment.
   
   At the same time, Harry Potter fan fiction—much of which focuses on smaller moments in the world of the series—is more popular than ever, which is likely representative of true audience sentiment.

   

   Today there are 26 seasons of Pokémon’s flagship anime series, 23 feature-length films (few of which are released in the United States) and over 150 games. Most of these stories follow Ash, Misty, Brock and their Pokémon and the sweeping scope of their decades-long journey is epic.
   
   Concierge is tiny in comparison.
   
   The series is only four episodes long with each installment varying between 15 and 20 minutes in length. It feels very intentional on the part of The Pokémon Company to have Concierge work with such a small canvas.
   

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2. Peripheral storytelling doesn’t “hint” or tie-in to a franchise’s canon.
   
   Born from the Shrek movies, the Puss in Boots franchise experiments on many interesting levels—its Netflix series aesthetically departs from its predecessors by drawing inspiration from comics and hand-painted animation and The Last Wish makes bold storytelling decisions, bringing complex questions about mortality into the story.

   

   But it’s still a mainline entry into the series canon which aligns audience expectations with the other films, inviting comparison.
   
   Peripheral storytelling calls for a lighter touch. The question of what is and isn’t canon is central to defining what stories can be peripheral and The Pokémon Company has laid the groundwork for many years.

   

   Their anime follows one canon and the games follow another; stray adaptations like Concierge, Detective Pikachu, and the upcoming PokeTsune are made possible because the world of Pokémon feels realer in the imaginations of fans because of that careful separation.

WORKING WITH IMAGINATION

Matthew Ball says the three-step formula for creating a successful media franchise in the 21st century is to “tell stories, create love for those stories, and monetize that love.”

Many brands don’t have a problem with steps 1 and 3. And by only nailing those, many franchises are successful.

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It’s step 2, though, creating love for those stories, that’s the kicker.

Love takes time and when you’re dealing with longer timeframes, your fans will be growing and changing. That means you must contend not only with your fans, but your fans' memories of what they once loved about your stories. And brands that nail that are the best in the world.

At the time of writing, Pokémon is the most valuable media franchise. It is worth more than Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter, or even any news organization. And I believe it is because they nail step two so beautifully.

Peripheral storytelling isn’t the whole story, but it’s one ingredient in their success. They put the ambient temperature of the franchise on full display, allowing fans of all ages to engage with the franchise however they want.

On a corporate level this requires enormous courage and artistry, which is why Pokémon Concierge is such a rare gem.

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