Do you prefer the manga, the show or the games? Do you also think each represent more of a different view? For example manga is darker, show is kiddier.

Well, I don’t really know the manga, although I am aware that it’s a great deal darker than the anime or games. Also I think (?) it’s not actually produced by Nintendo or Game Freak, but sort of authorised by them in some vague and nebulous sense? I admit I don’t really know what the situation is there.

(I wish to point out, because I know someone will bring it up, that when Satoshi Tajiri said of Pokémon Adventures that it “most resembles the world [he] was trying to convey” he was comparing it to other Pokémon manga series, not to the games or anime- that quote has an annoying tendency to get taken out of context)

As for the games and anime… well, to be honest, I don’t know that I see the point in choosing. They just don’t do the same things. I mean, they notionally portray the same world, and I tend to think they’re fairly consistent with each other in their outlook and broad conceptions of what makes the setting work (i.e. ”the power of friendship”), but the purpose of the anime is to tell a story, while the purpose of the games is ultimately to provide challenges in strategy and problem-solving, with the story very much being a secondary concern (sure, the storytelling has been improving a lot recently, but you don’t have to look far to find video games that make it seem downright primitive). You can’t play the anime, and the games can’t tell as good a story or contribute as much to our image of the background world (although again that’s changing). For me they’re two parts of a larger whole.

Do you have any personal opinions on how the Pokemon anime shall end?

Shall or should?

Quite honestly, I don’t think they have any plans for it to ever end. As long as they keep making new Pokémon, they’ll need to introduce them in the anime, and continuing to make new Pokémon is pretty much the heart of Game Freak’s business model. They’ve shown that they don’t care about Ash being in a state of general stasis with regards to his personal development (not to mention his age), and they certainly don’t care about recycling plots (compare, for instance, the Johto episode All That Glitters with the more recent Dancing With the Ducklett Trio, or Charmander’s backstory with Tepig’s), although, to be fair, the newer versions are often improvements.

If the anime ever ends, it will be because they ran out of money. We can only pray that someone will have the presence of mind to write some sort of conclusion for the last few episodes.

Have you seen the summary for Extremespeed Genesect: Mewtwo Awakens? I don’t think you’ll like it – I and some others didn’t.

I haven’t, and I am now far too scared to. Are we talking about, like, a trailer, or…?

My baseline expectations for Pokémon movies are generally pretty low. I tend to think the TV series is significantly more interesting. I will admit, however, that I haven’t seen even half of them, so that’s a statement from partial ignorance.

Have you seen the new trailer for the Genesect movie? It seems that they’re so shameless about how much Genesect copies Mewtwo that they actually decided to have Mewtwo appear in the movie. Now not even the new generation of fans will be fooled by such a rehash. XD How hilarious do you find this?

Honestly, I actually like that this is what they’re doing. If you’ve got two very similar designs, then (in my opinion, anyway) the absolute worst thing you can do is avoid the issue, because then you’re just being lazy, everyone knows it, and you wind up with this irritating redundancy. I think throwing the two into conflict, in order to accentuate their similarities, make a point of it, and also throw any differences into relief, is actually one of the best ways I can imagine of handling Genesect.

What is your opinion on the twisted story of Amber, Mewtwo’s soul mate?

Disclaimer: I haven’t actually seen the Birth of Mewtwo, so this is all coming from someone who knows the story at second hand.

(For anyone who doesn’t know the story: Amber was the daughter of Mr. Fuji, the dude who runs the Lavender Town Pokémon shelter and headed up the team of scientists who originally created Mewtwo. Amber had died as a child, and Fuji’s real aim in the project was to clone her; Mewtwo was just a gimmick to convince Giovanni to fund him. Mewtwo’s telepathic abilities allowed him and Ambertwo to converse while they were growing in their pods, and the cloned girl was his only friend. Unfortunately, while Mewtwo’s incredible powers kept him alive while he grew to maturity, Ambertwo died before she became strong enough to leave her pod. Ambertwo encouraged Mewtwo to believe that life is something to be celebrated, but his grief at losing her should probably be taken to be at least partly responsible for his massive existential angst and his rather bleak outlook.)

I don’t think I’d call it ‘twisted;’ I’m not sure what you’re getting at there. Sad, certainly; it reminds me of nothing so much as two sick kids meeting in a hospital ward. I think that the story provides an opportunity to examine the theme of identity that would have been the central idea of Mewtwo Strikes Back if only the battles and the weird self-defeating ‘violence is wrong’ message hadn’t gotten in the way. Poor Ambertwo seems to have all of the original Amber’s memories, so she theoretically has to deal with one of the same questions Mewtwo asks – “Am I Amber, or just Amber’s shadow?” – but her own childish innocence makes it a non-issue for her; although she insists that she’s Amber on the inside, she doesn’t really think the question matters and is happy just to be alive. I think that in the end, after all the chaos and destruction of Mewtwo Strikes Back, Mewtwo finally comes to see things the same way.

Hi there! I’ve been reading your stuff here for a while now, and it’s been quite interesting. If you don’t mind, the obsessive Pokemon fan in me has a question for you: What are your views on the Spiky-eared Pichu, from an in-universe standpoint? Are there any particularly interesting implications to having this random Pichu who traveled through time at least once, and yet recognizes a shiny Pichu from the present? Why can it learn Pain Split while other Pichu cannot, and why can’t it evolve?

Ah, but you see, the thing about the Spiky-eared Pichu is that she is a character who is from the movie Arceus and the Jewel of Life. And the thing about me and Arceus and the Jewel of Life, as you may find out if you’re reading through some of my older entries, is that we do not get along. Specifically, I think it is a putrescent heap of hippo excrement that should ideally be placed in a hermetically sealed vault and shot into a black hole. Unfortunately, if I were to give any thought at all to the in-universe implications of the Spiky-eared Pichu’s unusual status and powers, it would be tantamount to admitting 1) that Arceus and the Jewel of Life really happened, and 2) that some aspect of it might actually make sense.

Thus, I must regretfully inform you that to answer your question would cause the very spark of my fundamental essence to extinguish itself and end my tormented existence on this harsh earth.

What do you think on the apparant rule of “There is no such thing as an evil Pokémon”? There are clearly Pokémon who do things that can be considered evil (like Litwick and Lampent stealing souls in one animé episode) and there are Pokémon who look (and really should be) evil like Darkrai and Houndoom. Also, said “rule” was mentioned in a season full of Early Installment Weirdness, so what do you think? Can an evil (through no influence) Pokémon exist?

Oy vey.

I presume you’re referring to the dialogue between Pikachu and Ekans in Island of the Giant Pokémon? Personally I give quite a lot of weight to that episode because it’s the only one where we directly hear what they think. There are only a couple of other episodes I can think of that seem to address this question; the other one that I looked at in depth was the Case of the K-9 Caper.

I think the important thing to recognise about what Ekans is saying is that she’s not just saying “hey, don’t look at me." She actually does understand that she does evil things as Jessie’s partner; she is aware of good and evil as concepts. She just doesn’t care, because her master is more important. Furthermore, Pikachu takes this as a totally legitimate excuse.

What I’m getting at is that the vast majority of Pokémon aren’t simply ‘not evil’ but completely amoral, like real animals. Litwick devour souls because it’s just what they do, same as a lion will kill a human if it’s provoked, or stalk and kill a zebra. The difference is that Pokémon do understand morality; they just think it only applies to humans. The Litwick understand that their actions would be considered evil, which arguably means that they are evil, but it’s also how they survive, which arguably means it’s excusable – and I think Pikachu would probably agree, if you asked him about it while he wasn’t currently fighting for his soul.

Morality gets very confusing when you have to accommodate multiple intelligent species, all with different ways of surviving.

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.

I may be totally wrong here but in the last post you were asking why Giovanni would want a gym and the financial side of it. What if the gym’s are somewhat akin to the games in that if a challenger loses they have to pay out? I know (or at least think?) that it is never really mentioned in the anime, but what if the same rules applied? This could explain why the Cerulean gym needs the ‘shows’ to generate funds (because without Misty they obviously aren’t that competent)? Just a thought

That’s a very good point… it goes both ways, of course – the Gym Leaders would have to pay out if they lose – but the Cerulean Gym example does support that. We see Ash lose Gym battles, and he never pays up, but Ash’s financial situation is vague at the best of times anyway. I guess it depends on how tough you think Gym Leaders are supposed to be: we know from context that they’re meant to be tough but beatable, but do we imagine that they lose about a third of their matches? Or more like one tenth? They would have to win many more matches than they lost in order to pay even for simple things like maintenance (and Blaine manages to keep his Gym – which undoubtedly has ridiculous maintenance costs – despite spurning weak challengers). We also have to question the amount paid by a defeated trainer – in the games, this varies according to the level of your strongest Pokémon and the number of Badges you have. Does this seem realistic, or would there be a standard wager that amateur trainers can easily afford?

Honestly the whole economic situation of the trainer lifestyle is totally opaque to me. Paying out to a trainer who beats you is only going to move money around between them, presumably they have to buy food, and it seems clear that you don’t have to be rich to be a full-time trainer, so obviously they must be making money somewhere, but they don’t really produce anything, so who’s paying them?

I love your blog, (seriously, it’s really funny. xD) but when you’re writing this, keep in mind the anime/movies are aimed at kids. Don’t be so harsh on it. XD

But where would be the fun in that!?

Seriously, though, I actually love the anime. I think the anime is great. It’s just the movies that I think are drivel (and not all of them, either; the second one – the one with Lugia – I thought was really good, although that might be the nostalgia filter talking).