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.

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…

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.

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.

Oh my God, your article on genders!!! Sorry, but this stuff makes me so excited. I really, really like the way you think about the Pokémon universe. Have your read the “Theory of Incense Breeding” from The Cave of Dragonflies? You’ll find it very interesting, certainly.

…huh. Y’know, I had never read that, but it’s almost exactly the same as the explanation I just came up with in response to a question in the comments to my entry on gender. Well, there you go; it *must* be a reasonable explanation!

(For the interest of other readers, here is a link to the Cave of Dragonflies discussion, the question I was asked, and the answer I gave)

Q: How do you reckon the whole “holding incense” works? Because it seems to be some sort of drug which caused pokemon to form new under-developed species which they previously could not (for example, breeding a sudowoodo in GSC or Emerald would not get you a Bonsly, as rock incense did not exsist).

A: That’s more or less the same explanation I came up with when I tried to puzzle it out, but the idea of deliberately giving a Pokémon drugs that stunt the growth of its offspring is so wildly out of step with the rest of the series that I have trouble accepting it. For an explanation that makes sense from an ecological perspective… it could be that those ‘baby’ forms represent a slower growth to maturity which is, in the long term, healthier for the Pokémon, but also requires greater parental investment in the offspring, and is therefore only suitable in times of conspicuous environmental benevolence. The incense stimulates the Pokémon’s body in the same way as those positive environmental conditions, prompting the release of hormones that cause offspring to develop more slowly.

There’s a lot of legendary stories that pretty much ruin each other, the Arceus vs. Mew thing being the biggest one, but what about Groudon/Kyogre and Regigigas? I personally don’t like the whole “pulled the continents apart” so I refuse to acknowledge its existence. What would you do with that story if you were in charge of all that?

Hrm. I don’t think there necessarily has to be a conflict between the two; we can assume that Groudon raised a single Pangaea-like landmass out of the ocean while Regigigas was responsible for dragging the continental plates into their present positions. Basically, Groudon and Kyogre are primordial beings, while Regigigas is from a more recent era. Alternatively, though, since I don’t think we’ve ever seen direct evidence of Regigigas’ power, you could suggest that “towing continents” is a simple exaggeration. After all, the image of Regigigas running around the face of the planet, dragging India a few metres northward before nipping off to shove the two halves of North America a few metres closer together, is just a little bit absurd.

I think my first assumption, if I wanted to keep the continent-towing, would be that there are multiple Regigigas, dragging multiple plates in multiple directions and often working at cross-purposes (hence earthquakes and such). The second would probably be that they didn’t come to exist until long after Groudon and Kyogre went to sleep. They’re not elemental forces in the same way that Groudon and Kyogre are; they don’t drive continental drift for the sake of continental drift. Rather, they generally have some reason or another for dragging a continent – moving it to a warmer or cooler region of the planet, or further away from a rival Regigigas.

I find your use of he and she odd. It makes it seem like you’re referring to specific Pokemon rather than a species in general, as if there is only one of each Pokemon. It also raises some questions about questionable gender categorizations and why you would say one Pokemon is male over female.

*shrug* I just do it.

I never feel comfortable referring to Pokémon as “it,” with a few exceptions (mainly the non-legendary genderless Pokémon like Staryu or Metagross), and I have an instinctive revulsion towards using “they” to mean “he-or-she”. Although my native language is English, I study Greek and Latin, so I’m used to the idea that words can be inherently masculine, feminine or neuter regardless of biology or even common sense (that one scene in Aristophanes’ Clouds where Socrates is telling Strepsiades he should say things like ἀλεκτρύαινα and καρδόπη… well, it’s hilarious if you know what they’re talking about; take my word for it). Don’t ask my why I consider Ho-oh feminine or Lugia masculine, because I’m afraid the answer is quite beyond me.

Anyhow, gender in Pokémon. Weird subject, first of all because Pokémon uses “gender” as a synonym for “sex” and it’s not; “male” and “female” are sexes, not genders; masculine and feminine are genders, and that’s something quite different. Actually their use of the incorrect term implies a whole lot of interesting and bizarre things about Pokémon reproductive biology, but I won’t get into that because it would take far too long and the real reason is probably that the translators were just squeamish about using the word “sex.” Also, the fact that the characters in the TV show almost universally refer to their Pokémon as “it,” as though their sexes are unknown and irrelevant, is bizarre. I mean, even before Gold and Silver introduced the concept to the games explicitly, the writers must have assumed that Pokémon could be male or female. Until Attract starts to become a factor, though, it just never comes up. Ash must know that Pikachu is a dude. I mean, sure, maybe he’s never lifted him up to check between his legs, as it were, but he must have asked! Yet Pikachu is almost always “it” (occasionally “he,” but I think these are actually errors by the dub team), as are all the protagonists’ other Pokémon. Why do they all so often lack such basic knowledge about their own Pokémon?

I’m going to stop now before I accidentally write an entire entry on this.

Early in the episodes, you see real life animals..cackles, You see fish in Misty’s aquarium, you also see fish in the bottom of the ocean when S.S. Anne sank, You could also hear bird calls in the distance and there was a worm being eaten by a pidgeotto, and then there are all the pokedex references. I’ve heard stuff like “oh they didnt have enough pokemon back then”, and “the pokedex are like that just so you can relate, but wouldnt it be cool if we could claim that the animals were secretly

This question has fallen afoul of Tumblr’s arbitrary 400-odd character limit, and was supposed to end:
“…going extinct, and noone gave a crap about it cuz pokemons obviously the "superior species”, what if a field inhabited by wild boufalants was once a home for regular buffalos or something like that. idk, i get curious about these things cuz the creators are so vague in these areas"

Anyhow, I shall answer thus:
Well, yeah, the out-of-universe reason is probably more or less as you suggest. Bear in mind that, when Red and Green were released, no-one at Game Freak had any expectation that there would ever be more than 200-250 Pokémon if that, and they certainly didn’t anticipate that Pokémon would become the global phenomenon it has. I think that, in the early stages of the franchise’s development, they probably did assume that there were a bunch of regular animals filling all the ecological niches that Pokémon didn’t… fish, birds, insects, in the second episode Ash even mentions cows. It’s only in the last generation or two, I suspect, that they’ve consciously begun to think they can build an entire ecosystem out of Pokémon alone.

This is all very well for the designers, but we the fans now need an in-universe explanation for the disappearance of those animals.

Your interpretation is… rather dark, and also confronts us with the question of why the real-world animals haven’t already gone extinct long ago. Pokémon are basically animals that can defy physics in one or more ways, so there really shouldn’t be any contest there, regardless of human activity. I think it sort of implies, actually, that Pokémon are relatively recent additions to the ecosystem and are replacing the other animals one by one as their foothold grows, which might be a fun basis for a total reinterpretation of the setting, but can’t really explain the version of the world we have.

I guess if I had to explain it, I’d tell you that the real-world animals are there, all right, we just don’t care about them because they only fill the less eye-catching ecological niches (in short, there are no buffalo or giraffes, but there might be mice and snails). Whenever a particular area lacks the Pokémon necessary for filling a particular niche, there’s a real-world animal there to take its place, but no-one wants to hear about those. I have no explanation for the cows, because it stands to reason that farmers would import and export Miltank all over the world while regular cows would be herded only by a few die-hard traditionalists in the regions they originally came from.

I think for me the big question is whether Pokémon are a monophyletic group or not – that is, whether they share a single common ancestor with no descendants outside the group. The whole issue would actually become a lot simpler if we assume Pokémon are paraphyletic, like fish (that is, dog Pokémon are more closely related to dogs than they are to other Pokémon, and so on) but that seems to be at odds with the way scientists in the Pokémon world talk about them. So, yeah, I don’t know.