When I was young, I loved Pokemon. Like any other kid, I loved the cartoons and I loved the characters and I loved the almost perfect world that they inhabited. You could say that I too was engrossed at this Japanese creation, to the point that I almost memorized all the names of those cute creatures (were it not for the fact that the creators kept inventing new ones).
I also liked the other cheap derivatives of the Pokemon phenomenon that followed soon after. For instance, I liked Digimon. I especially liked the parts of the show when the Digimon creatures would transform into badder and more powerful versions of themselves. That was fun to watch.
But, like any other kid, my fascination over this genre faded with time. And now that I'm older and supposedly wiser, I think it's about time I take a more critical look at my childhood obsession.
First, the plot itself revolves around the theme of friendship. The owner and his creature-pets are friends. There are some episodes in Pokemon which clearly espouse the importance of taking care of each other on the basis of friendship (I will not dwell on those anymore). Indeed, there are many scenes where the owner and his or her beloved creatures are happy and are wearing smiles.
However, this seemingly nice anime espousing friendship contradicts its message on the face of its most recognizable plot device: the battle between the monsters.
In real life, I don't go around looking for fights. And I don't goad my friends into hurting themselves by fighting battles for me. Friends are there to support me and, if they want, protect me. But coercing them to fight and risk their lives is not what a friend does to his friends.
But this is what those stories of "Mon-mons" are all about: the owners pit their so-called pet-creature "friends" against other pet-creatures. Such blatantly "not-friend" behavior is tolerated in the Pokemon world but it is exactly what you see in dogfights, horse fights, and cockfights which are illegal in most places. One easily sees the similarities between a pet-creature owner and a real-life animal owner who takes care of his prized possessions.
There is also the case of an unfair hierarchy that governs the conduct of both owner and pet-creature. In these "Mon-mon" worlds, we see that the creatures themselves are very powerful, to a point that they can exist even without their human counterparts. But they readily subject themselves to the misguided intentions of their hapless owners who, in turn, abuse the potential powers of their pet-creatures in egoistic duels. It is difficult to swallow that the ones perceived to be vulnerable and unnecessary are the ones lording over the fitter monsters, a realization which criticizes the existence of friendship in an arrangement where one party is deemed superior to the other.
Truth be told, the genre of Pokemon does have its fair share of questions when it comes to moral judgment. For instance, if all these creatures have body parts which can be used as weapons, does it follow that they can only find their purpose by fighting other creatures? Or do they have a higher purpose which their owners do not want them to discover? And so on and so forth.
As a final word, perhaps, if another anime of this genre shows itself in the future, I will be very, very wary. I may not know what the effects of this show are on children but I will tell them to watch this kind of anime with caution and with a real-life pet beside them.
For more (belated) Pokemon bashing, here you go.
I also liked the other cheap derivatives of the Pokemon phenomenon that followed soon after. For instance, I liked Digimon. I especially liked the parts of the show when the Digimon creatures would transform into badder and more powerful versions of themselves. That was fun to watch.
But, like any other kid, my fascination over this genre faded with time. And now that I'm older and supposedly wiser, I think it's about time I take a more critical look at my childhood obsession.
First, the plot itself revolves around the theme of friendship. The owner and his creature-pets are friends. There are some episodes in Pokemon which clearly espouse the importance of taking care of each other on the basis of friendship (I will not dwell on those anymore). Indeed, there are many scenes where the owner and his or her beloved creatures are happy and are wearing smiles.
However, this seemingly nice anime espousing friendship contradicts its message on the face of its most recognizable plot device: the battle between the monsters.
In real life, I don't go around looking for fights. And I don't goad my friends into hurting themselves by fighting battles for me. Friends are there to support me and, if they want, protect me. But coercing them to fight and risk their lives is not what a friend does to his friends.
But this is what those stories of "Mon-mons" are all about: the owners pit their so-called pet-creature "friends" against other pet-creatures. Such blatantly "not-friend" behavior is tolerated in the Pokemon world but it is exactly what you see in dogfights, horse fights, and cockfights which are illegal in most places. One easily sees the similarities between a pet-creature owner and a real-life animal owner who takes care of his prized possessions.
There is also the case of an unfair hierarchy that governs the conduct of both owner and pet-creature. In these "Mon-mon" worlds, we see that the creatures themselves are very powerful, to a point that they can exist even without their human counterparts. But they readily subject themselves to the misguided intentions of their hapless owners who, in turn, abuse the potential powers of their pet-creatures in egoistic duels. It is difficult to swallow that the ones perceived to be vulnerable and unnecessary are the ones lording over the fitter monsters, a realization which criticizes the existence of friendship in an arrangement where one party is deemed superior to the other.
Truth be told, the genre of Pokemon does have its fair share of questions when it comes to moral judgment. For instance, if all these creatures have body parts which can be used as weapons, does it follow that they can only find their purpose by fighting other creatures? Or do they have a higher purpose which their owners do not want them to discover? And so on and so forth.
As a final word, perhaps, if another anime of this genre shows itself in the future, I will be very, very wary. I may not know what the effects of this show are on children but I will tell them to watch this kind of anime with caution and with a real-life pet beside them.
For more (belated) Pokemon bashing, here you go.
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