Review: Why is Pokemon a Kids’ Show?

I just want to start this off with a disclaimer: this is in no way supposed to be an in-depth (or super serious) review of Pokemon. I’ve only watched a few episodes of Pokemon: Black and White and played Pokemon Go a few times. I have by no means watched every single episode in the series and definitely am not a total Pokemon lore master. These are just my views on the show and if you have any comments about Pokemon lore, I would love to hear it. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on this wildly successful franchise.

#1: Pokemon is essentially dogfighting

How has no one noticed this?! You can argue with me about this all you want, but isn’t the point of trainers keeping Pokemon to train them to beat the crap out of other trainer’s Pokemon? If you think about it in those terms, the show is actually kind of dark. I can understand it in the context of a game, but how did it get green-lighted for a show here in the United States. Why isn’t PETA (People for the Eating of Tasty Animals) screaming at Japan for letting glorified dog-fighting in a show? Imagine if Hollywood did this. We’d be throwing a fit.

#2: About kidnapping Pokemon

I would seriously like to know what goes into making a Pokeball and keeping the Pokemon inside it. From playing Pokemon Go and watching the show, you throw the ball at the Pokemon and that’s somehow supposed to release some sort of magic beam that catches the Pokemon and if it doesn’t work the first time, you can’t reuse the ball. In order to release the Pokemon for the dog-fighting purposes mentioned earlier, you throw the ball and the Pokemon emerges from it. It’s basically a tiny, little home for the Pokemon with so many safety liabilities.

What happens if you have a ton of Pokeballs on a shelf and you accidently knock it over? Do you now have a ton of Pokemon running all over town? What if you get trapped in the ball? I’m assuming the Pokemon law inforcment is now going to have to open all the Pokeballs in order to find you, which could cause even more problems since they all look the same.

I suppose there is the computer thingy, but I have questions about that, too. What happens if it gets hacked by someone like Team Rocket? If the Pokemon get out if they’ve been corrupted by the hacker, what will happen to the city? With their powers, they could cause so much damage and kill millions. If their powers were amplified and combined, they could destroy the world, even with all the new continents that Professor Oak seems to be raising out of the ocean every season.

#3: Professor Oak

What is this guy doing half the time? He only seems to be there for exposition and some guidance for Ash Ketchum (Get it? Ketchem? Catch ‘um?). There are so many memes about how the dude seems to be there to randomly raise new continents like the Shinto god Izanagi at the beginning of the season.

How many continents shall we find next, I wonder? There’s 25 seasons and over a thousand episodes so far. With a new Pokemon show coming out, I wonder if Professor Oak will prove himself to be an immortal creation god. It would make sense if this was true since so many Pokemon are based off kami and yokai in Shinto mythology.

#4: Team Rocket is comprised of two idiots and their cat

Team Rocket’s entire job is to appear every other episode or so to try to catch Ash’s Pokemon, Pikachu, because apparently they can sell him for a high price. Not only does this take me back to my original point about Pokemon dog-fighting, but their Pokemon, Meowth, is the only Pokemon in existence in the anime who can speak English (or Japanese depending on where you live). I realize that they have a friendship with Meowth, but it seems like a very one-sided friendship. They could probably sell him for a higher price than they could Pikachu. Pikachu seems like a very common – and thus, lower priced – Pokemon and there seem to be different breeds of Pikachu beyond just Ash’s. They also have a wider range of powerful evolutions. I realize that Ash’s Pikachu is the best trained one, but he’s not the only Pikachu. According to my brother, though Pikachu has better powers than Meowth (which maybe would make his price go up), Meowth (though common in the Pokemon Go game) is still the only Pokemon in the show that can talk. I’m also assuming that a talking Pokemon might be able to understand other Pokemon and thus be able to translate that into human speech, which would make him very useful to trainers.

Okay, I’m done with my sort of rant about Pokemon now. I hope you got a laugh out of this and if you want to inform me about Pokemon lore in the comments, do so.

Until next time,

M.J.