No meet-and-greets or Pokémon Card Game classrooms will be taking place for at least one month.
On March 26, a female employee at the Pokémon Center store in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district was stabbed and killed. The shocking incident prompted the store’s management, as well as that of the Pokémon Sweets dessert cafe located within the same shopping center, to immediately close down indefinitely, and while Japan’s other Pokémon Centers remain open for business, they too are rethinking their operations for the time being.
In addition to being retail stores, the Pokémon Centers serve as venues for a variety of fan events, such as contests, giveaways, and character meet-and-greets, that attract fans of all ages. However, the chain has announced that it is cancelling its events for the entire month of April at all Pokémon Centers in Japan, including such regular parts of the festivities as the Pokémon Greetings and Pokémon Card Game Classroom instructional sessions.
The only exceptions to the cancellations will be the already scheduled Pokémon Card Game City League and Pokémon GO Divisional Pokémon Center Qualifying tournaments. As official competitions, there are likely contracultural that organizers have to participants and other affiliated tournaments that would make it complicated for the Pokémon Centers to simply cancel them outright. Changes are still being made, though, to the proceedings for the Pokémon GO tournaments. Initially, the plan was to allow spectators to view the event, with both direct visual lines of sight to the competition area as well as video broadcasts on screens inside Pokémon Center stores, and also to give out special merch to spectators. All of those parts of the event have now been cancelled, implying that while the competitions will still take place, they’ll do so in a much more controlled environment with a buffer zone between participants and general store visitors.
It is worth keeping in mind that the March 26 stabbing stemmed from a previous personal relationship between the victim and her attacker, and was not the result of animosity towards the Pokémon Center, the Pokémon franchise, or its fans. While there’s no question that the incident is causing the Pokémon Center chain to review its security protocols, it’s likely that even more so than potential safety risks, the decision to cancel events was made out of respect to the deceased. Cancelling celebratory events is common in Japan following tragedies, such as the widespread suspension of springtime cherry blossom festivals and summer fireworks shows following the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, and so it’s not surprising that the Pokémon Center management would feel that now really isn’t the time to be amping up a party-like atmosphere in their stores.
Source: Game Watch via Yahoo! Japan News via Kinisoku
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