Magical Pokemon Journey / ポケットモンスターPi Pi Pi ★ アドベンチャ is a ten volume shojo manga series by Yumi Tsukirino (月梨野 ゆみ) about a girl named Hazel and her pursuits of love for her crush, Almond the Pokemon Trainer. Most of the human cast are named after some sort of nut (Hazel, Peanut, Almond, ect) and almost every Pokemon excluding Pikachu and a few bug types talk!

I guess the best way to describe it would be a slice-of-life romance shoujo manga, due to a lot of the focus being on Hazel's crush and eventually her rivarly with Coconut. It had a sequel by the name of Pokemon Chamo-Chamo ☆ Pretty ♪ which is very hard to access physically.

In North America, it was published by Viz Media before going out of print. It’s currently a difficult collection to come across in terms of being affordable but it’s understandable given these are no longer produced and had limited volumes translated to English. This is all I know from what I've researched. If you know more, please do let me know!

If you do want to give the manga a try or look at the art, jb2448 has archived I think all of it (I'm unsure because it's not translated). You can check it out through this link!

I physically own 3 issues, the following:

Pokemon Holiday / Pokemon Sleepover / Operation: Hypnotism

I found and purchased them for affordable prices off Thriftbooks.com, as they were previously copies for libraries (like the ones I used to read as a kid). I'm still hoping to get more translated copies like these, but they're just a pain to come by.

It's why I understand the fact I never see this series mentioned anywhere. It feels like one of those "you had to be there" sort of things to appreciate it because once it faded out of libraries, how else would you have known it existed?! I legit only found it as a kid because it was placed with alongside the Pokespe collection and the little Pokemon chapter books. I have no clue how else I would have accessed it. I never even seen people online talk about it despite me being on the early web where it would have flourished the most!

Magical Pokemon Journey: How Do You Do Pikachu and Magical Pokemon Journey: Pokemon Holiday were the two only volumes my library carried in my youth. Today, they've been lost to time unfourtunately. But that didn't stop me from still finding myself influenced by Ysukinirno’s work. I have so many notebook paper comics about me and my Pachirisu and our misadventures, mimicing the humor and tone that Magical Pokemon Journey had. Because this was a girly centric Pokemon comic with the cutest art I'd ever seen; I wanted to make girly centric Pokemon comics too! It was hard to not become obsessed, especially since a lot of the Pokemon talked! Between Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and Magical Pokemon Journey, they really influenced how I like to write Pokemon and how they interact with humans. They're literally just little furry guys! Similar to how Sanrio critters and Jewelpets function; they're legit just dudes who are critters. Like, yeah, they're monsters and all and will do animal stuff but they're just little guys at the end of the day. I fucking love that.

I think what really has me fighting and wanting to share this series is that it's an officially liscensed Nintendo Product. Like, Nintendo liscensed it. Why don't we have more things like this?! It hurts my heart so much that today we almost never get anything on the silly levels that this series holds due to capitalism and shortcuts for what makes the big buck. I kick my paws so angrily often realizing that this era of exploration is done because of the focus of money. Whether it's through the video games (GOD I miss the crazy spinoffs) or the art (poor Pokespe is being strangled to death!). The big official people aren't gonna take risks and back weird things anymore or even think about them. And that sucks!

I know thats why fandom work is so important and why we have to support peers making what we want to see, but DAMNIT! I can keep dreaming about Pokemon ever being open to liscense someone's fanwork. The closest the fandom has gotten to that was Detective Pikachu; they hired a lot of realistic Pokemon artist to help visualize the film so it wasn't uncanny. Maybe they're hiring people for the games too, but I have to be honest I've stopped caring about the games. I probably won't care again until they make a weird spinoff that isn't microtransaction and mobile based.

I mean, yeah there's still a chance in the coming years we'll get some weird Pokemon spinoffs. Pokemon has been experimenting to some extent, I admit! They've been animated though. I'll link the videos that've been my favorite of non-typical Pokemon work:

They're also at the time of writing, making a stop motion show for Netflix! Pokemon Concierge.

I'm hoping to get more stuff like this that's tangible, I guess. Stuff to read. I love animation but I also miss having reason to get off the computer and pick up a book.