Tag: QandA

I can understand how you think Dialga is a lot better than Registeel, as it is based on something significant in our society. According to Wikipedia, it seems to be based on the personification of the Iron Age. It may not be as interesting as time, but it does have its significance in reality. Regardless of this, would you change your opinion if Registeel was based on something more intersting, or had a rich historical significance?

Oh, I think Registeel and its siblings are actually doing pretty well on that front.  I may have given the impression that I was more dismissive than I really am when I did Registeel vs. Dialga – really, it was just late at night and I didn’t want to rehash what I’d just said about Regice.

I actually really like the concept.  I’ve just never been happy with the execution.

I love this blog so much, and omigosh on the Pokemon Tournament thing, I couldn’t agree more. xD wish the voting really was like that, but can you imagine what goes on in little kids’ heads? “Ooh, that one was in my favorite movie. I like that one because it’s a fire type. That one isn’t cool enough.” XD All that beside, I like how you broke it down to decide. (Oh and I’m going to need an article on why you dislike Mewtwo because that’s gonna bug me. xD)

I don’t know that I’d say I dislike Mewtwo, just… I think that the implied moral of his backstory is fundamentally out-of-step with the way technology is treated elsewhere in the franchise.  That’s not necessarily bad, but…

…well, there’s no real chance of Mewtwo losing to Entei, so he’ll still be around for me to talk about later. 🙂

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).

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.

Greetings!!!! Before I begin… Love the blog! Anyways… Just a suggestion… Since your so opinionated about pokemons… Why not do a post or two about some original ideas of yours? I personally would like to see you design a elite 4 champion idea… You could talk about his personality, his pokemons and all that good stuff. (of course after I’ve heard what you think of iris in BW2) Thanks!

You know, I keep meaning to do that.  I mean, not designing a champion, specifically, but do a series of entries on how I would run the games if I were in charge.  I just keep coming up with *other* things I’d rather do first.  So, er… it’s in the pipes.  So to speak.

I think conkeldurr looks like a clown cause he’s supposed to be like a circus strongman. That’s why he has the nose thing. It really doesn’t come across that well, though.

(For reference, this comment is in response to one of my older entries: http://pokemaniacal.tumblr.com/post/17760667917/timburr-gurdurr-and-conkeldurr)

That… would make sense.  I suppose if that is what they were aiming for then Conkeldurr is… shall we say… less awful than I made him out to be.

I still think the whole clown thing makes him look unbelievably stupid, and I still think they haven’t really done anything with it – that is, if you take away the clown noses and the funny hair, it would do nothing but improve the design; he has no traits or abilities that would stop making sense without them (I mentioned Mr. Mime in the entry, and you might make a comparison with him; his powers are way more specific than “this Pokémon is physically strong” – do you see what I mean?).

So, yeah.  I still hate Conkeldurr, but I hate him less now.  Good job. 🙂

You’ve said before that you’re an archaeology student, so I’m assuming that you enjoy the subject (otherwise you’d be insane for studying a subject you don’t like) so would you be interested in seeing more pokemon such as Lucario, who seems to be ancient Egyptian based, or other such pokemon that are based on ancient greek, mayan or egyptian mythology, seeing as it is largely japanese mythology that makes it into the games (ie. Yamata No Orochi being Hydreigon’s inspiration)

If there’s one thing I want more of, it’s myth- and folklore-inspired Pokémon.  They are The Best Ones.  I don’t even care whether we’re talking about Japanese stuff, or wider Asian stuff, or anywhere else.  I think one of the designers has said that there have been no Pokémon so far who are based on Greco-Roman mythology, which is the particular cultural milieu I’m interested in (though there are definitely some who are based on ideas that have Greco-Roman counterparts).  I would like to see some of that.  Again, though, it’s all good.  Myths and folktales last for a reason; they express powerful, evocative ideas.  Designs based on them have a certain inexpressible dignity… or, so I feel.

(Incidentally: at my university there is a long-standing rivalry between the Egyptian historians and the Greco-Roman historians, but I must still concede that Lucario is beyond epic)

So, in a word: Yes.

You find Sam Oak incompetent? I mean I guess that depends on which context we’re looking in. Cartoon and game style, yes I can agree, certain manga he’s a bit of a badass. And then with Gary Oak turning Professor in later episodes, I don’t find him too incompetent, but that’d just be my opinion.

I’m afraid I don’t really know the manga, so I can’t comment on that, and as far as the anime goes, there’s a massive gap in my knowledge between Johto and Unova.  I’m mainly going off the games (the anime version of Professor Oak is a fun character; I’ll give you that).  To the best of my memory, Aurea Juniper is the only one who ever actually *discovers* anything over the course of the game in which she features.  Also Oak apparently spent his *entire career* creating a totally blank Pokédex and is now too old to go out and fill it.  He doesn’t actually know anything about Pokémon; he’s a glorified computer programmer.