Whenever there is a new Pokémon game, you can count on two things: Excitement and phoney magazine scans of the new Trainers and the three Starters. Pokémon Sun and Moon will be no exception.
There are numerous examples of this in the past (here and here, for example), but as Japanese site Hachima Kikou points out, here are the latest fakes. They were first uploaded on a Korean language Twitter account and currently have over 3000 re-tweets.
https://twitter.com/TimeOoDd/status/708213399147061248
Hachima Kikou says that the Japanese in the scans seems off. I’d say that, compared to previous fakes, the Japanese is a million times better. There are more concrete examples as to why these scans are fake. First of all, Pokémon articles typically appear in CoroCoro Comic, which is aimed at little kids. Because it’s aimed at little kids, all of the kanji articles in the articles have furigana above them as a reading aid for children.
There are kanji characters, but they do not have furigana above them. Even odder, the word “ima” (いま), which means “now”, is written in hiragana instead of kanji, which would be 今. This is actually a word that would definitely be in kanji (but, of course, would still have furigana above it), because first graders learn this character. It’s strange to see it written here in hiragana.
Maybe, then, this could be in the most recent issue of Famitsu? Nope! While that publication does not use furigana to help kids with reading (because it’s not aimed at small children), there is not a story about Pokémon Sun and Moon.
Other strangeness includes the punctuation. There are dashes and dots in the middle, which are not Japanese periods (instead, Japanese periods look like 。and not ・ in the middle). There are also odd comma in the middle of sentences, and the text font doesn’t look like the font Japanese magazines typically use.
You are highly unlikely to see these punctuation mistakes in a real Japanese magazine. You are likely to see them in fake magazine scans.
Comments
5 responses to “New Pokémon Game, New Fake Magazine Scans”
Even if this is fake, the games box art looks pretty realistic to what we might see. Especially the shapes of the Pokemon and the diamond shapes on their bodies.
Also the starters look realistic too, nothing great but it’s not unfamiliar to what we’ve seen in the past.
before seeing the title, I could tell this was fake for some reason. I guess because it’s too early and something just seemed off anyway, regardless I think that green goat looks super adorable.
A shame I like that grass starter
What a surprise, Kotaku censored my comment because I said this isn’t news worthy! You disgust me, Kotaku. Can’t take the truth aye?
Perhaps you’d prefer a video game website that doesn’t report on video game news? Boy wouldn’t that be swell? Until such a thing is invented you can replicate the experience by staring a a blank piece of paper. As an added bonus you will annoy way less people. Also you mean ‘eh’, not ‘aye’.
I know exactly what I meant. AYE
Annoying people is part of having an opinion, so deal with it. Besides, if you can honestly defend some of the crap Kotaku posts, you’re part of the problem.
But you won’t see it will you? Just like them, you’ll go on ignoring reality and wonder why people like me call Kotaku out on their BS.