In one of the most novel ideas we’ve seen from The Pokémon Company, the media giant has revealed Pokécology, an official book that focuses on the behaviours of the fictional creatures.
Reported on my Automaton Media, Pokécology will be released in Japan on 18th June 2025 by publisher Shogakukan, with no official Western release confirmed yet. But the big draw here is that the book has been put together by two veterinary behaviorism and ecology PHD graduates from the University of Tokyo. So it’s essentially a real science book about fictional creatures.
The book has been penned by Yoshinari Yonehara — who has worked with the company on Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Scarlet & Violet — with illustrations form Chihiro Kinoshita, who is known for drawing a wide range of children’s illustrations focusing on animal ecology.
We’ve got no official images besides the logo, which is pretty charming, but pre-orders from Amazon Japan, Rakuten, and HMV (among other retailers) price the book at around ¥1,430 — just over USD $10.
Instead of focusing on Pokémon stats and battle techniques, Pokécology will instead look at things such as sleeping habits, preferred foods, migration patterns, and other likewise topics. Sounds like the perfect New Pokémon Snap companion to us.
Plus, it’ll apparently be presented in an easy-to-understand way, meaning this might be how you get your kids excited about animal sciences, ecology, and biology.
We know translating the book could be a lot of work, but we’d love to see this get the official treatment here in the West. For now, we’ll have our fingers crossed as we prepare to become Pokémon experts. It’d be a great thing to announce in the run-up to the next Pokémon game’s release, Legends: Z-A.
What do you think of a official Pokémon ecology book? Let us know in the comments.