Hey guys, its the recapanon who loves researching Shudo stuff. I'm tired of reading our flamebaiting friend argue the same things over and over, so I'm gonna start a different argument.
Last thread (or the one before) someone brought up whether the games or the anime started Pokemania. Obviously its not an either-or thing, since the games, anime, TCG, manga, movies, etc. all combined to make Pokemania a thing. But I found this old ass journal report on a conference attended by Tsunekazu Ishihara, Masakazu Kubo (ShoPro), and Takashi Kawaguchi (Nintendo) talking about how Pokemon became so successful. They chalked it up to "incremental development" which allowed them to integrate all of the parts together.
But then they quote game sales numbers shortly before and after the anime aired in picrel. It seems like there's a clear before/after point where sales exploded, and that was with the anime. Worth noting that this is all Japanese sales for 1997 that they're referencing. The game and anime were both released in North America in September 1998, with the anime coming before the games by a few weeks. Source for anyone who wants the pdf:
https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8V12CPD 