I dunno if this has been asked, but I wondered if you think there are any parallels between a Pokemon journey and a religious pilgrimage?
Well, I suppose you do travel to a number of specific sites in order to become a better person… I don’t know if I think it’s a particularly useful metaphor for the way modern Pokémon journeys are portrayed in the games and anime, because it tends to be seen as more a “coming of age” thing than a “spiritual enlightenment” thing, so actually a better analogy might be the classic American road trip… which would make a damn good live action Pokémon movie, I think. We could, perhaps, speculate that the modern Pokémon journey is based on some traditional activity with much greater spiritual significance – replace the gyms with monasteries, for instance (and some gyms may not have changed much since then, like Fuchsia and Ecruteak) – but that would be pure speculation.
Pokémaniacal 