Everything about Pokemon (in my opinion) part 1

Almost everyone has heard of Pokemon (or in Japan, Pocket Monsters).  Among popular and successful franchises, Pokemon is one which is very well liked by both children and adults (it should be noted, many of us young adults were in fact children when the franchise came to being). Pokemon is known in several mediums. While originally and primarily being video game based, it also has an animated series, a card game, and of course there's a lot of collectible merchandise for this franchise. Now you might be asking what kind of appeal does this franchise have which might make it so successful. That might be best explained by understanding the premise of Pokemon.

Pokemon as I stated was originally a video game, specifically an RPG. In the world of Pokemon, trainers catch, train, and battle with creatures known as Pokemon (hence the title). There are many kinds of Pokemon that inhabit the world, and your goal as a trainer is to catch all the Pokemon and be the best trainer there is. In this RPG, you do not have typical party members which join you at specified points of the story, but rather your team of Pokemon is determined more by which ones you choose to capture from the wild. At its fundamentals, the world of Pokemon is one which encourages its players to explore and discover. Given the huge variety in Pokemon you can encounter, there is also a large degree of customization in building a team. So not only is there discovery in finding new Pokemon, there is discovery of new ways to create a more powerful team for battling. Competitive players like myself in particular take great interest in Pokemon battling due to the depth of customization possible in building teams.


Now before I start rambling about competitive Pokemon, I will acknowledge that not everyone is into the nitty gritty details about competitive battling.  So I'll quickly give a few thoughts on the other facets of Pokemon in this part of my ramblings.

To be frank, I'm not a fan of the anime as an adult, but back when Pokemon was new, I do remember finding the anime quite interesting. For one, its English voice acting is in fact quite good. Furthermore, as I've stated, Pokemon at its fundamentals strongly emphasizes the element of discovery.  In a way, I believe that makes the show fascinating, bringing up logical fantasy elements that come together to explain how creatures in this world interact with one another. It becomes exciting as Ash Ketchum either encounters new never before seen Pokemon, or when the ones he's caught suddenly learn new game-changing moves. The anime by all means intends to follow a similar purpose as its video game routes. The thrill of discovery defines its entertainment.

I have a few problems with the anime however. For one, the anime does a pretty awful job at being consistent with the laws dictated by the video games.  Most notably, the many times Pikachu beats a Ground-type Pokemon with Thunderbolt, such as vs Brock's Onix, vs the trainer in the beginning of the first Pokemon movie and his Golem, yeah.  I mean sure, the video games gave Pikachu an exclusive item that actually makes it hit like a nuclear bomb, but my point still stands that it's a pretty dreadful inconsistency.  Oh and the time when Sabrina's father told Ash to look for a Ghost type so he could rechallenge her.  Well, that's fine and dandy, except Alakazam in the actual game counters Gengar (and its pre-evos Haunter and Gastly) pretty hard given it is faster and hits super effectively on their secondary Poison type.  Don't get me started either on how the only Ghost type attack in R/B/Y was Lick, and it actually had no effect on Psychics. Yeah.

Maybe I shouldn't be too hard on the anime for taking liberties for the sake of thematic entertainment. But speaking of entertainment, a lot of it comes from Ash and Pikachu's interaction with the series villains, known as Team Rocket.  Well, if Jessie, James, and Meowth could be called villains.  While they are devious, they are much more comical and stupid to be frank. Their entire goal is to steal Ash's Pikachu (big deal, right?). Evidently in episode 2, they came to the conclusion that Pikachu was OP simply because the combination of Charge and Thunder (I made that up, shoot me if I'm not funny) swept them. I mean, seriously? They really were only blown up by massive amounts of setup favorable to Pikachu to be frank.  At any rate, the consistency at which they fail to capture Ash's Pikachu pretty much explains their incompetency.  They do however get points for exiting with style.  No episode is complete without Team Rocket blasting off again, right?

Let's be real, you do have to be kinda badass to survive
both the explosion and the resulting trip to the stratosphere.

Ultimately however, I can't take the anime seriously as an adult.  It is rife with inconsistencies, and its plot progression is repetitively simplistic and uninspired for the most part. It's just the same thing every episode as Ash encounters some new Pokemon, saves Pikachu from Team Rocket, and generally through some corny means proves how he's usually somehow a more skilled and caring trainer than all the miscellaneous side characters he runs into (not that he never loses battles nor randomly fails, but Ash and his Pikachu are most definitely pretty damn glorified). Don't let me tell you that you shouldn't watch the anime though.  You have to at least listen to Eric Stuart in the unleashed manliness that is Brock and James' voice. Trust me, the voice acting in the show is definitely good. Also if you are a fan of the video game, you will at least love the soundtrack.  Very powerful remixes of familiar in-game themes. Go look it up on youtube!

Totally not related and totally NSFW,  but totally recommended to read.

Moving onto the card game...I'll keep my opinion on this one really quick.  Firstoff, I don't actually know a whole lot about it given it has changed a lot since the R/B/Y era.  Secondly however, I fundamentally think trading card games are lame because collecting cards is a pain in the ass.  Starter decks will only get you so far.  You have to really work and shell out cash and quarters to really get a solid variety of cards to optimize your deck just in general. I guess the other way to treat the trading cards is like any other merchandise, as collectors items to admire. Depending on how you want to approach this, this can still either be fun or tedious. There's basically a never ending supply of cards and merchandise to collect, and realistically you probably will never get close to acquiring all of it.

One thing that is interesting about the card game is that unevolved Pokemon tend to be far more valuable than evolved ones. This is due to how the energy system is designed.  It takes a larger number of energy cards to perform actions with most evolved Pokemon in the card game, so thus the best Pokemon in the card game are usually non-evolved or stage 1 evolution Pokemon that have cheap but reliable abilities. As I recall, Haunter had a guaranteed sleep status at the cost of only 1 or 2 energy cards?  Koffing likewise I think had a 10 damage attack that either confused or poisoned at the cost of 1 energy card. Legendaries on the other hand like Moltres are gutter trash in comparison when you basically need 4 energy cards to do an 80 damage move that might fail half the time, or something awful like that.

Fortunately, there are some significantly more reasonable alternatives to the madness that is known as collecting petty rectangular slips of laminated cardstock. There is a Game Boy Color adaptation of the card game, which I actually own a copy of and found moderately enjoyable, though it is only up to date with Generation 1 cards.  Better yet however, there is in fact an online Pokemon Trading Card Game simulator that is completely free to play.  I personally am not motivated to invest any extra skill into it though, but I will say from personal experience that having a computer do the work for you in playing the game is infinitely convenient when you no longer have to rely on messy tokens and pen and paper to figure out the math for everything.

I'm actually somewhat surprised Nintendo hasn't made a sequel to this on the DS.

Aside from collecting cards, as I've stated that the other way to show your appreciation for Pokemon is of course buying other assorted merchandise for the series.  Again, I'll try to keep my opinion on this one pretty brief.  The first thing to note is there are currently 649 Pokemon in Pokemon Black and White series, not counting extra formes for specific Pokemon.  As you can imagine, this is a ridiculously large number of potential creatures that could be made into figurines, artwork for notepads/binders, toys, and other collectibles.  This has a few implications.  The first being that having a really complete Pokemon merchandise collection is either impossible or requires you to spend outrageous amounts of money.  The second being what you pick can really personalize what kind of Pokemon fan you are.  Thus, I would recommend buying wisely.  Pick specific things that you know will make you happy if you want them.

Trust me, there was once a time where I really tried to be a hardcore Pokemon merchandise collector.  Some of you young adults in my age group may remember a time when Burger King had Pokemon themed toys with their kids meals, right?  Well yeah, my family and I actually went out of our way to collect them all. If we didn't succeed, we came extremely damn close. There were 60 different toys to collect.  Imagine all the junk food we ate back in 1999. Trust me, it's much healthier to be happy with collecting your absolute favorites.

Yes, these actually came in Poke Balls.  Serious business I tell you.

In general, you can see that I don't really place a whole lot of value on the Pokemon anime, card game, and its merchandise.  Ultimately, I don't feel these are the most important parts of the Pokemon franchise anyway.  Pokemon's roots ultimately are in its video games, and it is in my next blog post you will learn more how I feel about the video games, both on a casual and competitive level.