Unova / New York Correlations

[SuperTrainStationH]

Not sure if this should have gone in the anime section or maybe even Black and White, but I'll give it a shot here. I also figure this is specific enough a topic for its own thread.

Anyway, we all have known for a while that the Unova region is based on New York City, but a former NYC resident I noticed a few elements of authenticity concerning the locations in Unova featured in the first episode of the Black and White anime that other fans might not have noticed.

The airport Ash's seaplane splashes down appears to be analogous to Floyd Bennett Field, which was on the coast of Brooklyn (just as shown in the anime) and formerly host to seaplanes, but has been mostly abandoned and not used for passenger flights for many decades now.

Prof. Juniper drives Ash, Prof. Oak, and Ash's mom from the airport to Nuvema Town via a forested parkway which would be on the southern tip of the Pokémon World's geographical equivalent of our world's "Brooklyn".

A similar (though much busier) parkway connects the area of the real life abandoned seaplane port in New York to the communities of Cony Island and Bensonhurst which would correspond with Nuvema Town. The real Belt Parkway parkway is also scenic and forested, and wildlife loosely mirroring the Pokémon seen by Ash on the road to Nuvema can be seen along the roadside, excepting the deer like Pokémon.

The drive both in real life, and as depicted by the anime, between the seaplane port and the town is scenic, but short.

Finally, Cony Island is host to both a college and a weather monitoring station that could be seen as a possible parallel to Prof. Juniper's lab. A relative of mine actually worked as a lab technician at the college for a short time.

I made a chart type thing illustrating these similarities, but its VERY large, so I'll just post a link to it.

UNOVA - NYC Real Life Connections

This is just what I found watching the episodes of the English dub that premiered yesterday, when I actually get my hands on the game and see more of the show I'll probably find a lot more of these types of connections.

 

[Owain]

Unova IS confirmedly based on Manhattan...
this is cool, but not surprising XD

 

[βƹβƹ ɱɪɢηѻη]

Unova IS confirmedly based on Manhattan...
this is cool, but not surprising XD

That's not what he's talking about... He already knows that.

He's trying to match up the Unova locations with the real world Manhattan.

 

[Greenboot1228]

the desert totally, like it signifies the space between lower manhatten and the distrect that the empire state building is in. like building wise ya know?

(i dont know how to spell yay )

 

[Ambipom666]

Going just by the games, I'd say:

Everything from Route 16 to Pinwheel Forest is Brooklyn. Sky Arrow Bridge connects Castelia City and Pinwheel Forest. The S.A.B. is I think confirmed to be based off of the Brooklyn Brige, which connects Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan (a.k.a. Castelia City)

Raimon City is Midtown. That would be my guess. Then there's the Hodomoe Drawbridge, altough there's no drawbridge from Manhattan to New Jersey. The Cylinder Bridge might be The George Washington Bridge, the Pokemon League in the Bronx, the post-E4 areas being Queens, I don't know...

 

[SuperTrainStationH]

I wanted to hold off on adding anything new to this thread, but I found some significant new stuff that I think is worthy enough to be added.

I haven't played the games yet at all or read any spoilers for the games, but the latest anime episode of the B/W Dub included a scene in which Jessie and James are casing Necrene City for escape routes after they rob the museum.

They see some old train tracks running through the streets and mention that they arent used anymore. Now that I'm aware of the unused street train tracks in Nacrene City, I can confirm first hand that these train tracks actually do exist in Brooklyn Heights NY, which would geographically respond to Nacrene City in Unova.

Furthermore, the old fashioned buildings as depicted in the anime in the district surrounding the old train tracks are actually very accurate to the real life location, its evident that the creators did some specific research to include the train tracks in this neighborhood, I'm really surprised to be honest.

Here's some photos I took of the area a couple of years ago with more behind the spoilers. Unfortunately I didn't think at the time to take photos of the buildings themselves, only the tracks.

Spoiler

Additionally, I filmed a YouTube video giving a real life tour tracing a path from the far side of Undella Bay (which I added to the game map to place it in the context of Unova), past the airport where Ash first arrived in Unova, through the parkway that Professor Juniper drove him through to get to Nuvema Town, and then approaching the equivalent of Nacrene City from the south and crossing the equivalent of the Skyarrow Bridge to get to Lower Manhattan, which of course would be Castelia City.

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxA-A_hUEXo

I'll probably have a lot more Unova/NYC correleations to contribute once I actually play the games. This is mostly just based on my observations of the game map and watching the anime dub up to this point.

 

[Caedis]

Wow, I never got that many correlations before. I mostly just read about it. I've never been a NYC resident, but it definitely did seem city-wise to be similar as I too live in a huge city. There were definitely American themes as well (such as the Dancers in the games). In the anime everything did seem far more like the technologies that NY has today. Those were the only most obvious correlations that I was able to make out.

 

[jda95]

Raimon City is Midtown.Then there's the Hodomoe Drawbridge, altough there's no drawbridge from Manhattan to New Jersey.

The location of the Hodomoe Drawbridge roughly matches up to the Lincoln Tunnel.

And of course the Entralink is Central Park.

 

[UnovaCastaway]

As a lifelong NJ resident, I appreciate the tribute to this metro area!

The Mistralton airport roughly correlates to Newark Airport (EWR) in real life. (although Newark handles lots of passenger AND cargo flights). Driftveil City matches the seaport in Elizabeth, NJ, just south of Newark.

Northern New Jersey also has mountainous areas, although they are smaller, old and forested instead of the snow-capped rocky peaks in Unova.

You see the Battle Subway cover many corners of Unova. Of course, the NYC Subway doesn't extend into NJ (there has been speculative talk of expanding it in the past), but there are multiple train lines that lead into Manhattan (NJ Transit, PATH, Amtrak, along with Metro North and LIRR from Connecticut and Long Island, respectively).

 

[AndyPKMN]

Now this is the kind of topic I like! On my ongoing project mapping Pokemon locations to corresponding locations on Google Earth, I've found a number of interesting correlations.

-Nuvema Town could be based on Brighton Beach. I admit I have very little evidence for this, as starting towns are typically some of the least interesting or detailed. However, both BB and Nuvema have boardwalks, they are in approximately the same location map-wise, and BB has a large Eastern European immigrant population. Why this last point? In the Japanese version at least, both of your rivals (Cheren and Bel) have Eastern European names!

-While you cite Brooklyn Heights as Nacrene City, I find DUMBO to be a better comparison. Both are former warehousing districts which have been converted to artist's communities.

-Liberty Garden Island is quite clearly inspired by our world's Liberty Island.

-Like has been said before, Castelia represents Lower Manhattan, and Raimon Midtown Manhattan. By extension the Entralink would fall smack dab in the middle of Central Park.

-Undella Bay would correspond to Jamaica Bay, although the latter is not nearly as touristy and pristine as the former from my research.

All of this is of course speculation, but I find it to be a fun diversion. I'm also perfectly willing to include other people's conclusions, so I'll be keeping an eye on this topic!

 

[SuperTrainStationH]

So, Andy PKMN.

I say the tracks are explicitly Brooklyn Heights, but the actual approach to the Skyarrow Bridge itself, the view is obviously inspired DUMBO, and the bridge itself looks more styled after the Manhattan Bridge than the Brooklyn Bridge. I think they hodge podged together different aspects of the area they liked, because either way they definitely did their research on the actual location as far as this general part of NY is concerned.

Pinwheel Forest would be an obvious analog for Brooklyn Bridge park being right in the shadow of the bridge of course, though it would have worked better if BB Park was a bit more "foresty" like Central Park.

As for Nuvema Town, while before playing the game I took it specifically to be Cony Island/Brighton Beach, now that I've seen it in the game, the overhang on the pier on Nuvema's southern side is EXACTLY like part of Sheepshead Bay in the same area which is built on an overhang kind of like that, but you can't tell when you're there unless you look at it from across the water.

 

[Dark Master Draya]

really... i wouldnt say it is

i think that its just a missinterpretation... but if its been confermed soooooo, i still dont see it

 

[βƹβƹ ɱɪɢηѻη]

really... i wouldnt say it is

i think that its just a missinterpretation... but if its been confermed soooooo, i still dont see it

You mean, you think that the interview with Junichi Masuda about the region being inspired by the NYC area was a mistranslation?

I doubt it. We would've known it by now if it was mistranslated. Hundreds of people have translated it, so it's definitely not mistranslated.

Maybe this picture here will help you to see the resemblance:

 

[SuperTrainStationH]

...
-While you cite Brooklyn Heights as Nacrene City, I find DUMBO to be a better comparison. Both are former warehousing districts which have been converted to artist's communities.
...

I just realize that what I've been calling Brooklyn Heights actually is DUMBO and we're talking about the exact same location. This is what I get for using crudely labeled internet maps.

Additionally, Mignon, that Manhattan in skewed WAY far north on that map to the point where the Williamsburg Bridge is where the equivalent of the Skyarrow Bridge should be, but thats just a matter of the geography being artistically altered in Unova.