Well I don’t see that there’s anything about the Pokémon world that particularly precludes similar narratives and tropes to the ones that exist in our world, although how art and literature deal with Pokémon would presumably vary significantly from one culture to another.  If a culture regards Pokémon as essentially clever animals, then one imagines their literary motifs would develop along fairly familiar lines.  It sort of depends on how willing people are to think of Pokémon as ‘non-human persons,’ and how widely stories that treat them in this way are accepted.  Even then, there certainly have been cultures in the real world that were happy to ascribe free will and agency to animals, and to tell stories that depict them as equal to humans, so I’m not sure the presence of Pokémon per se would prompt them to develop any literary forms that are actually without parallel in the real world.

I’m… pretty sure I’ve talked about this because it was important to one of the points I was making in the ‘If I Were In Charge’ series but I can’t really remember how much detail I went into or how explicit I was about it, so…

Basically, I have difficulty with PC boxes because I normally prefer trying to reconcile the games and anime, but the differences in how Pokémon are stored seem to be just too stark.  It seems to me that the two different systems – the PC boxes we use in the games, and Ash’s set-up with Professor Oak in the anime – are best seen as responses to the demands of the different media.  The games need something simple that doesn’t require too much complicated and tedious interaction on the part of the player (whether you like it or not, it has to be admitted that my alternative would be a lot of work for both designers and players).  The anime isn’t comfortable portraying trainers as storing their Pokémon in this comparatively unsettling way, and so produces the narrative of Professor Oak’s huge Pokémon habitats.  I’m inclined to favour the anime as a portrayal of what the creators ‘really think’ and take the games’ version as an abstraction that keeps us from having to think about it too much, but the alternative – that the games represent ‘reality’ (whatever that even means here) and the anime is just a story concocted to make it seem more pleasant – really has equal support here.

You could suggest that both systems are actually in use and that PC boxes are used when the Professors run out of space, or by trainers who just don’t have the special relationship with a Professor that Ash does, but then the question just becomes ‘why wouldn’t the Professors just keep the extras in Pokéballs most of the time’?  Perhaps Pokémon in Pokéballs need to be let out more often for food and exercise than Pokémon in PC storage (which is more of a deeper hibernation)?

This same person later added: “So those two articles [the articles in question are these ones], I hoped they gave you a laugh. I guess its easy to see trainers as abusive always fighting for profit constantly non stop, cramming the PC with the animals caught forcibly; pokemon who are sadistic creatures with additional Stockholm syndrome. But franchise says otherwise. I treated as unrealistic propaganda. But after reading your past blog, I guess to sum it up, I am looking at it wrong? It feels unrealistic. Don’t hate me man. I remember making Michael Vick jokes too.”

I’d seen the first article before, but not the second.  From an analytical perspective there are a lot of problems with them but they’re clearly meant as jokes, and they certainly succeed at that, so I’m not really bothered.

Anyway, I’m glad I’ve given you something to think about.  I suppose ultimately for me the question is one of authorial intent, and I think it’s obvious that no-one at Game Freak actually intends Pokémon to be apologistic of animal abuse.  Clearly they feel that something is implicit in the way the setting functions which makes it fundamentally different from slavery and animal abuse, which is why I tend to favour reading more into it, and extrapolating the kind of outlook a Pokémon would need to have in order to make the system work.  Of course you could go all “death of the author” and say that what Game Freak intends is irrelevant anyway because all that matters is that people can read it as slavery, but I’m really not a fan of death of the author (maybe because, in history, reading a text without considering authorial intent is sheer insanity, and that tends to influence my outlook even when I’m thinking about literature).  On the other hand, if you can make a good story out of portraying Pokémon that way, go for it!  For instance, I was recently reminded of this comic (slowly progressing and in no state resembling completion, but nonetheless worth every second you spend reading it), which portrays Pokémon training in a much bleaker light than I’m used to arguing for, and as a result is absolutely fascinating.  I would almost think that Game Freak avoid tackling the issues head-on on purpose, to allow people more freedom for this kind of darker interpretation, except that they don’t support or even acknowledge fan fiction, so I don’t know.

Who is Michael Vick?