Putting on my Product Manager hat, the best product launches often focus on a single well-defined persona, as this one apparently did. Now that this is proven to work, they can expand to middle-aged women, older people, younger people, animals and what have you. But I think that this is a great start.

The bar in this medium is pretty low. Pokemon is about capturing animals in the wild and making them fight in captivity.

The "why just men?" question is probably worth raising locally, but I'm not going to shame them from the other side of the planet for it.

That's a needlessly uncharitable interpretation, but it is an interesting point.

I think that increased rates of low (and high) grade neurodivergence in men, and society expecting eccentric behavior from men, especially as they age, results in in the sort of characters that make something like this work. Umarells in Italy come to mind.

In Japan, men commit suicide at roughly twice the rate of women. The age group with the highest rate of suicide was 50-59. I can't find good data, but loneliness and not feeling valued by a community is very likely a significant contributor here.

Women are important but if the problem you're trying to solve is deaths of despair, then focusing on men makes sense.

In fairness older men are goofy, women not so much

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

"obachan" expansion potential

The whole thing was an idea of a woman, Eri Miyahara, 45-year-old secretariat head of the Saidosho regional community council, I bet she have her reasons to focus on men, I suspect it's the perceived loneliness of the selected ones.

An obvious choice for an early expansion pack.

Like Pokemon adding a girl player character in 2nd Gen.

Japanese society is famously sexist.... also the game was created by a woman.

Hey, what about the women?

I was going to comment on this. I wonder if there are any cards for women (dumb!) or if they’re just not mentioned in the article (dumb!).