Pokémon Company CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara Steps Down From Head Role at Creatures Inc.
This week, Japanese video game studio Creatures Inc. announced that founder Tsunekazu Ishihara will be resigning from his Executive Director role at the company following his retirement as CEO on April 1. Ishihara will continue to be the President and CEO of The Pokémon Company, a company he founded in 1998 to oversee the Pokémon brand and in which Creatures Inc. invested heavily in the mid-1990s.
For the last two decades, Creatures Inc. has worked alongside Game Freak and Nintendo on the Pokémon franchise as CG artists, bringing the then-2D artwork into 3D. When the series moved away from sprites, Creatures Inc. was enlisted to model all the Pokémon for Game Freak. The video game company also developed the Detective Pikachu game, the Pokémon Ranger series of games and more.
Ishihara will continue on at Creatures Inc. in a supervisory role as Founder but ultimately has retired from the company he founded along with Satoru Iwata in 1995.
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Composer Hirokazu Tanaka, also known as Hip Tanaka and Chip Tanaka, also stepped down from his role as an Executive Director. Alongside Ishihara as CEO, Tanaka was the President of Creatures Inc. since 2001. Tanaka came to Creatures Inc. in 1999 after leaving Nintendo, who had forbidden him to work with other companies while employed at the Kyoto developer. At the time, Tanaka was working on music for the Pokémon anime and games and continued so for over a decade.
Tanaka will also continue at Creatures Inc. in a supervisory role as a Creative Fellow.
Both Ishihara and Tanaka retired from their roles as CEO and President respectively at the start of this Japanese business year on April 1. Yuji Kitano took over as CEO and President while Tomotaka Komura is the Executive Vice President
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Daryl Harding is a Senior Japan Correspondent for Crunchyroll News. He also runs a YouTube channel about Japan stuff called TheDoctorDazza, tweets at @DoctorDazza, and posts photos of his travels on Instagram.
