Well, why doesn’t it make sense? War has lethal consequences, and humans have perfected that to a frightening degree. People do horrible things to each other. I think if someone insists that Pokémon has to be read in this kind of darker light, or extrapolates from that to argue that liking Pokémon makes us worse people, then they’re just trying to spoil other people’s fun, but that’s not what this is about; this is about a story that exists for its own reasons and wants to develop its own ideas. Alterity is basically supposed to be a story about what it means to be considered ‘different’ and marginalised by the dominant groups in a society (hence the title), and I think Pokémon offers some very interesting possibilities for examining that theme, which the author (in my opinion) does extremely well. I mean, I don’t expect everyone to like it, and that’s fair enough – there’s some heavy ideas in there, and Pokémon is normally very lighthearted. I don’t think there’s any point in complaining that it’s unrealistic, though.
