Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pokémon: The Electric Tale of Pikachu

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was speedy keep. Nomination withdrawn. (non-admin closure)‎ Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 21:23, 26 December 2024 (UTC).[reply]

Pokémon: The Electric Tale of Pikachu

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This subject doesn't appear to be notable. I scoured through everything for a BEFORE, including Japanese sources, Books sources, sources from the early 2000s, and Scholar sources. I found a genuinely fantastic source from SyFy, which can be viewed here: https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/pokemon-electric-tale-of-pikachu-manga.

Beyond that, though, is very little. There's some trivia articles from Valnet, which generally don't count for notability, but that's about it, and none of them are really SIGCOV of the entire manga series. The current source in the article is half-decent, but it's very barebones coverage (It's generic but it sold well). I found another hit in a scholarly paper, but it was just verifying the same sales info that I found previously. There's an interview source in here, but that falls under WP:PRIMARY, which doesn't count for notability.

There's scattered bits here and there, but nothing here for a strong, concrete article that satisfies any notability guideline. An AtD for now is to List of Pokémon manga. While not the greatest article, it allows for a preservation of page history should stronger sourcing come about, or if that list ever gets a revamp. Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 02:06, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Literature, Video games, Anime and manga, and Japan. Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 02:06, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

~~Weak~~ keep - In addition to the SyFy article, there's a review by Ex.org (reliable source per WP:A&M/RS). Technically enough for notability but there's also a short review in Manga: The Complete Guide: [1]. And I wouldn't call this article by CBR trivial: [2], although CBR is marked as "generally unreliable", the author in this case has also written for reliable outlets like Polygon and Nintendo Life, so I wouldn't dismiss it as outright unreliable. And there's a sales article by Comichron (listed at WP:CMC/REF), written by a subject matter expert John Jackson Miller. --Mika1h (talk) 14:00, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Found a review from Spanish print magazine Minami: [3] --Mika1h (talk) 14:46, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I found these sources [4] (brief mention), [5] (sales), [6] (Plot). Timur9008 (talk) 18:16, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep per the above sources; I also found a good article in Screen Rant [7] (considered marginally reliable) and this Mania article is linked in the external links, which is a reliable source. Not to mention Anime News Network previously reported that at one point it was the best-selling comic book in the US [8]. Link20XX (talk) 17:07, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Mania reviews are for the anime series, they should be removed from external links. --Mika1h (talk) 17:16, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I went ahead and removed them. Timur9008 (talk) 17:24, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I did not realize it was an anime review (admittedly was too lazy to read it); that being said, my vote does not change. Link20XX (talk) 18:40, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: This isn't an argument for retention, but something that might point towards sourcing that could show notability. I seem to remember that this series was the first Pokemon manga to be brought over to the United States and given an official translation. The English release dates seem to back this up as well. I'm pulling up some hits in Newspapers.com - I'll go through those and see if they're for this series or not. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 19:59, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This was indeed the first English language translation (official, anyway) of any Pokémon manga. I've found some news coverage of this - I'm uncertain of one of the reviews, but did find at least one good one. The one I'm not certain of, it's because the reviewer looks to be young. The picture is low quality so I'm not certain and the review isn't given any of the "reviewed by Jane Smith, age 8" or "Kiddie Korner" type additions that usually accompany child reviews, so I have to assume that it might have gone through more editorial oversight than some of the other reviews, if she is as young as I think she might be.

I'd have liked to have added more. I actually think that there is a very strong chance that there are more sources out there, they're just harder to find because of one (or both) of two reasons: The sources are not available on the Internet or do not allow for searching as one would with Newspapers.com. The sources do not use the specific title of "The Electric Tale of Pikachu" and instead refer to the series along the lines of "Pokemon comics", something that would be pretty easy to do as Viz began publishing the original, longer series immediately after completing the four volumes of TETOP. This newspaper article is a good example of this. It's a short mention about how the first issue of the comics (mentioned in the lead and backed up by the Yadao source) sold extremely well.

With this in mind, when you consider what I did find - and that some of those sources were released years after the last volume was released in 2000 - it does give off the strong impression that more sourcing is probably available. However even without that, I think that the currently available sourcing is enough to establish how the series passes notability guidelines. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 20:42, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Something to back this up is that it's extremely likely that some of the anime and manga themed magazines of the time would have reviewed the series as well. Pokemon related topics were kind of a license to print money, so I could see one of the early magazines like Mangazine, Protoculture Addicts, and so on reviewing this. Sure, it's not a guarantee, but this is one of those cases where the existence of such mainstream sources gives off a good faith assumption that more likely exists.

Of note is that we also haven't searched for Japanese language sourcing. The same issues I mentioned above for the English language sources would apply here, but I think it's likely that more reviews and coverage exist in Japanese as well. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 20:47, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've asked for help at the Pokemon and anime/manga WikiProjects, in the hopes that someone fluent can perform searches. I'm bringing up a lot of hits, but since I'm not fluent I'm unable to refine this so that the results bear fruit more easily. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 20:55, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Withdraw as a result of some of the finds here. I'm impressed with a few of the more obscure finds I wasn't able to locate, primarily the Ex.org review. Combined with the SyFy source and some of the other sources, this more than passes WP:GNG. I'll see about trying to incorporate some of this content into the article soon. Thank you all for the finds! I honestly thought this wasn't notable at all, so I'm glad to have been proven wrong here. Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 21:21, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.