Rather, the general view is that Pok mon is innocuous or even positive.
Mothers say that it fosters communication at home.
Allison, an associate professor of cultural anthropology at Duke, is a specialist on mass culture in contemporary urban Japan. She is in Japan on Fulbright and Social Science Research Council senior fellowships researching popular heroes and super heroes in Japan that get circulated through comics and television programs, are mass marketed through toys and other merchandising, and are exported around the world as global commodities. She has now turned her attention to Pok mon. Pok mon began as a game and has exploded into a mass merchandising opportunity, she said. The game was picked up as a serialized comic, or manga.