Pokémania: Maybe it's the heroin they put in it...
Oct 10 '00 (Updated Jan 23 '01)
The Bottom Line For adults, Pokémon is a wonderfully vast diversion for anyone who is a pervert, chemically addled, or who simply enjoys silly, weird, cute stuff. Uh, the latter describes me... Really...
Most of the following essay was originally written, by myself of course, in January 2000 for the American Book Review. Unfortunately I needed to trim the word count before I could call it complete. Even with my limited array of writing on this site, I'm sure people have realized that I appreciate my right to be long-winded. As a result, I gave up on this essay appearing in a dead tree publication.
Today I broke down some of the longer paragraphs and added more nonsensical sentences throughout. The purpose of some of these new sentences was a pathetic attempt at updating the essay, because the waves of Pokémania proliferate in new directions faster than even the manic likes of madamecp can keep up with. I suspect the attempts at updating it will serve as nothing more than instigators of confusion, because I also left in most of the dated commentary.
For that I apologise.
I also hope this essay doesn't cause any consternation for parents who allow their children to watch the anime series. My goal is not to deprive your children of that pleasure, but to point out what childish adults like myself might find appealing. Please do not confuse my deranged mind with the actual series, games, and merchandise.
One technical note: As per standard writing guidelines I italicised the word Pokémon whenever using it as a title (mainly for the anime series), and didn't whenever it was simply a word. Likewise I capitalised pocket monster names while using them as proper nouns (the main characters of the series tend to bestow the names of the breeds upon their critters, it's much like naming your miniature schnauzer Miniature Schnauzer), but not when I was referring to the general breed.
That having been said...
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Pokémaniac (noun): Numerous addicted battlers in the Pokémon GameBoy role-playing game who jump you for the sole purpose of showing off their cool collection. Now extended to anyone who is obsessed with anything Pokémon.
As you probably well know, Pokémon (aka Pocket Monsters) is everywhere. If you dared any Xmas shopping through web sites you likely noticed that most featured a special Poké section. "Toys, Hardware, Household Necessities, Pokémon." It's as crucial as a new toothbrush.
The merchandising is endless, the show is rated #1 for kids and contracted for another three or four years in several countries, the first movie set a new record for five-day openings in November by grossing $52.1 million (and now we have the second movie, and the third is upcoming), the games chronically sell out, kids are beating, stabbing, and ostracising each other over the trading cards, the comics are likely over-loading Viz's printers, and the languages of "Pika, pika, char, char" seem more common than English. Pokémon seems to have become the Godzilla of this commercial generation, and to ignore the trend you'd practically need to live in an isolated igloo at the South Pole (obviously Santa's Elves are busily making as much Poké anything as possible at the other pole).
Though popular culture often gives me the shudders, and particularly the trends which encourage buying everything related to them (movies, video games, CDs, etc, Mortal Kombat springs to mind) I don't hate Pokémon at all. Worse yet, I'm as addicted to aspects of it as millions of other kids. In pondering the differences, I realized it boils down to the simple fact that I like this trend and not the others. Sheesh, I know.
But it's also a matter of support for art forms I enjoy. Most obviously, Pokémon supports anime. Which is a questionable gain in that supposedly only kids can understand the T.V. anime series, and do we seriously want our kids getting hooked on the type of film most likely to leave them watching demons ripping people in half with their twenty foot long male genitals? It wouldn't be surprising if many parents do exactly that, reckoning "all animation is for kids" and ignoring whatever they're showing them. Which is a habit I find grating, as I personally prefer to have familiarity with the programming my own children view. Even if it's something I find nauseating, like when I forced myself to watch a few episodes of Seventh Heaven with my son. Hey, if he's going to have morals brutally pounded into his head, I want to be there to discuss it with him.
In the non-kid crowds, however, and particularly amongst the goth and rave scenes, there's been a lot of newfound anime addiction resultant from Pokémon. Seriously, a mere week after my friends and I were joking about making Poké blotter to exploit the rave trend I heard rumours of someone having beaten us to it. But that wasn't really my point, was it?
In August '98 the heavily-censored DIC overdub of Sailor Moon was temporarily rated the Cartoon Network's #1 toonami show. Anime (as anime, as opposed to "as Robotech") hadn't yet crept onto network TV, though, not until Pokémon debuted in September '98 and became the #1 kids' show period. Then Sailor Moon followed, in syndication, and now the rush of others has become obvious. Princess Mononoke received rave reviews on the art theatre circuit and, simultaneously, the first Pokémon movie (with the original title of Pokémon: The First Movie) was grossing over 30 million on the first day of its U.S. movie theatre debut.
According to most Pokémon articles, it's impossible for anyone over the age of twelve to enjoy or understand the show. They've even advised parents to not bother trying, advice which seems well-heeded. My husband and I dressed as Jessie and James (the "bad guys", but I prefer to call them romantic anti-heroes) for Halloween in '99: he as Jessie, me as James. Many a parent recognized my daughter's pikachu costume, but few recognized ours. They claimed "Oh, we haven't gotten that far in the show yet." I thought "Oh, you mean you haven't gotten past the first episode yet since that's the only one they didn't appear in."
I was sucked in because my kids were watching it, and, as I previously stated, I prefer having at least some cognizance of what's being spoon-fed to them. Initially I only half- way noticed Pokémon... Until I realized it's a bonafide anime, one which happens to include many of my favourite idioms (think "acid-head", because boy did ever used to be one). It's full of bizarre surrealities (plus cute ironies and numerous monsters whom look like bad hallucinations), fighting and quickly-moving characters get their colour pattern backgrounds, there are fangs and flames and twenty foot tall ticked off people with balloon heads.
Granted, this is a show aimed at kids. Our chances of seeing Jessie's naked butt, or Misty being ripped in half by the aforementioned overly-endowed demons, are nil. There aren't even any decapitations or dismemberments. But who needs that every time?
At least I can understand why people who bother trying might fail to understand Pokémon. Anime is different—the animation styles, the culture represented within it. The unexplained surrealities that really shouldn't make sense (which is half the fun!). The same applies to the confused reviews of the first movie: the random odd bits thrown into Pikachu's Summer Vacation (renamed Pikachu's Vacation here), simply because they look neat and weird, must've had most reviewers' brains dripping out of their ears—probably with a little help from Mewtwo Strikes Back's violence-justifying saccharine ending.
Pokémon also has continuity, by gosh, and you can hardly expect everyone to grok that. Look at how much Babylon 5 befuddled people! "This show sucks because I can't understand the entire novel-ish duration after watching one random episode!"
Mind you, I'm not sincerely complaining. If more parents watched Pokémon, more would try to get it banned. Picture the old stereotype of a pristine housemom gawking at James' fiancé, Jessie Belle, with her dominatrix attire and attitudes in Holy Matrimony!, or even at the burly German-sounding electrical gym leader hitting on little Misty, and you'll catch my point. Then there's lickitung... Fortunately these things fly right over the heads of kids.
Already the gripes have ranged from Buddhist symbols of hope resembling swastikas on a trading card, to abstract talking f*ckachus (yes, the complaint was that the unmentionable "f" word would pop out of a stuffed pika's mouth. I experimented with our talking pika, but had no such luck), to the jynx pokémon looking like it's "an overweight drag-queen incarnation of Little Black Sambo".
Tetchy. Pokémon has been a Jellyfish-send (read: blessing) for me, given that it's hooked my kids on Japanese culture. Now they love it when we make origiri for them, even if origiri was originally called "donuts" in the overdub. They try speaking a little Japanese, in fact my son recently showed off at school by being the only person in one of his classes who could speak any Japanese, and they enjoy the Taiko drumming and folk dancing annually at the Sakura Matsuri (Cherry Blossom Festival).
My son will watch black and white subtitled Akira Kurosawa films now, though he previously screamed in terror (well, not quite) over films with either aspect. And if I decide to let him watch one more anime film or series he bounces around ululating in excitement. Pokémon episodes are full of cultural references, both traditional and media (look for Kurosawa odes, including a Yojimbo episode entitled Showdown at Dark City). Unlike too many multi-media addictions, which discourage diversification, Pokémon creates worlds of explanatory opportunities for the parents who want to bother with them.
Even with the overdub the Americanization isn't too terribly horrible (I'll bar the first movie from that assessment. At least the show retains the incidental music, though the lyrical songs are atrociously replaced, but for the movie they stripped out the entire soundtrack in favour of obnoxious crud! I personally stick with being addicted to Japanese Poké Cds... not to mention a Hong Kong bootleg that I suffered the embarrassment of reviewing in my own dead tree magazine before realizing it wasn't legitimate) and it's gotten better. Lately Brock is allowed to make "rice balls" (origiri) as opposed to donuts and the two holiday-related episodes that were originally cut from the overdub because they might've been too confusing (being about Girls' Day and Boys' Day, which aren't celebrated here) were later inserted at the beginning of season two.
If you aren't familiar with the basic premise of Pokémon, it involves monsters who are captured and trained for battles. When not in use, they are stored in tiny poké balls—hence the pocket monsters name. Much of the world is engrossed in training, studying, and breeding them. In the bulk of the stories Ash/Satoshi (in Japan he's named for Pokémon's creator, who blames it all on childhood bug-collecting habits), a stubborn but often downright dim-witted ten-year-old, is the primary character. Though his starter pokémon, Pikachu (that cute little yellow-with-black-stripes mousey critter you can't avoid seeing everywhere), is the true star. And they are even kind enough to point this out from time to time.
Ash bumbles through annexing abandoned and/or abused pokémon, and sometimes even miraculously captures them, whilst striving toward becoming an elite pokémon master. To accomplish this he must battle his way through winning badges from gym leaders, and through the Pokémon League(s). In all but the game stories he travels with Misty, from the Cerulean water gym, and Brock, from the Pewter City rock gym, both of whom supply him with much-needed advice and harassment.
Recently in the anime series, the ever-hormonal Brock found a woman who could tolerate his presence and was temporarily replaced by Tracy/Kenji. (And now, even more recently, he's returned, having had his heart broken, so they can leave poor Tracy to have his heart broken by Professor Oak... who was kicked out as Ash's Mom's "friend" when a Mr. Mime moved in with her). Ash and company invariably become a nuisance for the infamous Team Rocket: Giovanni aka The Boss' massive crime organization. Believe me, Ash needs his enemies because they help him grow. And vice versa. It might help to think of this story as being about a transcendental journey, wherein the kids (Ash, Misty, Brock, Tracy, Jessie, and James) are all discovering themselves and learning to be "all that they can be" (but not in the army reserve).
Though all of the main characters, excluding Ash's snobby rival Gary (who, of late, has matured far more than Ash... as if that's difficult) whose own cheerleading team follows him everywhere and who only got around to learning some humility during the second season, are likeable misfits, the most loveable ones are the "bad guys": Jessie and James, obscenely-flexible and thoroughly fallible members of Team Rocket. A couple of ultra-cute seventeen-year-old, bumbling, down- trodden, vain, psychotic-yet-hyper-sensitive, super-persistent, mad scientist megalomaniacs.
In Japan they're Musashi (Jessie) and Kojiro (James), names you might recognize historically, or from The Samurai Trilogy, or from Miyamoto Musashi's Book of the Five Rings, which either proves that they are ultimately heroic or that they'll ultimately kill each other. Jessie is tough, the daughter of a poor family who only had snow treats to look forward to, James is the pretty boy who ran away from his horrid rich family and his psychotic dominatrix fiancé. They became members of the same bicycle gang, then joined Team Rocket together. Their pokémon companion, Meowth or Nyasu, the only talking critter in the series thanks to the powers of Love and Rejection, is equally tragic and fallible.
James is also the most convincing male cross-dresser I've seen, even amongst other anime characters. Put them both in their Officer Jenny mini-dress uniforms, and he and Jessie have identically shapely bodies. Though scads of teenagers are giggling stupidly about how "gay" James/Kojiro is, the true explanation is that he's a parody of a Takarazuka actress—or basically he's a man acting as a woman acting like a man. And he's a thief by profession, disguises are essential! If they just so happen to be as a barely teenage girl or hula dancer, or if they consist of the frilliest pink tutu I've ever beheld, or a petticoated red gown with goldilocks wig for a more old-fashioned look, then so be it. All the more to make the perverts happy. I used a picture of James—exhibiting his ample cleavage and curves in a bathing suit contest, holding a towel around the signs of his ungirlness—from Holiday in Aopulco to design a t-shirt claiming "The Man of My Dreams."
Much of my Poké toy addiction stems from my sadness over the Wile E. Coyote-ish luck of Jessie and James, my desire for them to stop bumbling and just succeed at something (darn it)! They get so depressed and pathetic, but at least in my living room the world is theirs. We ordered our (in)action figures from Japan before everything Pokémon was everywhere here. Since then they have steadily congregated an army of pocket monsters, all of whom surround them as they perch upon their high cassette rack pedestal. Critters in a variety of shapes and sizes.
When Pokémon initially hooked me I thought they were utterly brilliant for beginning with 150 (now over 250) different monsters. Such a range of marketing possibilities! Then you have your plush versions, squeezies, battle figures, pillows, Xmas ornaments, electronic talkers, tub scrubbies, the socks I'm wearing as I type... Well, suffice to say some of the only items I haven't yet found (candy, lunchables, fruit rolls, pop tarts, etc do indeed exist) are toilet paper and condoms. Bummer, I know, my bathroom and underwear drawer feel naked without them.
Actually, let me qualify that statement because there is more Poké-merchandising I haven't yet stumbled across: clothing in adult sizes. I have one Team Rocket jersey that fits, and my husband owns one pair of boxers. But you can't imagine how depressing it is that I'm not allowed to wear the same cute pikachu slippers my daughter has. *Sniffle*.
The toys don't solely rule play-time. Though the Red and Blue versions of the RPG came first, and inspired the anime, the stories have become backwards compatible. Version Yellow's starter critter is a pikachu (as opposed to the original bulbasaur, charmander, or squirtle) and Jessie and James are switched into some spots previously only filled by generic Team Rocket members.
While the earlier versions of the RPG are entertaining, the Gold and Silver versions (currently available only in Japanese, but that should change in less than a week) are considerably more involved: the pokémon have genders and can be cross-bred, the monster count is extended to 250 and includes de-evolutions. And, because the story-lines for these games extend to the future when Satoshi is grown up, you even get to see a cute Team Rocket girl who looks considerably like the spawn of our current loveable Rockets. In each RPG you can nearly endlessly beef up your critters, and link to other peoples' GameBoys to fight each other in stadiums—or you can import your monsters into Stadium (Nintendo 64) for an animated battle. Anyone who appreciates hallucinogenics will likewise appreciate some of the psychic and ghost attack visuals in the latter game.
Likewise coinciding with the story are Pokémon Pinball for the GameBoy and, probably the most fun game, Snap for the Nintendo 64. In the latter you, as the Todd character, take pictures of pokémon. Apples can be used to bait them, or "pester balls" to scare them out of hiding, and sometimes outright hitting them is necessary. Progression into new courses and secret areas is often extremely abstract.
Theoretically Snap is as non-violent as many people mistakenly believe Pokémon is in general... but not really. Simply ignore the results when you hit a critter on the head with an apple. Ignore it that "pester balls" are a lot like the anime's "blast balls": the archetypal bombs used by Team Rocket. Hey, they're merely harmless balls. Who cares if they take down mountain sides and, in the game, knock critters silly. They're equally as harmless as the Team Rocket rocket launchers, er I mean "ice blasters". Nintendo certainly knows how to squeak violence by! (And the anime violence is rather Warner Bros., there is carnage galore but no one is ever permanently hurt no matter how charred, shocked, crushed at the bottom of a chasm, or blown up by "blast balls" they are.)
Also taking their own slightly varied paths from the game/anime story are the comics and books. The monthly translated manga segments loosely equate to the show, but are abbreviated and altered in details. Ash is actually fairly competent in them! Admittedly I haven't read the chapter books, though we bought them for the kids. The board books (from Viz, as are the manga) each focus on the brief tale of one primary monster (not an anime character), which leaves them independent of the series. The Golden Books are mini-versions of single episodes. And then there are the numerous game-related books: strategy guides for the video games, handbooks for the cards, Poké-fever books for the Poké-fevered, etc. Adult-wise, the comics are definitely the most interesting. Though I do have a soft-spot for the board books... Since I initially wrote this, other Poké-manga series have appeared on the market. I haven't yet read all of them.
There remain a few Pokémon addictions I haven't succumbed to. Probably the most nefarious is the trading cards, but I don't blame Pokémon for this. If anything, I blame Magic: The Anti- Christ (well, The Gathering). Only now is my son allowed to have the cards. Previously we were repeatedly confiscating them while he was illicitly obtaining them. What kid could avoid the awful stigma of being the only one without the cards at school? They were banned at school and being confiscated there as well, but that didn't stop anyone from bringing them and trading.
Though it was an effort, I eventually got it through my son's head that before too long the cards will be nothing more than a fizzled out fad and there's no point in going so nutso over something which should be fun. He needn't, say, get intentionally locked in a store then call the police and get busted with forty or so packs of stolen cards on him like one kid did. Or get stabbed over them, like other kids did.
The card hype was used to ensure the success of both movies, at least: for each first movie ticket purchased you received one of four limited edition movie trading cards (and now you get one for buying the video tape). You would merely need to see the movie four times and then luck into trading your duplicates for the full set! Not at all surprisingly people were buying excess tickets, simply to have their precious cards. And for the second movie, you got your Ancient Mew card per ticket. Though that time they played it even smarter, only serving a promo card so kids might still be forced to buy the true version of it. The one with the stats.
Another addiction I evaded is anti-Pokémania, for which numerous web sites have sprouted up. Some people complain about the overtly commercial-appeal, others about the perverseness, a priest ignited Poké-goodies because it's witchcraft, though the Pope himself was bought out by the franchise and announced that it's good 'n' healthy fun, the anime snobs hate the cheap-looking animation (which has gotten better, believe it or not Pokémon was originally low-budget), etc.
At the center of anti-Pokémania lies the infamous Electric Soldier Porygon episode. While most of the episodes originally not shown here were simply not overdubbed (e.g. Holiday in Aopulco for being too perverse, Legend of Dratini for featuring a trigger-happy safari warden) and were easy enough to track down in Japanese, Porygon was outright banned after it caused nearly 600 kids to be rushed to the hospital due to seizures, vomiting, and irritated eyes... Unless you ask the conspiracy theorists, who'll claim about 1,300 kids had seizures because the show used strange new mind control methods. Often they believe this was the Japanese government plotting against us, though this happened there. Perhaps these theorists should try going to a dance club or watching a Godzilla film sometime...
In reality the explosion sequence which caused the seizures was a six second, red and blue, strobe that filled the screen. My own Electric Soldier Porygon tape might lack the full effects due to viewing differences, none of us had seizures even while big-screening it with a projector, but I also have video-taped news clips in varying languages that dispute the theories—including the breaking news from Japan which clearly, in anal-retentive detail, demonstrates that it was simply an excessive strobe.
Last but not least is Poké-lawsuit-mania. Whether the suit is over a toy-related death or a generic offense, the world is jealous and wanting a chunk of the profits. The lawsuits become steadily more bizarre, extending even to Uri Geller suing Nintendo over the spoon-wielding psychic kadabra. His complaint was that yunghelor/kadabra must've been based on him, and it's villainous appearance in plot-lines is damaging his reputation.
I can see the similarity in the Japanese name, and the spoons, but as for that villainous portrayal he's receiving... Sabrina's kadabra wasn't villainous. It merely happened to have a wacky psychic of a gym leader for a trainer who enjoyed turning people into dolls and crushing them with bowling balls in their doll houses. The only thing the kadabra itself ever did was fight legitimately in a legitimate pokémon battle. What was that about pitbulls and their masters?
Pokémon is cute, perverse, fun, hallucinatory, hated en masse, and the behaviour of numerous addicts might leave one thinking those "mind control" waves seeping from the screen are actually heroin. It's made me laugh so hard I had severe gut-pain and tears leaking from my eyes. It's been touching, and sad, and it offers numerous means of distraction from stress. Let the world gripe. I'll cheerfully maintain my addiction until this drug fizzles out of existence.
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madamecp
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Member: Jasmine Sailing
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