>>58412779I watched the video and it wasn't what you described at all, he's just talking about how Pokemon was more explicitly tied to Japanese culture and he even explained why but eventually phased all that out to make it more understandable to overseas audiences once the series was starting to take off in the West at the time and has mostly kept it up since.
Anyways it is kinda weird how these days we don't have to worry about stuff like this nearly as much as before because Japanese culture is way more familiar to everyone than it used to be, I'm pretty sure almost everyone knows what a rice ball is in current year. I guess the internet is to thank for that.