Tag: Pokémon

Anonymous asks:

It’s been implied in certain Pokedex entries that only a select few Pokemon are actually capable of understanding human speech. If this is true, how is it that all Pokemon are able to understand the commands for each their attacks right after being captured, with no training whatsoever?

Difficult to explain, but I suspect they understand the intent behind words, as expressed through a combination of tone and body language, to a degree that is unusual for humans.  They may not know, right off the bat, exactly what words mean, but they can tell instinctively whether the tone of a command is aggressive, or cautious, or desperate, and they can tell the difference between being told to use a regular technique and being told to do the most powerful, dramatic attack in their arsenal.  The first couple of battles will often be rocky; that’s part of what characters in the anime mean when they talk about having to learn to work in unison with your Pokémon, and it’s part of why empathy is so often stressed as a vital quality for a Pokémon trainer.  You don’t see this in the games, of course, but, well, would you like to?  It would just be a pain.

viridian kingof kanto asks:

In XY the Gym Leaders and Elite Four all held titles of nobility which increased (the Champion as Grand Duchess and GLs as Marques). But you yourself are also able to climb the social ladder and gain titles. What do you think that meansforthesociety?

Well… to be perfectly honest I think it means that the noble titles are really not very important in modern Kalos.  They’re an anachronistic remnant of what I think may once have been a Pokémon-training aristocracy that ruled Kalos in a period when not everyone could train and battle with Pokémon, probably before the invention of mass-produced Pokéballs.  At one point, membership in the nobility made it possible for people to become trainers.  Today, anyone can be a trainer, and being good at it can get you into the nobility – but since it’s no longer exclusive, the nobility can’t really act as a cohesive group with distinct goals and values anymore.  Its political power has been supplanted by modern democracies, and its central position in the institution of Pokémon training has been supplanted by the Pokémon League.  All that’s left is ceremonial.

Anonymous asks:

The more recent Pokemon games imply that Gym Leaders adjust their strength and difficulty based on the challenger so that its not a complete stomp in either direction what are your thoughts on this?

That it’s really the only way the Gym system can make any damn sense.

Think about it; not all trainers start their journeys in Pallet Town (or New Bark Town, or wherever), and not all of them will follow the same routes as we do through their home regions – not least because our routes are often determined by unusual temporary obstacles; if that Sudowudo hadn’t been standing in that exact spot, it would have made perfect sense for a trainer starting in Violet City to earn their second badge in Ecruteak City.  Gym Leaders are supposed to be educators as much as they are obstacles; they want trainers to learn stuff, not get curb stomped three weeks into their journeys, give up, and go home.

Anonymous asks:

Do you think there’s any relationship between Pokémon like the Magnemite line, the Beldum line, and the Klink line? If so, what might that be?

The ‘mechanical’ Pokémon, that is?  Honestly I think it’s impossible to say, although Magearna might shed some light on all of that, once we learn more about her.  Voltorb are supposed to have appeared suddenly around the time of the invention of mass-produced Pokéballs, and Professor Juniper discovers that Klink appeared in Chargestone Cave about a hundred years ago, so I wouldn’t rule out their creation having something to do with human influence.  I doubt they were deliberately made by humans, because they mostly seem to be thought of as mysterious Pokémon and no one seems to know exactly where they came from, but they might be the result of human activity in much the same way as Grimer (i.e. the waste products of human technology, stimulated by “X-rays from the moon”).

Anonymous asks:

Even though I believe on your argument on the whole Beartic x Dragonite question, I don’t really think that the thing about levels is possible. Principaly because the levels don’t seem to make a very big influence on the anime. One example is one of the starting episodes of the Unova series where Pikachu loses to Trip’s Snivy. (His name’s Trip right? Right) The Snivy was recently catched and I can’t really believe Pikachu would be something lower than 50 and it surely didn’t just “reset”

I agree with you in principle, but that’s a bad example.  The whole context of that battle is that Pikachu’s just had his powers drained by Zekrom.  He is operating at vastly diminished capacity compared to practically every other time we ever see him fight, and the games offer us no guidelines on how to simulate that.