Self Reflection Into My Investigation

Throughout the course of my investigation I have come to understand how an audience can be more influencing on media texts than I once originally believed. I found it particularly interesting how transitioning between international audiences has a greater impact on the original text. Not just by the way the dialogue is altered and dubbed to match the target language but how different cultural opinions, beliefs and moralities impact on the ideas that are expressed through the texts themselves. It’s opened my eyes to how world events and political standpoints cause original media to be censored in different cultures, this will lead me to question in the future if the content I am consuming is in its original form the creators intended or if it has been altered and tweaked to viewing guidelines and audience requirements. When talking about how through the use of paratexts audiences have been given a higher balance in power I feel like I offer a bias towards the audience, due to my own personal fandom for the franchise and being a consumer of these bootleg games as well as originals. I find it this causes me to easily perceive Pokemon as an escapism text due to my own level of escapism felt when indulging in the franchise particularly towards the video games, animated series and manga aspects of the franchise. I find that with the research I have conducted into how western audiences react towards foreign originating medias will help me in future analysis of texts as I have gained a better understanding into the oppositions of Eastern and Western ideological cultures, with Eastern cultures offering a darker maturity into their content with different belief systems to that of Western media in which I primarily consume. I find it interesting in how merchandising can be used to intersect with media releases in order to boost the level of anticipation and reception from an audience, in what almost feels like a form of bribery into partaking in a particular media text. This is something that I will take into account when creating my own productions as I feel that with every media text there needs to be a degree of marketing and cross convergence in order to entice an audience in and create a successful piece of work. I think it has also been made clear to me that when creating a media text be it a feature film or a game it is always key to understand who the audience your intending to target is learning their interests and knowing what will evoke a positive reaction from them. I think if I were to conduct this investigation again I would ensure to focus not just on how Pokemon is tailored to fit a child audience but also dive deeper into how it has been created in a way that does not narrow it to gender specific interests or even that of young to late childhood. I would also like to investigate more into the orins of the entire franchise, looking at original target specific audiences in Japan and how this altered as the franchise began to snowball into something bigger.