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Atsuko Nishida is a Japanese Game Freak character designer. She is responsible for the design of Pikachu. She was part of the original Pokemon design team along with Ken Sugimori and Koji Nishino. In addition to being the designer behind Pikachu, she is also responsible for the design of the three original starter pokemon, Bulbausar, Squirtle and Charmander. She is also credited with the design of some Eevee evolutions including Leafeon and Glaceon and Sylveon.

Designing Pikachu

According to a 2018 interview in the Pokemon website, Nishida was working on character design for a Mega Drive game when she was asked by Ken Sugimori to help design Pokemon characters that could be described as "cute". In Sugimori's words, he requested Nishida to join the all-male team of three designers because "Tough-looking Pokémon designs was all I could think of, so the thought of “cute monsters” didn’t even cross my mind. So that’s when we got help from a female designer Nishida-san, who was tasked with designing Pikachu". At the time, Nishida was tasked with designing an electric-type Pokemon with two evolution stages. Her original design resembled a daifuku, a small japanese dumpling, with pointy ears and very little definition. Nishida is responsible for Pikachu's name. She explains the origin of this name is inspired on pika-pika, a japanese onomatopeia for sparkle, and chu, a japanese sound for a mouse's squeak. While Nishida's early designs were more reminiscent of a squirrel, Sugimori and Nishida credit Game Freak president Satoshi o ask Nishida to make Pikachu an electric mouse.