er....Pokemon

[Tea]

so,..er...yeah, I've never picked up any of the games, and am not going to claim to have done any extensive reading up on it so I'm pretty much basing all of this off of looking over a friend who's quite into Pokemon's shoulder and the occasional have to look something up because I have no idea what that person is talking about (let's just say pretty liberal use of whatever Pokemon wiki I've found), but it seems we have quite a following around here, so here goes.

I think the best articulation I've come up with for Pokemon is glorified animal fighting. I'm sorry, Power of Friendship, but how does that fit with capturing random animals and forcing them to fight each other for your entertainment (no discredit to a serious battle between humans, but the arenas? that's pretty much just entertainment.)

I'm not complaining about violence in games, but am I in some strange part of the world where animal fighting hidden under a layer of cuteness and magic is suddenly perfectly fine? Someone please enlighten me.

[Zathyr]

... They're not real animals. I'm pretty sure if they were there would be some pretty vocal opposition.

There are lots of other games where you have some kind of monster or something that beats up other monsters or something. Some have the cutesy thing going; others, not so much. Cuteness and magic have nothing to do with why people are fine with it. Looking across these games, I'd have to say the main reason no one really complains is the fact that the creatures aren't real. They're not representing anything real. I remember some game where you virtually hunted digital representations of endangered animals, and it got some folks pretty angry. I think some virtual dog fighting or cock fighting game would get some negative press too, more (I think) because it reminds people of how bad those things can be in real life, and they don't want to trivialize it. But once you start using fictional animals, it's just a game - it's just fiction. It's pretty easy to dismiss.

[WearsHats]

It started off as a card game. You collect the cards and use your monsters to fight other kids' monsters. That became popular enough that they made the cartoon, which gave the subject some life and personality. But the cartoon doesn't make much sense. You've got these 12 year old kids (or whatever age they are) wandering around the country alone. Do they have parents? Money? School? People are okay with them just walking into a forest full of wild monsters with all sorts of strange offensive powers? And then capturing them, so the kids are basically walking around with flamethrowers and lightning guns and whatnot?

Making the animals fight each other in tournaments does seem cruel, but at least they don't take permanent damage from it. And I suppose if you've got a country full of wild monsters with super powers, there is some incentive to have them caught and tamed, and to give them a safe, structured outlet for their powers. But I'm much more in favor of the water Pokemon fire department. Maybe lightning Pokemon power stations, if you could find a way to do it humanely.

Really, though it's like Zathyr said. It's a cartoon about fictional creatures. Real world logic and ethics don't have to apply.

"Notice:"

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I can't say that I see anything controversial here. I'll probably move this thread, either to Community or Controversy Lite. I'll check back later, see how it's shaping up.

[Synch]

Don't forget capturing them and keeping them encased in a pokeball! You can add kidnapping and slavery to the gladiatorial animal fighting!

It started off as a card game. You collect the cards and use your monsters to fight other kids' monsters. That became popular enough that they made the cartoon, which gave the subject some life and personality.

I'm afraid thats quite incorrect, Wears. The creator was a game developer who made Nintendo games and worked on Legend Of Zelda, and pitched his Pocket Monsters to Nintendo, which they loved. He specifically did it in response to the interlink cables so people could trade pokemon. The TCG came later on that year, then the manga, then the TV series a year later.

The origin behind Pokemon is bug collecting. Satoshi Tajiri was a massive bug fan as a child; he had dreams of being an entymologist and other kids called him Dr Bug because of his bug collecting enthusiasm. He wanted to encapsulate bug collecting in a game, but figured it wouldn't work with insects and instead came up with Pocket Monsters. He wanted kids to find them, trade etc. I believe Nintendo came up with the idea of battling, as collecting only would be a little boring, and Tajiri specifically insisted on no blood or dying to reduce violence. I could be wrong about this though, maybe it was Tajiri's idea to battle, but he definitely wanted less violence.

With my background in SPCA and the fact that I've dealt with underground dog fighting, I'm really against people using animals to fight, but I don't really have problems with battling pokemon, just like I don't have a problem with killing people in a game - there's no dark behaviour and its just fantasy. I seriously doubt if kids playing pokemon would take anything from pokemon battling and grow up to abuse animals or get involved in animal fighting, and so I think its harmless fun.

[Synch]

Sorry to double-post, but I thought of something else. This concept is a LOT harder to deal with when you play an RPG like the ones we have on this forum. In the video game the wild pokemon attack you, but I'm playing my first RPG (M0rtimer's game) and you feel like a real bastard when you start attacking some little creature you've just startled. I punched a pickachu in the face to knock it out...

[WearsHats]

Thanks for the correction, Synch. That's actually pretty cool.

But I still don't think this is controversial. I'm moving the thread to Community.

[tovar]

going by the cartoon many of the pokemon seem to express a desire to evolve.and they need to fight to evolve.

still seems cruel but they often seem to want to fight

[ChuckDaRighteous]

going by the cartoon many of the pokemon seem to express a desire to evolve.and they need to fight to evolve.

Ironically one of the expressions I hear as motivation not to fight is "show you've evolved beyond a mindless brute" or some variation of that.

I agree pokemon is a bit like animal fighting. They mask it by making it "cute," and have no killing, and near instantly healed after, and making the "animals" more combat oriented in ability. However if you take away all the ways they dressed it up, its animal fighting. Its just so dressed up it doesn't seem so much like it.

[Theis2]

I think they also try to excuse it a little bit by pointing out that the pokemon wants to fight.

[Tea]

Wears,
Belated, I somehow ended up not picking up the computer for the last two days, but yea, no complaints about moving wherever this best fits (I was debating where to start up initially anyway).

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I am not going to contest that it's just fiction and just for fun, but that is not to it's discredit. Just because it's fiction doesn't mean that there is any lack of serious elements. To pick on another piece of fiction, our lovely friend Goblins, sure, I'm reading it because it's entertaining, the world is cool, and I want to see where things go. That said, in the first battle (the battle between the goblin war camp Minmax and Co., not actually first) and Forgoth gets stuck on the end of a nice bit of questioning the ethics of adventuring/or even labeling one class of people monsters.

Anyway, I guess that didn't come out so well when I first said it (note to self, no more doing things when half-asleep), I guess my problem isn't so much that I equate Pokemon with glorified dogfighting, it's the part where I keep hearing things about friendship and the friends are also doubling as the dogs. Sure, put my friend and I in a fictional universe (our current one is lacking in threatening situations and my human is probably only good as cannon fodder) I will gladly choose to fight in her honor (and not because it's the chivalrous thing to do). Being captured and forced to fight,...somehow, I don't think that should end well.

I can kinda understand the fainting bit (it's primarily a children's game and makes a nice gentler version of killing), but on the other end, at least death afforded some kind of end. The more I think about it the more disturbing this universe becomes.

One thing I may have taken from fiction though is I've been treating the pokemon as intelligent (or at least capable of being intelligent). I don't really want to think of them as just animals (among other things, it kinda makes me the idiot human putting words into their mouths when they have no hope of saying anything about it), maybe it's just wishful thinking for the day the pokemon finally get around to rising up against the humans (a day which I can only hope is coming, the games seem to be getting increasingly environmental, civil/animal rights may not be that far off).

[DoodleMoogle]

It's a common point that people make about the pokemon setting.
Pokemon are not animals, they feel and some of them can even speak.Yet they're basically slaves to humanity and used to take part in petty fights that their owners bet money on.
In some of the recent games they've even shown that pokemon were used to fight wars.
We can't even say that the pokemon really want to fight. Remember that the pokemon caught in the wild will fight for its life and even fight its way out of a pokeball if they have the strength.
And when they are caught they suddenly become docile and follow their captors every command. Even legendary pokemon submit to these horrifying contraptions.
These pokeballs are clearly some sort of sinister mind control devices that either pump the pokemon full of mind altering drugs or plants a computer chip in their head.
There is something dark under the cheerful facade of the pokemon universe and the way the people of that world just accept this mirage is unsettling.

If I recall they even had the villains of on of the newer games basically represent pokemon liberation. Team Plasma if I recall.
Ironically they used pokemon for their movement instead of, oh I don't know, guns? It's a kids game I know, but these things just bother me.

[SamWiser]

I meant to reply to this thread a while ago, but I got busy playing the exact game we're talking about.

Pokemon is what you make it. I've played the main games, read the comics, and gotten into some of the fan comics, stories, ect. A lot of them tried to explore the darker side of pokemon. Some did it well, some didn't. A lot of your problems have been handled officially. Pokemon aren't just mindless slaves, and that can (and are sometimes shown) rebelling against their masters. As for why they might want to be caught? In the first episode of the show it says that they are healthier and live longer due to professional care by Pokemon Doctors. Also, pokemon that are trained by humans are normally stronger than other pokemon of the same level. It's all fine and normal enough if you don't think about it too much. I won't say that it solves every problem, but explanations (sometimes weak ones, but they are there) exist for all of the main issues presented.

[WearsHats]

If you accept that the Pokemon are willing participants in the fight, then I guess friendship between them and the humans is not so different from friendship between a boxer and his or her trainer. Which will vary depending on the individuals involved, how they treat each other, work together, etc.

Not that that really works with the idea of going out into the wild, invading their homes, beating them up, and then trapping them in a ball. And, really, if the Pokemon wanted to be trained, you'd think they'd just leave the wild and wander into a human city or something on their own...