Topic: Japanese "metagame"/commonly played rules?

[Hahex and Oshawott]

Probably better off asking somewhere else but I figure I'll ask here first.

I've done a little bit of googling on it but it seems in Japan the only ruleset that's really developed is the VGC one? Here we use Smogon a lot alongside, but obviously since the site's in English that limits a lot of Japanese people from participating.

My only personal experience of Japanese players come from battle spot and some VGC replays, so I'm not sure if there's anything else other than those rules. I guess what I'm asking is whether or not there's something similar to Smogon in Japan, or if Japanese players only use whatever official Nintendo/battle frontier rules.

[Delicious_Scout]

My experience from Japanese players in X was that most of them followed Smogon's. I do not know if this is of any relevance, though.

[Turner]

I don't battle competitively much but I can confirm that they are indeed different. A lot of it stems from the simple culture/language differences. A lot of kids in Japan who play Pokemon still need furigana above kanji to actually read the dialogue of the game, navigating to a foreign website and being able to process that information in a way that is meaningful to them would be beyond their skill set.

On top of this, interactive Pokemon culture and the connectivity features are far more meaningful in Japan than they are in the west. It can be hard for us to trek out to wherever the nearest VGC is or to meet up with local Pokemon fans to battle, whereas Japan is a far smaller country with a number of local Pokemon Centres where kids can go on the weekends and take part without having any prior competitive knowledge and glean strategies from their friends and learn from Pokemon Get TV/Pokemon Smash, they will do this long before they visit somewhere non-native to the Pokemon franchise like a fansite. In Japan Pokemon connectivity even with stuff like streetpass and local wireless is a lot closer to how many of us played the traditional Game Boy Pokemon in that respect in that it was more about the person in front of you than a person anywhere in the world.

I think also in the west the reason Smogon's rules are so widely adhered to is because it's the most comprehensive english competitive battling website, most people will copy and paste teams and movesets from there without thinking. It took me a while to realize that what Smogon said wasn't gospel and that their rules and clauses are meaningless on Wi-Fi, where people will abuse evasion whether you like it or not.

Not really relevant but whenever I've battled Koreans I've noticed their teams are often really gimmicky.

[Hahex and Oshawott]

I've been in China recenty and picked up a pokemon magazine type thing there. I assume it's translated from Japanese, but I'm not totally sure. I have a feeling that the 3DS is formally banned from sale in China, although it's not rigorously enforced.

Either way, it has an incredibly detailed section on some competitive builds for certain pokemon. Pages detailing complete learnsets and reccomended items but most interestingly is the mention of EV spreads and example movesets. Although I can't read all of it, it seems similar to what we see on Smogon analyses and Richard's Pokemon of the Week. That really suprised me, since over here we only really have Monster World and ONM as any sort of pokemon magazine, and neither go in particular detail about competitive battling.

Hearing what Turner said kinda makes me wish that the UK had a pokemon center. Sure there's a VGC up in Birmingham once a year, but it's not really the same. I guess it's sort of similar to how there were loads of Yu-Gi-Oh! tournaments up in bookstores weekly.

[Dragonpika]

I only know about VGC, really, but from what I know of the community there the Japanese players tend much more towards meeting up in friendship groups and practicing and brainstorming team ideas together, with much less focus on sites like Nugget Bridge (which is probably the most popular VGC-orientated site, there's no real Smogon equivalent for VGC). They tend to have much more.. quirky strategies than the USA and Europe. Klefki was huge in Japan but never really made it big over here, for example, and SwaggerLum was almost centralised in the Japanese metagame, compared to minimal usage outside. I'm pretty sure it was a Japanese player that invented the Divecats team, too. =P

It makes it kinda weird at Worlds where all the European and American players know each other, but the Japanese and Korean players tend to have their own little groups, but I guess that might be a language thing as much as a difference in online communication.