Psyduck co-stars in series about finding inner peace and daily joy.
Back in February, the Pokémon Company announced that a brand-new stop-motion animation Pokémon series was coming to Netflix. There wasn’t any release window mentioned at the time, but it’s now official that the series will debut next month, and to help set the mood, the first full preview video has been revealed.
That mood, by the way, is relaxed and soothing. Titled Pokémon Concierge, the series follows Haru, a young woman who’s starting a new job working at the Pokémon Resort. This isn’t a nature preserve where people come on vacation to see Pokémon, though, but a place for the Pocket Monsters themselves to enjoy the seaside scenery, tropical weather, and wellness activities like yoga, with human staff on hand to take care of their relaxation needs.
While several different Pokémon species appear in the preview, it looks like Psyduck is going to be playing a big role. The perpetually stressed-out Psychic-type seems like a prime candidate for a vacation to relieve its jangled nerves, and it seems like Haru might be recovering from a frazzled mental state herself, as she happily stretches out on the grass and looks up at the big blue sky while saying “I never had the time to do this sort of thing” in the Japanese-language video.
There’s also a preview for the English-dubbed version of the series, but there’s one voice that’s the same in both: Mariya Takeuchi. The 68-year-old pop vocalist’s heyday within Japan came in the 1980s, but she’s had an international resurgence in popularity in recent years as younger overseas audiences rediscovered her 1985 city pop song “Plastic Love.” Takeuchi provides Pokémon Concierge’s theme song, which is titled “Kimi no Ibasho” (meaning “a place for you to be”) in Japanese and “Have a Good Time Here” in English.
▼ Pokémon Concierge’s English-dialogue preview
Getting back to the visuals, there’s an impressive amount of detail, with full sets and lighting and environmental effects, such as a flickering campfire and Haru’s bangs fluttering in the breeze. Little touches like that are sometimes considered more trouble than they’re worth to include in stop-motion, so it appears that a lot of care has gone into the series. And while, like every piece of Pokémon media, Pokémon Concierge looks kid-friendly, it seems like the main target market is going to be adults, what with its focus on achieving a good work/life balance and finding a job you can take daily pride in.
Pokémon Concierge debuts on December 28.
Source, images: YouTube/ポケモン公式YouTubeチャンネル
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