Pokémon Confuses Me

The world of Pokémon makes no sense to me.  I get the logistics of the fighting, of the card trading as well as RPG battles and all that.  What I don’t get is why young kids are traveling around unsupervised engaging in battle with wild monsters/animals.  The world itself makes less sense than rules governing the battles.  The battles all have reasonably complicated but balanced/thought out rules.  You have different types who are stronger or weaker against other types.  They can be leveled, upgraded, get new moves standard role playing nonsense.  It’s the world that makes no sense.  The whole place seems to hinge on these battles.  That seems to be what drives the economy entirely.  And it’s left to the kids.  The only thing that rings true is some evil mafia like organization trying to control the whole empire and win by stacking the deck behind the scenes.

Other games in the genre are rather ridiculous, magic how silly, but they make sense.  I can accept a world with wizards and goblins but without some manner of internal logic to hold it together it moves from odd to outright creepy.

Take Final Fantasy.  They have had countless games, spin offs, plenty of mistakes, but they generally keep to some internal plot and logic that makes sense.  There is life outside the adventure.  People in the world run towns, do the smithy-ing, farming, raising cattle or breeding chocobo (ostrich horse hybrids with their own theme music).  There is monarchies and established governments.  Why does this matter, it’s made up you ask.  Simple.  Because there is no frame of reference.  If everything is different it’s incomprehensible and worse still really awful plot devices can come out of nowhere and fix any problem.  “Oh, you can just use this magic water conveniently over there but never mentioned previously to now to fix the king”.  Fuck you lazy writing.  Fantasy/science fiction needs some stabilizing presence so their audience can understand what’s going on.  That’s why in movies that take place in some other realm or world we have some idiot the other characters keep talking to.  The new guy who is a moderately acceptable plot device used to explain to the audience through them what the rules are of the world.  Better than some hastily written words flashing across the screen or a bad narration.  Wonder why so many heroes are young people who know nothing of the world they live in?  Or that the story starts with some dude with amnesia, or some new student, a new recruit, and so on (see Hellboy, X-Men, The Matrix, Star Wars, Harry Potter, The Hobbit, and more).

How is it creepy you might ask?  Well for starters they let kids wander around the whole world by themselves, encouraging them to capture and enslave wild animals/monsters, and tell them to fight with people to progress.  I’m pretty sure most mature societies frown on encouraging kids to fight.  And they might be more than slightly obliged to oppose animal cruelty or risking your life capturing vicious beasts.

But only the Pokémon fight each other you state.  That’s right.  It’s also fucked up.  Is some ancient pact never referenced that means a Pokémon can’t attack some stupid kid.  And why is there no violence besides Pokémon on Pokémon violence?  You’d think in any society there is some conflict between humans that escalates to physical harm.  I’m not talking bar knifings or gangs of groin punching hooligans - watch out for the leather clad cock rockers – but it’s weird a place so inured to violence has it only in these strict confines.

Let’s encourage child endangerment.  Sure there is some weird law never stated that talks about Pokémon only hurting Pokémon but sometimes these creatures do outlandish enormous attacks.  Maybe there might be some repercussion.  They aren’t fighting in some vacuum.  It’s the reason in Dragonball Z they always flew out to some unpopulated area.  It’s the reason any super villain who wanted a chance with Superman would throw a bus of nuns at a bus of orphans to distract him.  But forget the weird monster battles these kids are wandering the world by themselves.  Never once are they chastised.  Rather they’re encouraged in sweat shop mentality to catch them all.  Is this their version of school?  I guess they might learn statistics, some strategic and critical thinking but that’s about it.  No history, no reading, no writing, just bullshit.

No adults do this even they could own at the sport and have all the power.  This is odd.  There are scumbags out there.  For every person who volunteers at the shelter there is some dickwad who cuts you off in traffic as they sip delicately from their overpriced premium coffee while flipping you the bird and listening to bad German techno.  You wonder why only kids can do battle.  Or maybe he kids are just stupid enough to do the hard work and capture the monsters and the adults harvest the fuckers for something else.  Maybe every time you bring one to the hospital there is some nefarious goings ons before they returned to you.  Maybe that’s why their always so excited for you to come pick them up.  Now I no longer trust vets as a side note.  Damn you crushing paranoia.

The game teaches that kidnapping and slavery are okay.  They totally aren’t.  I don’t know if every Pokémon has some Stockholm switch and they are chill with people forced into some magical sphere prison but it seems weird.  Worse still one Pokémon gets to just wander around freely with their trainer.  The rest can go fuck themselves.  Stay in your cage until I need you to beat the hell out of another one of your species.  And totally don’t rise up against us even though we robbed you of your freedom and use you for our gain.  It’s not like you have superpowers that keep getting stronger and we’re just flappy meat popsicles.  Seriously, why don’t they riot?  Maybe the magic ball just reprograms their brains.  In that case the poor wild Pokémon should organize and storm the cities and try to free their borged (borged is a word right?) cousins.

I have no comprehension of how their communication skills work.  These Pokémon only seem to communicate via saying their species name.  Not even their name their species name.  But they clearly understand their trainer’s wishes.  No Pokémon disagrees with your choice of attack, even its stupid, and does another one.  They clearly listen and comprehend, and sadly obey completely.  Why won’t you love me trainer, I do everything you ask!  More bewildering one of the monster/pets learned to speak our language.  Just one.  And he isn’t famous or praised for his rare ability.  Which muddies the water when thinking about individual personalities and self-awareness.  They can comprehend, they can learn but they have no yearning for anything but being controlled?

My caffeine addled brain is probably looking far too deeply into childrens’ programming but remember this is what the youth are watching.  This is the material that is in their heads as they begin to form higher thoughts like ethics, morals, and a right way to live.  While entertainment is never really to blame for kids’ actions it isn’t free from criticism either.  But most importantly it may be best for parents to understand what the hell your kids are ingesting.  Then again I wanted to be a Jedi when I grew up.  I don’t think the market has any opening for that and I have almost entirely stopped trying to move the remote control with my mind.

Ben