How do you think the pokeball would be viewed in the pokemon perspective and the human perspective? Its a very simple question but I believe it may have its complications particularly for the former.

As a symbol, you mean? Hmm. Well, for humans it seems to be hugely important; they splatter Pokéball logos all over the place. A Pokéball is the symbol of the Pokémon League, for heaven’s sake. As the tool of a Pokémon trainer, it represents the foundation of the partnership between humans and Pokémon that sustains many important aspects of their society. For many people, it doubtless has another meaning: security, and the subordination of nature to humanity. This is something you could take in a number of directions, and different people would probably view it in very different ways – the rank and file of Team Plasma, for instance, would probably view Pokéballs much as we view shackles, as symbols of slavery. The fact is, for humans, partnerships with Pokémon lead to almost infinite possibilities, and the ways in which people react to the image of a Pokéball logo would be similarly varied.

For Pokémon, the image is likely to be just as complex, and largely dependent on their personal experience of humanity. Some Pokémon who have suffered at human hands would, like Team Plasma, view Pokéballs as tools of slavery and cruelty. I suspect Pikachu has something like this in his past – consciously, he knows that Ash’s Pokéballs aren’t harmful in and of themselves, so he’s okay with Ash’s other Pokémon climbing in, but the idea of using one himself triggers bad memories and irrational fear, making the very idea unthinkable. For other Pokémon, a Pokéball is a place of security for when they’re tired or injured. For still others, the beginning of a dramatic change in their lives, something that changes their fate forever – whether for good or ill.

In short, the image of a Pokéball encapsulates everything you believe about trainers and Pokémon, whatever that may be. It’s an incredibly powerful symbol but, much like the swastika (for thousands of years a symbol of good fortune, but for much of the last century the dark signature of a regime of hatred and oppression), it doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to everyone.

So, in an episode of the Sinnoh anime, there is an episode where Dawn’s Piplup is seeming sickly and tired all of the time, and disappears during the night. It turns out that Piplup is about to evolve, however, it uses the move Bide to keep itself from doing so. When the evolution process finally starts in battle, Dawn is at first very excited, but then confused when Piplup bides the evolution away. Do you think this raises some interesting questions on a Pokemon’s control of evolution?

Hmm. Interesting. I will note that I’ve seen hardly any of the Sinnoh series and don’t really know anything about Piplup’s portrayal as a character, but putting that aside…

In some ways it’s a similar situation to what Bulbasaur faced in Bulbasaur’s Mysterious Garden, except that here the pressure to evolve is internal, not external. My usual position on evolution is that it’s triggered at least partially by a state of psychological readiness (with certain exceptions, such as the use of evolutionary stones or the evolution ritual in the Mysterious Garden) so on the one hand, it makes sense for Piplup to be able to hold it off by an act of will, but on the other hand, in the absence of any obvious external stimulus, I have to wonder what was causing Piplup to evolve in the first place. Maybe a subconscious desire for growth and strength was prompting the change in body chemistry that triggers evolution, but on a conscious level Piplup didn’t actually want to evolve – he wanted to get stronger in his current form. The conflict would be enough to forestall evolution indefinitely, but at the cost of maintaining a heightened state of stress which would normally be associated with a short burst of rapid growth, hence Piplup’s weakened state.

What I seem to be saying here is that Pokémon don’t normally ‘choose’ when to evolve, per se; although it will usually happen partly because they want it to, it’s triggered by psychological factors outside of their conscious control. Normally evolution takes place in moments of heightened emotion – it might be a rush of adrenaline that pushes them over. A Pokémon who understands the process might be able to cultivate deliberately the kind of mental state that prompts evolution – or, in Piplup’s case, force himself to calm down and slow the process.

Are pokemon able to understand human speech innately or much trainers train them much in the way people train real animals?

I suspect if you were to ask someone from the Pokémon universe, they would respond that this is one of the ‘wondrous mysteries of Pokémon’ which Professor Oak and his ilk are doing such a rubbish job of pursuing.

The anime certainly seems to imply that they understand human speech; people regularly talk to Pokémon, and the Pokémon seem to react appropriately to the words they’re hearing, even wild Pokémon who’ve had no previous exposure to English, or Japanese, or whatever language these people supposedly use. You could argue that Pokémon have adapted to be able to respond effectively to human orders since it allows them to work with humans more efficiently, but their comprehension seems to go beyond that; Ash regularly talks to his Pokémon about subjects that go well beyond simple tactical commands, and they clearly understand him. On the other hand, when Meowth first attempts to learn human speech in Go West, Young Meowth and tries to read words out of a book, it’s clear that he doesn’t initially understand the meaning of what he’s saying – he just knows they’re words used by humans.

I think the key to making sense of this is that Pokémon can understand each other as well, and can communicate relatively complex information between different species despite having very few phonemes to work with and almost nonexistent syntax. Clearly the actual sounds involved in communication are of secondary importance to them; they’re receiving and understanding something else. I think Pokémon are capable of this kind of universal comprehension because they’re excellent at interpreting nonverbal cues – things like gestures, posture, tone, and eye movement. When Pokémon speak to each other, this is how they get most of their meaning across. The actual vocalisations are used mainly for emphasis. Likewise, when they listen to humans, they’re not actually listening to the words – they’re listening for shifts in tone and inflection, watching your eyes and the way you hold your weight, and so on. Because this is how they communicate all the time, they’re extremely good at it. The kind of conversation Ash most often has with his Pokémon – conversations about emotions and relationships – are very easy for them to understand. Learning to recognise specific attack commands is a little harder, though distinguishing between ‘attack,’ ‘defend,’ and ‘dodge’ is basic. Creating complex strategies in advance is difficult at first, but gets easier as the relationship between a trainer and a Pokémon develops. Making heavy use of gestures can make this much easier. Many, perhaps most Pokémon are intelligent enough to understand any concept you could possibly want to explain to them, but getting the message across may be difficult for more complex ideas.

What are your thoughts on the breeding restrictions on the nidoran family and the reasons for it?

For the benefit of readers who don’t know what this is about:

Female Nidoran and Nidorina can breed with male Pokémon from the Monster or Field egg groups and lay eggs which will hatch into Nidoran of either gender. This makes sense. Male Nidoran, Nidorino and Nidoking can breed with female Pokémon from the Monster or Field egg groups, who will then lay eggs which will hatch into Pokémon of the mother’s species. This also makes sense.

What makes no sense at all is that Nidoqueen are sterile.

EDIT: I was mistaken; I think I had several Bulbapedia articles open at once and looked at the wrong one at some point. Nidorina can’t breed either; only female Nidoran can. This is actually what I *thought* was the case originally, until I decided to check my facts and then misread the reference. Oh, the irony. Anyway, this makes all of my speculation below much less plausible and I have no longer have any sensible explanation. Game Freak are just silly.

Adult Nidoqueen cannot breed at all. No, not even with a Ditto. As far as I can tell, this is merely one of the stupider oversights that Game Freak haven’t quite gotten around to fixing yet for some reason. I couldn’t tell you why; someone probably made a mistake in the original coding when they did Gold and Silver (given Nidoqueen’s unusual gender status, it’s not unbelievable that they could slip up with her) and it’s been copied and pasted ever since. Strange that they didn’t fix it when they overhauled the entire game engine for Ruby and Sapphire, but perhaps they hadn’t noticed it by that point. Hmm.

Anyway, there is actually a perfectly reasonable in-universe explanation they could use if they wanted to. There’s a conjecture in anthropology, which has been floating around for a while now and has never gained a whole lot of support but never quite seems to die either, called the grandmother hypothesis. Basically, the idea is that human women are able to live well beyond reproductive age because having older women around to help care for the children presents a tangible benefit to the survival of the community. It’s a common sense explanation for the phenomena of menopause and post-menopausal longevity, but it’s very difficult to prove scientifically (you can read more about the hypothesis in P.S. Kim et al., “Increased longevity evolves from grandmothering,” Proc. R. Soc. B. 2012). If you wanted a good reason for Nidoqueen to be unable to breed, this would be a solid place to start: Nidorina are the breeding adults, while Nidoqueen are the ‘grandmothers’ who hang around to help their daughters raise their own children and protect the whole group. This makes a great deal of sense considering that very few Nidorina would ever make it that far – they evolve using Moon Stones, so in the wild you’d expect to see one, perhaps two Nidoqueen in an entire herd. They have a more complex social function than just continuing to reproduce.

Nuzlocke- The idea of playing the game where you have restrictions on what Pokemon you can catch and that when a Pokemon faints, it dies. What are your thoughts on the phenomenon? Do you think it says anything about the Pokemon “culture”? What about the comics that are often a part of these challenges? Do they offer any particularly good/bad insight into the Pokemon world?

I’ve tried that a few times (I always knew it as ‘hard mode,’ though, I only encountered the term ‘Nuzlocke’ fairly recently). I was really terrible at it. I always had fun writing little obituaries for the Pokémon who died, though, like so:

“R.I.P. Altheia, the serious Illumise. Exploded in a tragic Metronome accident, aged 28 levels.”

(That one is a true story)

Anyhow, as for your actual question. Hmm. I suppose it’s a natural extension of the way people use the words “die” or “kill” in Pokémon, and other video games, when they actually mean “faint” or “incapacitate” or whatever. It’s a very different way of looking at battles, because of course the official media always portray battles as non-fatal (although there is occasionally a suggestion that deaths could potentially result if trainers pushed their Pokémon too hard). On the other hand, one of the traditional rules of hard mode is that you have to nickname all of your Pokémon, to create an emotional attachment to them; the rules have the impact they do because you’re supposed to imagine them as your friends (I’ve even seen a couple of accounts where people have named Pokémon after their real human friends to stress the point).

What’s interesting about this is the way it turns Pokémon into a roleplaying exercise. Technically the Pokémon games are within the RPG genre, but there’s remarkably little emphasis placed on the player’s choices and personality – the ‘RP’ of ‘RPG’ doesn’t really come into it much. The more detailed view of the world presented by the anime – I think – is meant to encourage players to imagine for themselves all of that extra stuff that the games leave out, like interactions between the player and his or her Pokémon. Part of the aim of hard mode or Nuzlocke rules is to provide an added challenge, obviously (once you know what you’re doing, the single player game is trivially easy until you get to places like the Battle Subway; this rules give players the added challenge that often seems to be missing from the game), but I think the way the rules are generally expressed demonstrates that they’re also used with a view to increasing the feeling of immersion in the game world. You’re supposed to imagine an actual emotional connection with each Pokémon and desire to protect it. Although the presentation of the challenge is much darker than anything the official franchise likes to give us, it actually supports the aims of the game designers rather well. Might be something for Game Freak to think about…

The Ethics of Pokémon Training

When you get a title like that, you know there’s some serious sh*t gonna go down.

So, I’m writing this because of a question that turned up in my ask box a couple of weeks ago, which I will reproduce here:

“You’ve touched on the moralistic complaints about the Pokemon franchise before (your post on Torchic, Combusken and Blaziken). I’m on a similar ground to you, seeing teamwork etc being more of what Pokemon is about, but you can’t ignore the fact that violence and animal abuse seem to be essential in fostering that partnership between trainer and Pokemon, can you? Teamwork it may be, but the Pokemon take 100% of the physical side of things. Would you consider doing a post on this issue?”

This is, as it happens, a particularly good time to be talking about this.

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has just gotten a lot of attention in the Pokémon community for producing a short online video game, Pokémon Black and Blue http://features.peta.org/pokemon-black-and-white-parody/, in which Pokémon free themselves from their cruel and sadistic trainers and start a rebellion with the intention of showing humanity a better way. I urge readers to take a look at the page and the game for themselves, however the gist of it is as follows: Pokémon trainers are horrible people who keep their Pokémon trapped in Pokéballs most of the time, keeping them from getting exercise, and let them out only to have them beat each other bloody, and provide them with medical care only so they can send them back into the arena more quickly. PETA has gotten a lot of flak for this, as they do for a lot of their stunts; from what I can tell, even the people who are theoretically on their side often think they’re insane. Naturally, jumping on the bandwagon and attacking them would be too easy. As always, I like to think I can outline a more nuanced view of the matter. Here goes nothing.

I’m actually not convinced any of this is meant seriously. I think the game itself was clearly made by someone who has more than a passing familiarity with Pokémon Black and White – in fact, I half suspect it was made by a fan with a black sense of humour. I strongly doubt anyone at PETA actually believes that Pokémon is a genuine threat to their cause; it’s more likely that the game is a tool for sparking controversy and drawing attention to PETA than a real attempt to damage Pokémon. I think there is something of a risk that going after Pokémon like this will risk trivialising the very real abuses they spend most of their time trying to tackle; however, I also think that attacking not just real instances of animal abuse in the world but also the cultural phenomena that appear to tolerate those abuses (in, I must again emphasise, what seems to me like a fairly tongue-in-cheek way) is actually a quite insightful strategy. They’re probably not going to make any Pokémon fans change their mind about the franchise (they certainly haven’t changed mine), and I think they must know that, but they are going to make people react to what they’re doing, and in the course of that reaction people will be made to think about what makes real animal abuse different from Pokémon battling. This, of course, means that people are thinking about animal abuse and why it’s horrible, which is exactly what PETA wants you to do, so the moment we even start having this conversation, the game has done its job. Since I actually quite like what they seem to be doing here, I’m going to go along with it and discuss some of these ideas myself.

First of all, I wish to acknowledge one very important fact: they have a point. Pokémon is a game about capturing wild animals, stuffing them into tiny balls, keeping them in there most of the time, and letting them out mainly so they can fight other animals, often for the amusement of spectators. You can argue – and I’m going to – that this is a very simplistic reading of the ideas in the franchise, but bear in mind that it’s actually not the absence of good, wholesome ideas in Pokémon that’s the problem. It’s very easy to point out the themes of partnership, discovery, charity, heroism and all the rest that we see everywhere in the Pokémon franchise; this is exactly what you see hordes of fans doing whenever PETA’s recent stunt is discussed. The problem is that this doesn’t actually address their complaint at all. It’s not the absence of good, wholesome ideas in Pokémon that they’re objecting to – it’s the way those family-friendly themes are mixed up and bound together with a premise that potentially has a lot of morally repugnant implications. To quote the game’s website, “the difference between real life and this fictional world full of organized animal fighting is that Pokémon games paint rosy pictures of things that are actually horrible.” Of course cockfighting is okay – after all, it’s no different to Pokémon training, and Pokémon don’t seem to mind… right? That train of thought probably sounds as ridiculous to you as it does to me, but people believe and do ridiculous things every day. Can you imagine that train of thought passing through the head of someone who already endorses cockfighting anyway? How about an eight-year-old kid who’s never heard of cockfighting before and doesn’t know whether it’s supposed to be good or bad? Frankly… I can. For most people Pokémon is only going to be one of a hundred different influences pushing and pulling in different directions, but it’s still there, pushing very subtly in a direction the creators never intended. So, again, yes: I actually do think PETA have a legitimate point here.

How, then, do we avoid this problem? Don’t even try to, says I: tackle it head on.

The basic premise of the Pokémon franchise is really quite morally ambiguous. That’s part of the reason I find it so interesting, and part of the reason I write for this blog at all. In general Game Freak likes to avoid touching on the moral ambiguities, but when they do it creates some of the most fascinating stuff the franchise has to offer. This is exactly why I’ve always felt that Black and White leave all the previous games in the dust as far as storytelling goes – the idea of Pokémon liberation trumpeted by Team Plasma (whom many people see as a pastiche of PETA) is potentially a perfectly noble goal. Black and White, for the first time, actually acknowledge that there is something slightly fishy about the basic assumptions on which the series operates. Maybe Pokémon shouldn’t be forced to battle – are we really so sure this is right? Many of the characters in the game are indeed won over by Team Plasma’s questioning of the established order, and even the Castelia Gym Leader, Burgh, admits that they might be onto something. The problem is that the debate eventually winds up being very one-sided. The Team Plasma grunts you meet are brutal, unthinking zealots. Their leader, Ghetsis, is cynically manipulating his followers to achieve his aims of conquest. Even N, the undoubtedly benevolent spiritual leader of Team Plasma, turns out to have been deliberately raised in the company of Pokémon who had been hurt by humans in order to influence his worldview, which begins to collapse once he sees what real Pokémon trainers are like. What about the Pokémon N was raised with? What about the people in this world who really do mistreat Pokémon horribly, like Team Rocket, such a major fixture of earlier games? What about Team Aqua, Team Magma, and Team Galactic, who tried to destroy the world by enslaving Pokémon? N is presented as naïve, his worldview as noble but warped… but would he really seem that way with Team Rocket on the scene? I think the best path for Pokémon to take from here is to look at what Black and White have done and improve on it: find ways to highlight the moral ambiguities instead of whitewashing everything, and explain through their storytelling “this is good, and this is bad, and here’s why.”

What’s my take on the ethics of Pokémon training, then? Well, if you’ve read a lot of my anime commentaries, you’re probably aware that I think there are a lot of unwritten and unspoken rules connected with Pokémon training, a code of conduct that regulates the way trainers and Pokémon relate to each other. Although explicit references to this code are few, I believe that most characters in the franchise do implicitly follow it. The first and probably the most important point to discuss is what it means to “capture” a Pokémon. The anime rarely presents capturing a Pokémon as requiring a trainer to beat it into submission; often, particularly in the later series, it’s more a question of winning a Pokémon’s respect. Furthermore, when the villains capture Pokémon, they rarely use Pokéballs. When they do, no-one seems to mind. When they try to capture Pokémon in other ways – even wild Pokémon, who should in theory be fair game – all the law-abiding characters are outraged. I think what this implies is that the process of battling a wild Pokémon and capturing it in a Pokéball is in fact about convincing it that you are worthy of being its trainer. This, in fact, is the reason knocking out a Pokémon in the games renders it impossible to capture: if you’ve beaten it completely unconscious, you’ve deprived it of the opportunity to test your skills and perseverance to its satisfaction. Capturing a Pokémon under such circumstances would be an unforgivable transgression of the rules that govern interaction between humans and Pokémon. Capturing Pokémon without Pokéballs – by physically restraining them, for instance – likewise violates the somewhat ritualised process of capture. So, now that we’ve established that Pokémon have to permit trainers to catch them, why would they even want to? The obvious reason is that they become more powerful under human training, but this is an oversimplification of the issue. Gaining “levels” represents a Pokémon gaining a greater understanding of its own innate powers, coming closer to becoming an ideal paragon of its species. This is most noticeable in species that experience evolution, of course (which, incidentally, I believe to be closely connected to the removal of psychological blocks and the achievement of a more advanced state of mind) but all Pokémon have unique abilities which even they may not fully understand by instinct alone. At the same time, travelling with humans forces Pokémon to learn a wider range of skills and use their abilities for a wider range of purposes than they ever would in the wild. As a result, they develop greater versatility and creativity than their wild counterparts. They may even gain skills of leadership and cooperation as a result of working together with Pokémon of other species (if you watch the anime episode Bulbasaur the Ambassador you’ll see exactly what I mean).

But what good does all this serve, beyond making them better able to serve humans and fight in human tournaments? Simple. I don’t think Pokémon are ever necessarily supposed to spend their entire lives with humans once caught. Many may decide later to stay with their humans forever, but I believe most Pokémon initially join trainers with the assumption that, like Ash’s Butterfree and so many of his other Pokémon, they will eventually leave, either returning to the wild to use their newfound powers there, joining other trainers to explore their abilities from a different perspective, or even assimilating completely into human society in one way or another, like Squirtle eventually did. Pokémon, in short, should not be viewed as passive tools to be used and discarded by trainers. They are independent, thinking beings who may partner with humans, temporarily or permanently, in order to further the goals of both, in accordance with an unspoken but well-established and very complex code of honour that dictates the actions and conduct of both sides.

Yes, I did just try to completely change the way you view every aspect of Pokémon training from the ground up.

Damn, it feels good to have my honours dissertation finished.

You’ve discussed trading a bit in your overview of Episode 15, but I was wondering if you had any more thoughts on it? At first it seems odd, but there are actually consistencies within trading. Pokemon gain more experience because they are put in completely different situations, and a traded Pokemon won’t respect a trainer who isn’t powerful because there was no bond formed in the catching process. Along with those, are there are other things, like trade evolution, that you could talk about?

Hmm. All right.

So, the thing about trading, as you note, is that it broadens a Pokémon’s view of the world. Being with different trainers puts Pokémon in a wider variety of situations and exposes them to different styles of training. In the process they learn greater independence and versatility, gain additional perspectives on their powers, and work together with a wider group of other Pokémon. Basically, traded Pokémon get all the things Pokémon could possibly want out of having relationships with humans, only they get more of them, hence the boosted experience deal (the larger boost for Pokémon received from a person who speaks a different language is a natural extension of this, representing the effect of a Pokémon being transplanted not just to a new trainer but to an entirely different cultural context).

On the flip side, trading a Pokémon most likely means abandoning your relationship with it and handing over the reins to someone else. Taken in the context of my theories about what it means to “capture” a Pokémon – namely, that Pokémon cannot be captured unless they are at least open to the idea of being trained by humans, and that the act of capturing a Pokémon represents the formation of a sort of implied contract – this is potentially not a totally legit thing to do. Your Pokémon challenged you, tested your worth, and permitted you to become its master. Now you’re letting this other douchebag take over? What the hell, man? Of course, potentially a Pokémon might accept that you’ve made a good choice and go along with it, enjoying all the benefits I outlined above. It’s entirely possible, though, that a less powerful trainer will be found wanting – and this may be true even if the new trainer is actually higher in formal rank than the original one! After all, the original trainer is still the one the Pokémon tested and accepted.

As I suggested in the entry on Battle Aboard the St. Anne, the way you as a trainer feel about this says a lot about your relationship with your Pokémon. It’s oversimplifying things to say that being willing to trade means you don’t care about them, because there are obvious benefits. It does, however, imply a very different point of view: trainers who are prepared to trade their Pokémon around at the drop of a hat are likely to have a more condescending view of Pokémon as a whole – they may very well be concerned with doing whatever is best for their Pokémon, but are very sure that they know what that is better than the Pokémon themselves do.

Trade evolution, of course, is the other big thing. Here, Black and White have done something that annoys me a little. See, prior to Black and White, I could say quite easily that the idea of Pokémon such as Haunter and Kadabra evolving when traded works as a natural extension of the way evolution is typically presented in the anime – as a process closely tied to a Pokémon’s psychological development. Evolution is triggered by all of the beneficial effects of trading that are also responsible for the experience boost. The problem with Black and White is that they introduce Shelmet and Karrablast. The Pokédex makes it clear that these two evolve when they are “bathed in an electric-like energy” together. The implication is that their dual evolution – and, by extension, perhaps other trade evolutions – is triggered by some aspect of the trading process itself (which, in both the games and the anime, is facilitated by a needlessly complicated machine). Now, personally I think that Karrablast and Shelmet’s dual evolution, while a brilliant concept, could have been much better-handled all around, so I’m going to suggest, firstly, that they’re an exception to the general rules for trade evolutions, and secondly, that there are actually many processes and phenomena which can cause Shelmet and Karrablast to evolve, trading being only the simplest and (for the majority of trainers) the most accessible.

I don’t believe my theories about trading are by any means comprehensive, but I think they should at least stand up to casual scrutiny. If you can think of any more specific examples that might support or refute anything I’ve said (particularly from the Hoenn and Sinnoh series of the anime, or the manga, which I’m not familiar with) I’d be happy to give that some thought.

Hey, dude! I was wondering about your opinion on PETA stating Pokemon encourages animal abuse, as well as your opinion on the game they made for it that parodizes Pokemon Black 2 and White 2. They really seem to have nothing better to do, right?

This is actually going in an article I’m writing, but it’s being pushed down the schedule a little bit by the fact that my dissertation is due on Friday! Fun times! So, yeah; all will be revealed, and stuff.

There’s a “Philosoraptor” meme going around the internet that goes like this: If two trainers with a Slowpoke and a Shelder respectively are battling, and the Shelder bites the tail of the Slowpoke, who gets the resulting Slowbro? An episode of the anime seems to state that the Slowpoke retains the control and allegiance for the Slowbro even if the Slowpoke is wild, but it got me thinking about symbiotic relationships in Pokemon. Mantine & Remoraid are another interesting pair. Thoughts on this?

Interesting question.

Purely from a practical perspective, the Shellder is sort of the ‘passive’ partner in the symbiosis; it just feeds off the Slowpoke’s scraps and moves wherever the Slowpoke decides to go. Assuming the Slowpoke remains loyal to its trainer, it makes sense that the Shellder would be dragged along for the ride. This, of course, raises the question of why a Shellder belonging to a trainer ever would willingly join with a Slowpoke belonging to another trainer, or with a wild one. In the Slowbro episode of the anime, the Shellder actually belongs to Jessie, but abandons her when it joins with the wild Slowpoke who lives with Professor Westwood. The obvious explanation is that Shellder didn’t really want to be with Jessie anyway, but unfortunately that explanation doesn’t work for me because of my weird theories that Pokémon are always able to resist capture if they don’t want to be partnered with humans. I think the best answer for me is that Shellder are very fickle Pokémon (which, in fairness, does seem to fit them) who are perfectly prepared to work with humans just for the possibility of finding a Slowpoke. They may develop true loyalties before that happens, and if they do, they will refuse to join with wild Slowpoke from then on, but in the early stages of your relationship with your Shellder, you might want to keep it away from any Slowpoke you meet…

Remoraid and Mantine are sort of a different case, because they actually can and often do separate again later (in its sprites, Mantine is shown without attached Remoraid from Diamond and Pearl onward). The Remoraid assists with evolution, but an ongoing symbiosis relationship is only necessary in the wild. Of course, if a wild Remoraid did attach itself to your Mantyke (or adult Mantine, for that matter) you might find that you had a new Pokémon! They wouldn’t change allegiance the way Shellder do, though.

Something that gets me is Levitate–the fact that so many Pokémon whose flavor would lend itself to an interesting ability are stuck with Levitate on purely physiological grounds. Would you consider looking at the Pokémon that have Levitate and coming up with some alternate abilities for them? (The Lake Trio deserve better!) One of my ideas: Gastly (and only Gastly) with a super-annoying ability that makes all physical-contact moves fail. Because how do you punch smoke, really?

Mmm; it is rather overused, isn’t it? On the other hand, for most of those Pokémon, it would make no sense at all for them to be vulnerable to Ground attacks. What’s more, Levitate is one of the better abilities out there (immunity to Earthquake, Spikes and Toxic Spikes? Yes please!). I think Levitate is probably one of the better arguments for allowing Pokémon to have two of their possible abilities at once. As it stands, though… well, no, I honestly wouldn’t want to take it away from them!