Date: Date
Mood: Mood
The site broke again! I'm putting this up so I can copy paste easier! The articles might sound like rambles or rants, but they're not. I really do love pokemon, it's just that there's a lot of things I think about pokemon when I'm in a pokemon mood and I'm like airing out my thoughts.
Mood: Creative Mode
Spitballing ideas I’ve had in mind that kind of copy pastes stuff I’ve written from cohost already. i’m mostly doing this because of my ability to do and then immediately drop projects. FG as in fangame, not fighting game. Pokémon’s too vast for that since the roster’s always getting bigger every game and we’ve already had pokken and close combat and type:wild.
I like coming up with ideas but actually making a fangame? Probably never ever, I’ll stick to struggling with one hobby as opposed to multiple.
Copy paste snatching some stuff from the recreation page too.
In terms of ideas I’ve had for like fangame stuff…
game focused solely on double battling like colosseum/XD but with more options
game that had you with a set team the entire time and you start off at the top and end up at rock bottom having to find all your teammates again
game focused on my fan concept, Big Unova, and takes the protagonists through like a more western southern area (like Texas)
Slice of life game idea
I once had an idea for a mystery dungeon game where they did detective stuff and dealt with like… an ultra beast mafia. It was a very silly idea.
I have a hamster wheel in my brain and it’s name is Pikachu and it’s got a chokehold grip.
A thing that I’ve noted that kind of gets my brain going about pokemon is that it’s a world full of like, innovative ideas that could be way more established gameplay wise or story wise but most of the time are pretty much nonessential and secondary to the structure of “get badge, fight evil team, get legendary, become champion” . Gen 7 was the closest they got away from that setup and then it was immediately walked back with gen 8. I like being able to do things that aren’t just battles in the games such as contests and the underground and the dream world once i got that setup and playing minigames and doing puzzles and sometimes I get those in the games I replay, other times I do not. Fan Projects are pretty decent with changing the structure of pokemon setups plus official spinoffs that do different things like snap and ranger and mystery dungeon and trope I/shuffle/cafe but I feel like the lack of spinoffs that do that anymore becomes more notable especially since there haven’t been sequels to some of them in years. The minor problem with playing fan projects though is when I’m playing a good fan project and I’m enjoying myself and oh, oops, it’s a cliffhanger and it’s been dead for years and there’s no follow up whatsoever so I’m left dissatisfied.
I think there could be a switch up with the genres or setup to make an interesting scenario. Things like idk, uh, being on a deserted island with your pokemon, or a game where you time travel, or maybe like an open world path game. These are all based on fangames I’ve played or have been playing pre hiatus. Of course, those things probably wouldn’t be near official but it’s nice to think about like a hypothetical shorter pokemon project that’s like, idk, made in 2D a la octopath traveler. I’d love to see the sprite art style be brought back for a spinoff. Another thing I’ve been thinking about is fan projects that have the player character already have a team or they play in a different battling format. I haven’t really played much of colosseum or XD but like I feel like there could be more pokemon games or projects that start off the player as an established person with an established team. I had a story idea in mind like that where the MC is a person who has lost their team and is essentially traveling the region to get them all back like what happened to Gold in the start of the manga.
Or I could go back to the time travel idea. With ZA seemingly taking place in an either historical or future Kalos that there could be more pokemon games that take place in different eras and periods rather than just “modern day, modern tech.” What about a pokemon steampunk game? Now that’s rad!
Re: Gen 1 Weirdness
Follow up to a neocities post about pokemon villains and also a follow up to the gen 1 weirdness post:
the interesting development factoids of capsule monsters : you as the human player were supposed to fight alongside the pokemon, different color whips which was scrapped because it was too cruel (which it is) but became badges, the general amount of scrapped pokemon we still don't know all of and how it was less of the dungeon explorer of kanto we know now as gen 1 and more of an apparent like... "digital underground dungeons." Like the whole point of the link cable was that the pokemon were virtual beings and the pokeball is a leftover of that concept… I digress. Also the anectode about red and blue being the overseas release solely because it matched the American flag, all can be found on a bunch of interviews.
gen 1 rocket having whips is significantly different in comparison to every other game where it's just pokeballs. Plus the fact they have their sprite where their eyes are shaded over. This actually carried over to the anime where the rocket grunts have eyeshadow/shading except for the usual gang of Jesse and James and Brunch and Cassidy. (What, of course I’d use that joke!) so whips were kind of an “we had it in capsule monsters but forgot to take it out for every sprite” thing like how it’s on Sabrina of all characters. (This might’ve been a factor to why she was a rocket member in pokespe.)
gen 1 cool trainers/ ace trainers also had whips but this got removed for 2 but if you look at the spaceworld graphics the whips stayed (example image I used)
the only sprite that keeps a whip is the tamer class which also has like the giant lollipop which is more or less supposed to be beastamer and therefore not the norm.
A lot of early installment weirdness for gen 1 can be found in the fact that the game wasn’t really fully solidified as a franchise at all with pokemon more or less being a game made by a small dev team who went like “hey, it would be neat if we made an RPG for the Game Boy which utilized trading. Let’s base it off stuff we all like!” Pokemon is ultimately just a series about monster kaiju battles but what if the monsters were your pets and it’s like children’s levels rather than shonen so the minute there’s like a weapon that could actually harm a person you go “woah man put that down” because there’s no reasonable way for humans in pokemon to actually fight back for later generations aside from using their pokemon and anyone who can is a weirdo who shouldn’t be considered unless they specialize in fighting like battle girls and karate guys do. Team rocket stands out as the exception to this because they still have to be the guys responsible for killing Marowak so they can use the skulls for profit so the rocket grunt clubs her to death in origins, or whatever happens in LGPE, but it’s a constant that she has to die for Kanto.
all other teams afterwards having colorful outfits and clear uniforms and cosplay makes them kind of feel less intimidating when compared to like an actual mob and mafia but then they become more colorful looking likely due to the anime and in contrast giovanni becomes even more menacing but like, a multiversal mob is a bit silly. Spreading yourself out too thin with ambitions there man, you’re gonna get owned by like a multiversal Red.
Like ultimately compared to everyone else in the series, team rocket’s goal of money and profit is a lot different than environmental worries or fronts for being better but actual manipulation of people and the contrast is that it’s completely selfish gain and like without a long term goal because Giovanni seemed perfectly satisfied with his ambition of making money and it’s not known how long he was actually running stuff behind the scenes with just rocket . there's not really anyone there for like selfish gain in later gens based on my memories, everyone has some kind of deep esoteric reason for doing what they do aside from like maybe gym leaders because their role is to appear and then exit as soon as the town is left unless you're in a gen that has gym leaders act as active authority and show up, they're the most forgettable of pokemon's large cast of humans because my focus was primarily on the pokemon.
poaching is a real thing, like, in terms of most other teams goals
team rocket is simple but effective
"we steal a the
pokemon"
Another thing is pokemon has a lot of influence from japanese media that was out during the Tokusatsu/henshin boom (kamen rider, ultra seven, godzilla, super sentai) and I read rocket might be based on a villain group from one of those shows out during that time so what I really need to do is start getting into Toku and then my mind will be totally blown.
Gen 1's remakes kind of cut away a bit of the edge that OG Kanto had which makes sense when a lot of capsule monsters was still in the development phase and kind of ended up blended in the final product,
but the core of nature and harmony is still present with the pollution pokemon and what not. I think there might be a historical aspect I'm missing out on like how a video mentioned a lot of projects being abandoned as a philosophical thing and also something about the bubble era popping leading to a lot of cynicism.
The craziest part of writing this one was that I feel like a lot of the things I said while just using TCRF and corocoro scans kinda were semi confirmed when the teraleak showed that there were characters who were only seen in concept art who showed up in the manga.
Note: This is definitely a contender
for the picking up pokemon page, which I’m unsure what to do with
going forward. I definitely didn’t connect the dots
beforehand but this is a thing that makes a lot more sense about this
part of the GSC arc now: Kusaka definitely played the
Spaceworld demo in between the time frame of writing out the Gold and
Silver arc before the Crystal arc released. The fact that gold uses a
skateboard like in the demo and the plot point of Red becoming a gym
leader (like how he was supposed to be in Spaceworld) and how Daisy
is a lab assistant, all of that can be found within the Spaceworld
demo. Pokespe is reflecting a game that technically doesn’t exist
because of how much it got reworked.
Dev history for GSC is fascinating
because like it was in between Pokémon blue, yellow, the orange
islands arc of the anime and like it’s basically 2 different games
based on the spaceworld demo to what we got now. Conceptually a lot
of the old maps for the johto demo can be theorized to be in Sinnoh
which like aligns with all of gen 1-4 being based on Japan, plus how
a bunch of pokemon in Spaceworld were used in Sinnoh in terms of
adding in more baby pokemon, and how there’s just a lot of
fascinating stuff to consider since GSC was being developed in the
time period of 96 to 99 and ended up in an entirely different
direction so much that I personally refer to Spaceworld GS as “Gen
1.5”. Also doubly fascinating how Pokespe also reflects bits and pieces
of this unused game . Impostor Oak appearing in spe; the cameos of
Spaceworld trainer designs during volume 3, gold’s skateboard, and
the whole rocket taking over the magnet train subplot might have been
Kusaka just taking what he had from the Spaceworld draft of the manga
and just gluing it with the plot of GS. 1997 was the airing of the og anime which meant that gen 2 was
being developed concurrently because Ho-oh was the first pokemon
shown, plus togepi was also there. Pokespe also released March 3rd, 1997. And the tankonbon chapters
themselves for RGB all release from the timeframe of 97 to 98 with
the yellow arc lasting until 99 so within that time frame was the
spaceworld demo. (Note: I can’t read Japanese but these show the
chapters as they released in the magazine format in chronological
order—
https://pkspedia.com/02_datebase/06_serial/magagine/poken-serial-magagine1.html) The spaceworld demo was in November and the arc chapters of the
saffron city siege featuring imposter oak were January of 1998. The
entire subplot in GSC proper about Red becoming a gym leader in
general! Because Spaceworld Gold was built off of Pokemon Blue (which
aligns with sprites for gen 1 pokemon in SW) which was the 3rd
version game compared to Red and Green which became US Red and Blue.
There’s an weird alternate world out there where Red’s the one
stuck with the color name debate. Correction: Blue and G/S were being developed concurrently. The
delay led to Blue coming out first and Yellow being made in order to
capitalize on how popular the anime was/keep people interested in
Pokemon after the delay announcement. Bonus image in regards to that time
frame, stuff like Corocoro scans and anime promotional material . Who
could forget about the famous pikablu..
Corocoro magazines sure were the way
of leaks, at least right until the 3DS had the demos and pretty much
every pokemon was revealed right out the gate. Or people who’d get
their predownloads loaded in earlier than street date. That’s how I
ended up getting spoiled on the entire Sumo roster.
More from Corocoro from the timeframe
of 96 to 98. Fascinatingly even in the 98 stuff they’re still using
screenshots from the Spaceworld demos rather than the fully revised
gold and silver. Kinda fascinating how the only Red there is the one from the
clefairy gag manga while pokespe red is nowhere in sight because
Corocoro does publish pokemon special, I guess clefairy Red and Ash
were way more popular at the time. I got all of these linked off of https://www.zoidsland.com/.
Spaceworld Investigations
Because he was supposed to be, and Kusaka gets sent
games/footage ahead of time so he can start making the manga that
promotes the material. These pieces of material I keep talking about
can all be found on the TCRF page.
But in terms of “why does
Spaceworld use Red as the gym leader but refer to Blue in terms of
the name?”
Reposts since I finally got my cohost recreation up. Spoilers for Pokemon Adventures.
I feel like pokespe yellow is kind of a character that’s
fundamentally misunderstood the further pokemon moves from it’s gen
1 philosophies of like people living with nature in harmony with
pokemon vs the horrors of technology and as pokemon becomes more
technology based a character who’s ultimately representative of
like, Mother Nature kind of sticks out in a weird angle. I think this
misunderstanding sticks even in her source material. Sort of a
companion to my “gen 1 is weird article” like the rocket one and
I finished ORAS and she didn’t show up so I wrote this out. Natural healing and empathy powers are off putting by pokemon
standards but things like auras exist so for all we know she’s just
got a way to share her aura in terms of giving her retroactive
reasoning because thats like what mega evolutions and Z-moves do.
Yellow personality wise is kind of like a shoujo character who was
thrown into a shonen and her team evolving at the very end when she
kind of abhorred that because she couldn’t recognize her team
anymore is kind of like her crisis of faith and loss of innocence at
least compared to other characters. Wish we got to see more of her
reaction but she uh. Fell asleep. Ultimately why i like yellow is
that in spite of being a pacifist character she normally tries to
give an ultimatum before going full into the fighting. She did
threaten to drop the SS Anne on those rocket members that one time
and never hesitated once to blow up Lance before the final
confrontation on Cerise island. She isn’t whiny about it and I
think that’s what makes her stand out at least with other pacifists
in media I’ve had to deal with over time. She’d be a terrible
game protag what with her team but Pokespe isn’t really all about
stats considering how a tepig was able to keep up with alder’s
team. She was created in mind to be the exact opposite of Red in
terms of not being able to battle or catch well and that is kept up
but the level boost thing is kind of also a thing with stats flaring
up like the beast aura… now I kinda wish she could show up and
interact with Riley. Too bad we’re never getting new remake arcs. In terms of the whole nature thing as well, pokespe has done this
before by citing pallet town as a place that was pristine and free of
pollution and the viridian forest is the big example of “magical
forest of nature”. The concept of pokemon being able to sense
things being awry because they are ultimately beings of nature is
also a repeated plot point within spe with things like the absol and
the lake verity explosion leading to the pokemon being angry at
humans. In terms of Japanese belief systems, Shintoism and Buddhism
both have emphasis on respecting nature and the belief that every
living thing has a spirit, which would explain why the forest itself
can seemingly manifest powers as it shares its spirit as a blessing.
Even during something during ORAS I thought “kinda interesting that
even though it’s moved past viridian forest it still apparently
hints that like the planet/nature itself can like summon people to
act for it” and generally, Celebi has also kind of shifted into
that direction of summoning people like during HGSS. That’s more of
a plot analysis than a meta analysis which was more or less the
reasoning of “we need these characters to show up during the remake
arc to advertise the remake.” But with later generations games
wise, things like Cursola existing and the various rotom phones and
ultra megapolis point more towards a heavier science angle, right?
It’s interesting in terms of “a new angle thats different from
the more simple stuff.” As technology marches on in the real world,
the pokemon world also reflects it. But since gen 1 was just kanto in
terms of locations and then abandoned buildings and the philosophy of
“let nature reclaim what was abandoned” and there’s a character
that is like a nature vs nurture conflict (lance is on the nurture
side because I believe he was definitely raised in a way that made
him think might makes right especially with the dragon clan) this
retroactively makes the arc be like “but why though” especially
since the powers that healed kanto and the world basically
immediately gave them leeway to start doing their construction
project type of things again. The thing she represents isn’t 100% a
priority anymore. Of course this is also a speculative bit but since
she’s a character that has no real reason to appear since third
versions and extra things during the switch were ignored she doesn’t
really appear because like, the Viridian forest is her domain, so she
kinda just stays and chills. She’s not a fighter like Red and she’s
not as strong as him in base form, so she’s kind of like in terms
of DBZ comparisons like she’s like the dende and Gohan of the
group. (Note: In terms of everyone else gen 1 wise, Red is Goku,
Green is Piccolo, and Blue is Bulma.)
On Nature, Technology, Pokemon, and
secondary characters (Pokemon Adventures Yellow Analysis?):
Mood: Meh...
I guess I can still come up with stuff for this spot after all.
Well, cohost has been down for a while and I’ll probably rehost some stuff from the recreation page but how about that teraleak thing?
It’s been a bit since the floodgates opened and all hell broke loose for terminally online pokemon fans, i.e, me.
Basically this is on an entirely different level than the gigaleak in that instead of the elusive GS prototype it’s actually multiple prototypes including XY which finally debunked the alien theory. Mega Jynx was real the whole time too! They even found the art for the spiky eared Pichu. There’s all sorts of things that are for the brand coherency just floating out in the world forever now at least until TPCi rounds up the execution block.
It does majorly suck that included in the 1 TB was the data for like, every single employee from Gamefreak and the leaker said they were witholding information for other games but like. Why the heck did you include doxxing everyone there then. You couldn’t have scrubbed that out too if you were gonna keep out newer stuff?
Gen 3’s concept art was so radically un-pokemon like that it’s insane. The entire roster is like the same surreal energy of Spaceworld GS. The most interesting part of this probably was the dev cycle thing where it’s like, GF was juggling multiple projects on multiple game engines that weren’t even all 1 to 1 because HGSS used DP’s and BW’s used Platinum’s at first. Crazy. The Pokémon development cycle has always been kind of nuts huh.
There’s a lot of development material that definitely shouldn’t have been seen, like the scrapped lore documents in gen 4, which was certainly a lot when everyone ran it into the ground on social media. This pretty much proved to me that people saying they want a more mature pokemon game couldn’t even handle the folklore tales which were basically just actual native stories but animal spirits and yokai were replaced with pokemon. Like it got severely toned down for the actual release game, why are people taking content we were never supposed to see as canon. This has only proven a thing I’ve always thought about in the fringes but because of the constant game of attention span rage baiting and like, lack of caring about games as a whole outside of select bits for instant satisfaction and praise leads to a mass swath of pokemon fans having one of the worst reading abilities as a whole fandom and have the worst interpretations. Like I’ve never felt fully confident to say it but like the reading comprehension devil just hangs out on the lawn of the pokemon fanbase watering his plants and sipping tea.
Masters also had a leak but only for pre-development info and now I’m dissapointed that the player characters had a lot more fashion before they got cut to become bland and blander.
I’d update the protag chart more thoroughly since there’s concept art but a lot of this stuff is still new which means it could be fake or more stuff can come out or you know, the more likely thing of the site getting sniped. The only thing extra I’m posting currently is an image of Cal because he’s a guy from a while back who I was like “does this guy have full artwork if there was a portrait made for him for Stadium 2” which he does! It’s just him in a half portrait, but to be fair, that’s better than nothing.
Date: Date
Mood: Mood
I feel like I'm hitting that wave of when a new season begins and my interest for a thing completely wanes. In this case, my summer feeling for pokemon is shriveling into dust and I want to get back into playing like final fantasy or something. I’m getting burnout, I think.
Putting the console down, turn it off, go outside, read a book or something.
It's quite easy to get burnout these days when you only stick to one thing or franchise, right?
I kept getting miserable YouTube recommends about how bad pokemon is now or how every game has always been bad and there’s going to be a new hack to fix it. I get it, you don’t like the direction the games and franchise have been going. People can have their own opinions unless everything they have to say is negative to which I will say "why are you still here then lmao."
Reigional and Generational wars are pretty silly. People don't play games with the context of awareness of the game development so knowing something like Kanto was literally compressed to hell and back to fit in OG Gen 2 Johto is a factoid that's been ignored for the narrative of "the kanto postgame is boring" well that's because in the spaceworld demos it was literally 1 town , like the development history for gen 1 and 2 games is fascinating but I digress. the XY chronicles have been the first time I've actually kept a gameplay log for pokemon that wasn't a hack and even that was an exercise for me in “am I being too harsh on this game or am I not being harsh enough or did I play it wrong because I failed the full context of the game itself in terms of what I was expecting? The notes I took paint one side of the story but did I truly feel as angry about the game because my play style was different from the intention? Then what was the intention?”
I have gotta start getting into other stuff, man. Like having more things added to your plate lets you appreciate all sorts of things from different avenues. New shows, new books, new hobbies… like if I’m dissatisfied then I should try other things. And I know that’s a cop out but eventually the well is going to run dry where I’ve completely exhausted myself of a thing and gotten sick of it and it will have an effect on the way I play the game and talk to people about the games. Sort of how I’m feeling on the site revamp tbh…
I fully understand that I’m never going to get a pokemon game that made me feel the same way I felt as a child from when I was playing older pokemon games and quite frankly I do not like open world games so I don’t have any particular extreme “want” for any of the switch games (Please note I was writing this out before I impulsively bought a used copy of Sword but still have zero interest in SV). I would’ve maybe for LGPE if it didn’t have the go mechanics and joycon reliance (I have a switch mini) and I would’ve maybe for BDSP if the models were like ORAS but they didn’t and I don’t have an extreme desire to transfer everyone over to be stuck behind another 5$ subscription service or however much money pokemon home is when bank’s inevitable shutdown means that the pokemon I caught and got from various saves will no longer be allowed to all be together in a single game. Least there’s the hacked transporter/bank save manager but still…
I know this is hypocritical when I’ve designed a good chunk of my website dedicated to just pokemon stuff but I’ve already mentioned that I have hobbies outside of pokemon, it doesn’t occupy my brain space as badly as it used to when I was a child, it’s just the thing I’m currently focused on since I can’t actually play my previous focus thing which was FF14. (Which is where I got this philosophy from because with content lull periods director Yoshi-P went “great time for you to play other games!”) Before that, I would’ve said it was MapleStory, but I have a very incredibly long list of gripes for that game even if I spent a decade on it because I have zero nice things to say about it outside of presentation. (Never ever going back to that game as long as I can help it.)
Mood: Meh.
Tl;dr: there are themes, I might just be too stupid to recognize them any deeper unless I go further in, which I don’t really want to, because I feel it seems a bit fruitless. This is quite the funny entry because I have been attempting to pay more attention with Pokémon masters, but now the focus has shifted from “understanding the lore” to “trying to understand like a handful of characters that I care about.” One step forward and two steps back.
Post base Sword and base Postgame Playthrough.
Is being a pokemon story/ lore fan/explainer a Sisyphean task? You kinda end up sandwiched between people who think pokemon has no story or people who outright ignore the story to make up their own thing or people who mash the A button and end up in the first two categories or people who take everything at face value and don’t get subtext whatsoever. Then there’s me, who genuinely draws blanks whenever they try to recall stories outside of select bits that stuck out to them in earlier generations and select characters within the games themselves (rival green, rival silver, mewtwo in pokemon mansion, that scene in gen 4 when you free the legendaries from Cyrus, N (Gen. 5 in general tbh), Lillie and Gladion and Nebby in Gen 7, rayquaza's cutscene in gen 3 where it went "STOP THAT"-- but does that really count???) (the reason I specify games is because like, I could tell you plot points from anime movies and manga and other things, but those aren't the games, so they have the advantage of being a different medium where they can show their story instead of telling it through dialogue boxes and a handful of actual cutscenes that are not just dialogue.)
To me, most pokemon game stories tended to be episodic in nature where it was more or less player goes to town and does a thing. It’s not until gen 5 in my opinion does there be a far larger attempt to have a narrative where they go “wait… is this whole pokemon thing… bad?” And even then the answer is “no you idiot. It’s only bad when people do bad things to pokemon is it a inherent problem, why would we make a game where the real answer is that the premise of the entire franchise is bad.” which is also something that was in gen 1 because team rocket was like, you know, running a literal traffic ring with the game corner and poaching pokemon from graveyards and shit. They try this again in gen 7 with Lusamine being like "don't you just box pokemon you don't use anymore" little does she know that her husband who was sucked into a dimensional portal and got amnesia is running an island resort where the pokemon are chilling and eating beans (unless they're trying to say that Poke Pegalo isn't canon and is just a gameplay only thing). There's a difference between cryogenically freezing pokemon versus not rotating them in the party (I do not recall if she ever unfroze the pokemon....). Trying to guilt trip the player like that doesn’t work especially if they’re doing something like a nuzlocke or solo run. I still don’t know what gen 6 was trying to say whatsoever.
Doesn't help that the franchise is wildly contradictory. Like there were books in gen 4 where it's like "wild pokemon show up to help people" but then the anime goes "wild pokemon attack people because they're jealous of trained pokemon" make up your mind. Thematically XY is going for a story about resource issues and the evidence Lysandere uses is the mega ring from the tower of mastery being only for the protag but later games (until 8 cut them out) just have a bunch of people with various mega items and even the rival from XY gets one in the postgame, so it’s clearly not all that bad mega distribution wise. (Really, the sheer fact that the creator in an interview said “well, the pokemon world’s a utopia and real life problems don’t apply” at face value seems dumb but then again, it’s a children’s franchise, not sure they can go too in depth into things like the sustainability of the pokemon world and stuff like taxes and things like “where does the meat come from?” without brushing into the fact that most Pokémon have some level of sentience and animals don’t exist but in SWSH hamburgers and hot dogs exist. They have to get it from somewhere. ) Most mechanics from other games try not to be as exclusive for pokemon either, like how every pokemon can use a Z-move and dynamax and terrastalize and how they pretty much attempted to bury Megas in the ground with the Alola dex entries.
Gen 8’s plot problem is that there’s something way more interesting going on with Leon and Sonia investigating factory explosions and fighting giant Pokémon outside of the wild area and instead the game goes “nah, you just keep doing the gym thing” and instead of me being like “wow, a game where adults are responsible” I go “their things sounds WAY more cool then what I’m doing”. I feel like maybe if we went investigating with them then the whole energy crisis thing wouldn’t have felt so last minute because seeing proof of the depleting energy would be a lot better than just hearing about Rose feeling desperate, right? It’s still a bit stupid the entire Lategame plot hinges on a problem that’s a thousand years from now rather than something that Rose would actually see within his lifetime. And there’s another narrative bubble problem of Galar saying it’s gym challenge is like globally important but there’s no one actually important checking it out— Galar has the least regional mentions based on NPC dialogue outside of people saying that people from Kanto also like curry and that Kabu is from Hoenn unless I missed some. Not a single cameo in sight but like in earlier gens you could at least get a mention of a character or one showing up. And it’s not like the Galar region itself is interesting either, a lot of regions I could say had their own culture and style but galar’s is literally built on the gym challenge and they had nothing else going on for the main game.
There’s a lot of ludonarrative dissonance in the way pokemon is. Like for roadblocks. It makes sense to have roadblocks right before you’re about to fight a final boss for something like an evil team rather than just having them be there so you can’t explore later routes. It makes zero sense to have this huge moment be like “oh no, we’re in danger!” And then the player can fly away to a different town and literally nothing has changed, it breaks the illusion of stakes. Of course, this is a difficult thing because what if you want to heal or buy supplies… okay, so what pokemon needs is more random RPG stalls instead of just centers. Theres kind of 0 narrative consequences for losing a battle outside of blacking out and losing money. There’s never really been a moment in a game where you feel like an underdog narratively unless you interpret like gen 2’s vague comments about Red as him overshadowing everyone else or like gen 5 when your dragon isn’t summoned like N’s until the finale because even in gen 3 when the weather crisis happens you can just like, leave the area and turns out that the thing is only localized to one specific part of Hoenn. (Note: I’ve only ever played Emerald and AS (A DECADE AGO?!) so idk if it did affect the whole reigon in the OG GBA games.)
Or my most recent example of Sword where Raihan said "we evacuated the place" then I go into a building right next to him and there are still
people inside talking about the same thing like robots on repeat. A lack of spot checking or just that "no one's going to check, don't program it in." But you know maybe Gen 8 just had like a problem in general because like I don't think I've ever seen
a pokemon plot that was actively sabotaging itself in the late game as much as Sword did between Rose and then the postgame with those stupid brothers where it got to a point where I just put my switch down and stopped playing not because the plot was like terrible but because they expected me to take any of it seriously as if one of the major characters I was dealing with didn't have their hair shaped like a sword
and flopping in the wind.
And like trying to like evaluate and rate the plots of games is difficult because of like. The complete inconsistency between games.
The whole like broad strokes kind of thing where it’s like Gen. 1 and 2 were like episodic personal adventures where the whole point was like your journey and then subsequent games add on the legendary formula thing and then gen 5 was good and tried and then gen 6 was like also formulaic and then gen 7 was good and was really good and then gen 8 immediately like kicked me personally with their attempt at a plot and gen 9 is like a lot of people say it’s good so like there’s no consistency whatsoever within the mainline games. The spin-offs had good plots when they remembered to have plots but that is also a case of “I played some spin-offs as a child and don’t remember the exact details at all.”
Literally every Pokémon story that attempts to tell a good story gets rated as the best one because like PMD2 is basically just a whole JRPG story based on what little I remember of watching a playthrough but like if it wasn’t a Pokémon story would it still be rated as high or is it rated as one of the highest Pokémon stories because the standard for Pokémon stories are clipping through the ground?
Insert gojo reaction image.
Tbh I could not answer this because I still am playing PMD 2 and therefore cannot give my full evaluation. I did see a video where they made dusknoir British though which made me go "huh I think I get it".
A pokemon game that actually has a rival that changes on whether you win or lose battles with them is something that would probably be pretty good rather than just by default railroading to “you, the player have to win! We did not program in an alternate path!” (The only time this has happened to my knowledge is Pokemon Yellow where your rival’s eevee evolution changes depending on how many battles have been won or lost with him.) It feels incredibly one sided if I have to win all the time.
In JRPGs outside of pokemon, sometimes whether you win or lose a battle thats plot important the villain either responds to that or its like a “win in battle, lose in cutscene” type of thing. Pokemon has to my knowledge, never actually done that sort of thing. There has yet to be a scene where everything is entirely hopeless but the player goes “I can’t lose here, my friends need me!” And then their party is fully healed through sheer willpower. The only case I can think which is kind of what I want is the one scene at the end of scarlet and violet where the Paradise protection protocol locks all the pokeballs outside of the giant motorcycle pokemon, but not exactly. I don’t count SWSH’s rendition of this because the setup is so convoluted and you do not have the same level of emotional attachment to the dogs vs the ScaVio motorcycles. I’m talking about a heroic second wind type of beat. That one where you start flashing back to all of the friends you made along the way.
The new trend of Pokémon lore with the 3DS era has been going with “we’ve got a
multiverse and alternate timelines and time paradoxes and hidden legendaries that
are godlike with craaazy complexities and people being plucked into different dimensions
with amnesia and then sometimes we decide to retcon things only to bring them back later
so you never know what’s truly canon or not! All the supplemental material is wildly different
too, so good luck applying any anime logic or spinoff logic or manga logic because they’re all their own canon! This doesn't even apply to the timeline problems!”
And I go “that seems really complex and headache inducing” and i go play a kirby game, which is funny, because those also have lore, but the lore there is mostly through pause menus and hard modes and miiverse posts and it's actually irrelevant as a whole because kirby lives in a world of cosmic horrors but doesn't give a shit, to him it's just "these guys ruined my day and now I will kill them".
Mood: RAHHHHH
A piece I was writing for the XY Journal that I decided to put here instead.
I’m thinking about plot in Pokémon games and protagonist centric views and villains. opinion piece.
The trend of “you’re a new kid who moved here and basically became all powerful within the span of a few months beating everyone and your rival gets more emotional
until they give up” started in gen 3* and then got extremely overemphasized onwards to the point it’s actually almost plot important in scarlet and violets
dlc rival Kieran that points out that the player character is like borderline omnipotent in terms of having cosmic destiny just happen to them and the fanbase
outright either loves or hates the guy because of it. Bro is basically edelgard levels of discourse, I kinda noticed this while on other communities but if a character doesnt instantly suck up to your self insert character they are deemed irredeemable and a piece of trash and self centered and egotistical for not praising the ground you walk upon. To be fair with choice railroading (a lot of people complained that there wasn’t an option to NOT lie to Kieran, the game said you had to lie) this is also an issue I noted in the looker saga where the player is forced to say yes to progress the plot and do things that the actual person might not want to do like, I dunno, lying (I know that being with Ogerpon wouldn’t have magically solved any of Kieran’s other problems) but the game’s decisions don’t give the player any agency, you have to do what the plot tells you to because if you say no, the game just goes “but you gotta! We didn’t program in an alternate path!”. Then don’t give me the dialogue decision because when you put in anything aside from yes or no the game treats the dialogue the exact same and the NPC will still say the same line as if theyre in on the joke of ignoring the player.
Gen 4 Sinnoh doesn't have the whole "new kid" aspect but it pretty much does give you a bunch of legendary pokemon plus PLA makes your character an actual chosen one by the big G of the pokemon world so it absolutely counts in the plot aspect. Gen 5 does do this with the box cover legendary for BW but it’s otherwise an outlier in most other departments. True power scaling would give a lot of later protagonists a lot of power based of their game’s legends. Red was just some guy in comparison when compared to most of these kids but his reputation is higher because he was the first player trainer and therefore the greatest of all time.
I kind of agree. Powerscaling wise he shouldn’t stand a chance if everyone really had their best teams with legendaries and Z- moves and mega blasts and what not but I commend
him for sticking with what he wants and not budging an inch after all these years. (Unfortunately the same favor of being the best does not extend to Leaf who is in some sort
of limbo of being treated as less than Red despite being his female counterpart. Gamefreak are cowards for not saying that she’s on the same level of strength as him. Booo. ) Simultaneously
though I probably have the most surface level takes on pokemon plots and characters possible because my only real sources of reference headcanon wise was just me taking personality traits
from HGSS era fics from people who were on LJ and FF.net and occasionally my own observations when watching speed runs and reading through scripts through stuff like Pokecorpus or the
dissassembly texts.
I’m kind of sick of Pokémon games saying that the protagonist has some sort of special destiny where they have to have the legendary because… they just do, okay? The evil team has to be
involved with a legendary somehow to exploit its powers of "(insert game powers here)" to "(insert plot here)" or else! *shaking fist.* Everything has to revolve around the protagonist because…
they’re the protagonist! Character development has to be because the protag beat someone, the plot has to happen because the protag got involved, it’s like the world itself is
frozen until the protag moves to a different town and then maybe something will happen in the past one to make you revisit. (This isn’t even a pokemon centric problem but when you
play other RPGs it becomes more noticeable.) I think this really got to me when I played Alola in spite of the fact it tries to break this convention by using Lillie as a protag proxy.
The game’s plot also really wants you to like Lillie and if you don’t like Lillie like I did initially you end up in Alola in the postgame trying to explore the towns and cities
and realizing you recall absolutely none of them outside of just following around plot NPCs. I admit that I put Nebby into a box when I was 15 playing SUMO.
(SUMO will soon be turning a decade old and people who played it when they were kids are almost teens or adults now….scary… I still think they’re recent but now we’re 2 gens past it….)
I just didn’t like initially playing the game and going “man, the climax of the game is Lillie yelling at her mom while my character stands vacantly in a corner” but like.
It’s fine now. It’s a good plot, Lillie’s a good character, the execution is what kills me.
The funny part about this plot malarkey griping is that basically my personal peak for a pokemon plot that is in a pokemon game isn’t something like mystery dungeon explorers because I never played
it, but Rangers 2 Shadows of Almia which is basically impossible to replay because of the lack of a stylus and my hand dexterity and emulation would be with a mouse only plus
I left the games behind in a hair salon because of an embarrassing moment I had in public where I lacked any kind of social awareness that making circles on my DS looked incredibly stupid.
You need to have a way to balance goofiness, absurdity, and seriousness, and that game does effectively do that within the constraints of still being a Pokemon game where the pokemon
are important (only thing I could knock it for is that the pokemon don’t have much in terms of personality minus the partner pokemon because they’re mostly wild pokemon and there’s
no chance to do good team bonding). Rangers 3 executes this better with ukulele Pichu being the only partner pokemon instead of being able to swap out pokemon on the farm but it’s
kinda dumber in plot with the evil immortal old people deciding to lift a giant sky laser fortress out of the sky to destroy an entire island. (I would wish for a rangers 4 but the mankey paw would curl and it would be an F2P Gacha game that dies like rumble rush did.)
For some reason Pokémon villains from like gen 6-8* were all like rich philantrophists who wanted what was best for their own reasons and were entirely illogical
within the basis of reality. Pokémon has a really bad case of doing telling and not much showing. Probably a demographic issue. (The target audience is children after all…)
What about gen 9? Haven’t played it, only know some plot bits based on piecing things together and the story seems to be about “not judging books by their cover” based on team
star being bullying victims that look like bullies to the outside world, arven’s parents, ogerpon in the DLC, and the paradox pokemon in general being weird plot wise. And time
travel, maybe. I kinda did not care to watch a playthrough, nothing pokemon wise has given me desire to buy anything past gen 7. (I only bought sword this year out of impulsive morbid curiosity.)
Kalos attempts to go “We have a resource crisis” and meanwhile the solution Lysandere had in mind was “kill everyone except my select group (and even then it’s hard to tell if this was legit or if he was gonna kill the group too based on what Pokespe said)” and Rose’s was “well, I can’t wait for Leon’s championship thing to be over, so I’m gonna kickstart the apocalypse because I want to be the one to solve the problem!” Based on what little I know of gen 8’s plot.
*Lusamine is debatable since her reasoning is radically different between og sun moon and ultra likely because of some higher up being like “wait I don’t think we can have a villain metaphorically be about a grieving mother about her husband being presumed dead turning to obsessing over a magic space jellyfish with neurotoxins being like a drug allegory and her children being like sort of abused and runaways because of that but we can keep in some of the cutscenes where she’s obsessing over the jellyfish but last minute change it to be about fighting necrozma” but the reasoning still stands.
Archie and Maxie were extreme environmentalists. Whatever, game never says if they’re rich or not. Was Cyrus a nihilist? Was he truly apathetic or merely pretending to be? Was making a new universe truly his end goal? Is he the rotom guy? Idk. I can’t get a good reading on that guy. Ghestis was like an American cultist preacher who I could see being on a radio or a large tv show making his own anti pokeball religion but he started local and never got to reach his full heights with his propped up chosen one before losing to the guy he set up to lose before turning into a terrorist. Sad. (Said with full sarcasm.)
This is probably why Giovanni is one of the easiest Pokémon villains to write for and conceptualize because his motivation is “I want power and I am going to exploit everything and anything to do so including the magical animal creatures we live with.” He’s a real kind of guy.
He can be as vile or manipulative or maybe even mentor like as the writers want because he’s the kind of guy that could reasonably exist and be translated between localizations because I’m pretty sure Giovanni was meant to be a typical yakuza gang type villain and basically got retranslated as an Italian mafia type a la Godfather. He was a man playing both sides as absent gym leader and maybe he was even liked in viridian and then vanished someday and nobody knew why. Rainbow Rocket does kind of take this to comedic levels where it’s like “wow, in a world without the protagonists all the villains get their legendaries and are super powerful” but they still get their asses handed to them by a bunch of children and like 3 adults so I guess it evens out.
Now here I am, writing Giovanni manifesto.
Guzma is also like a real ass guy underneath the surface because he’s a man who didn’t match up to the traditional values of alola and was rejected because of it like I can see that man as well . He’s not that difficult to understand.
“Give me 200 dollars. I’m evil. I want power.” Is a pretty easy way to go for gen 1 because the plot isn’t the big thing, it’s incorporated into the journey rather than being a roadblock. Meanwhile with Lysandere I go… “idk…he’s French( deragatory). He wants to kill everyone because of an unseen resource problem. Outside of Lumiose having a single street urchin for the most part Kalos is as utopic as the rest of the Pokémon world as said in an interview where most people are chilling with their Pokémon.”
I’m sure someone out there has a far better piece of analyzing the plot of Kalos but for me I went like “that felt like a puddle of water.”
Like they try splashing a plot on you going “it’s deep?” The game plots don’t really truly have many deep moments outside of select parts
until later gens because for the most part until gen 3 the plots are non intrusive where it’s like “go do this thing now” you find the thing
and do it because it’s not like you’re directed. Then with gen 3 the legendary has to be incorporated into the plot rather than being “hey,
check this out!” And then some roaming legend shows up. Gen 4 onwards you will run into the box legend, people will comment if you run away
instead of catching it, it’s basically expected that you as a player will use it.
Mood: jkklajfejsjf
Quite frankly, speed up is one of those things where it’s either loved or hated: Using it definitely warps perception of how long a Pokémon game is supposed to take and the experience as a whole where it’s an RPG, you’re supposed to take it slow… but other RPGs have speed up in their battles and even auto battle. Real hardware doesn’t have this debate because there’s only one speed, and it’s the default. The only solution there is to turn off animations. With speed up in Pokémon, though, what’s the end goal? Just the battles? I doubt the story’s the main appeal at that point, I know many people who mash A. Rare candies are a similar problem but I feel like they’ve been completely changed public perception wise over time. Professional nuzlockers (what a term) pretty much have the level cap by default and use the rare candies to not do grinding. Some hacks have this by default, other hacks will literally reset your game and freeze it if you input the code. Grinding isn’t really a problem if the hacks been properly level balanced but if it’s not…Again, sometimes it’s fun to overlevel and completely trivialize the challenge of battles! But there’s a difference between action replay, speeding up, and playing with animations off.
I’m not dictating the way anyone should play, because that’s not my end goal. I’m just posting my thoughts on it.On speed up, grinding, and rare candies. Opinion.
I’ve used it personally a few times myself, but only for games I’m not taking as seriously or when I’m stuck in a battle where things are tedious, but that’s legitimately only the case when I’m playing something like a Kaizo hack. If it’s story driven, I try not to use it, tempting as it is. I can also blame my attention span on being constantly pulled between IRL, other stresses, and other things and sometimes I have Pokémon games as a mindless task in the BG instead of my full attention and that’s where I can see a good excuse for speed up. Like if I keep losing a battle over and over I might be tempted to just push the button to lose faster.
EDIT: Additional add on I forgot to mention: The Doduo and Dodrio Tower options in pokemon stadium 2 that double and triple the speed of all the gameboy pokemon games
(minus crystal). Of course, it’s an unlockable requirement but it’s interesting to consider.
Mood: jkklajfejsjf
Leafgreen might’ve been my first purchased Pokémon game as a child (emerald was a hand me down from my cousin), but I’ve always held a soft spot for the original gen 1 games. There’s a bit of a theming thing in gen 1 material that I feel like gets lost in later remakes that sort of clean it up—that is, the Kanto region’s rampant industrialization issue that was based on the direct childhood of the creator leading to gen 1 feeling more “urban city fantasy”. Of course, later gens have cities within them and are city like, but there’s something about Kanto’s that feel… distinct? (You know, this entire thing could just be me with the nostalgia blinders on again.) As an aside, it’s a plot point in early Pokespe where pallet town is the only place that doesn’t have the issue of modern pollution causing it to be a safe place for pokemon and people and the reason lance is so pissed off in the Yellow arc is because people are causing problems for Pokémon because of all the abandoned expanding projects leading to more pollution. The contrast of how city like kanto is can be felt more in gen 2 where some of the cities in Johto are more traditional and natural wood types in comparison to kanto’s buildings. I won’t go too in depth into gen 2’s Kanto because of the nature of how kanto managed to fit onto the cartridge in the first place (originally it was a single town and compressed in order to fit, but there’s also the factor that I’m not playing gen 2 right now and just going off my memory. Maybe I’ll get Crystal Legacy next on my backlog list?). There is also the factor that Kanto is literally just Kanto, Japan, which is something that I’ve probably neglected to think about but like. I get it, kinda. A few years ago there was this grassy field in my town that’s been completely flattened for new apartments and I never noticed it because I was going on through different stages of my life. I used to play in that field.I’ve been continuing my playthrough of Yellow Legacy and Gen. 1 is kinda weird. Not in terms of like, bugs and glitches, but how different it feels franchise wise. Opinion piece.
Commonplace animals being the most encountered Pokémon early because those are the ones that can survive the best with humans, the amount of cut down tree sprites, whatever those barrel things even are… seriously, I have no clue what those are. The factor of so many poison types plus how many Pokémon can learn toxic was potential environmental storytelling because of how many building areas and cities there are— fishing up Grimer in Celadon City as a rare encounter despite how pretty the city looks. Then something like team rocket existing at all— illegal Pokémon trafficking, the amount of crime they cause, Giovanni in general playing both sides by being the legal but absent gym leader and leader of a crime ring. Whatever war Lt. surge participated in that the series quietly drops— alongside every other real world reference too for that matter. (Raichu electrocuting Indian elephants became Copperjah in a later gen and most dex entries in FRLG were only retained with real world info like Ponyta jumping the Eiffel Tower because they were direct copies of the RBGY entries.)
Even a place like the safari zone could be a potential point of “kinda weird you can go into an area that’s called a preserve for rare Pokémon just by paying and they limit your steps— possibly so people can’t snoop around and find where those rare Pokémon came from?” Of course, that last one is just me misremembering stuff and being cynical. But if we’re talking about real weird cynicism, look no further than the early anime novel as depicted by Takeshi Shudo, former director of the anime until Advanced Generation. 10 year olds were considered as legal adults, most pokemon trainers suffered from burnout and unemployment, and the gym system would kick you out if you lost 3 battles in a row. His planned finale was for the pokemon to rebel against humans with Pikachu as the leader. It’s certainly fascinating in a kind of “what?” Way.
I’ve linked a translation of the novel. It doesn’t cover the rebellion thing at all though, you could look into Dr. Lava’s content since he goes more in depth into Shudo’s role.
Pokemon the Novel
Then this thought of mine continues further on in gen 3 Hoenn where there’s a lot more natural things you have to go through— the towns like fortree and pacildflog being more natural— and the only city I can think of that’s actually city like and has a skyscraper is the one that literally has the hoenn equivalent of sliph co in it. (I never recall the name but is it like…Devon? Stone?) There’s also new mauville in emerald being the exception to that though as the power plant equivalent. And uhhh… whatever ORAS did to mauville, I think the entire thing is a building now? I don’t recall ORAS well, it was years ago. If I recall this, I’ll consider a follow up with later gens and see if my opinion changed.
As a side update: We can’t forget about Team Rocket creating bioweapons and playing God with Mewtwo. The best way to describe it is that the legendaries of johto are revered creatures who have resurrection powers and the other hid away because of their power and the one in the kanto postgame was depicted as a feral beast. (Anime one notwithstanding.)
Mood: jkklajfejsjf
My first foray into the manga universe might’ve been a best of yellow manga and an immediate reading of the RGB arc, but there’s many that I’ve pivoted to and read in the years as a Pokémon fan. I’ve always enjoyed the versatility of the franchise allowing for all sorts of different kinds of readings and interpretations as seen by the many authors takes and glimpses of their interpretation of the pokemon world, even if some are hit or miss. In fact, outside of early spe my favorite pokemon manga is diamond and pearl adventure. I like seeing the different directions of the world as provided by things like the animated shorts, OVAs, or the anime episodes whenever I saw them as a kid. I think Pokemon should continue to be a franchise that covers all sorts of stories and genres and aspects should be treated as pillars which is the reason why I will continue to refer to manga as supplementary material that expands upon the world and games.
Subtracting the popularity part, Pokespe also eclipses the rest of the manga in terms of length— a good majority of the ones I’ve read over years have only had 2 volumes maximum on average. Of course there’s exceptions (try adventure comes to mind) but a lot of the mangas can’t be as long running because they’re normally made in mind to only promote one game and trying to stay current with the game dev cycle would be a huge game of catch up — the BW2 arc in Pokespe took 7 years to complete because of how many games came out during that time frame that needed to be prioritized. I graduated high school years ago and the BW2 arc was still not finished in that time frame, which is crazy, because the arc is only 24 chapters in total. Sure, we can get more manga that cover and promote the game of choice, but something as long running as Spe or Pocket Monsters (both almost 30 years) probably won’t ever happen again due to the cyclical nature of the game development. The last but most important problem is that the manga that aren’t well known also are hard to find unless you really look and then normally aren’t translated (to English, at least). The further you look into the manga list on spots like bulbapedia the less there are that have info on them. Something that ran for 20+ years like pocket monsters (the corocoro Clefairy manga) isn’t going to get anything new or a full translation because well, it’s incredibly weird to begin with (literal toilet humor jokes) but it went all the way up to Galar and even got an anime reference (that one movie that Ash and Gary watched as children in the gen 3 anime). Some are completely gone like the sequel to phantom Pokémon 7 because it was in a magazine and never got manga format. It took years for something like Zensho (the true story) to get a full translation and that was only one volume. Even something that did have an English localization, magical Pokémon journey/ Pipipi Adventure, is barely anywhere to be found online with full scanalations of what was there. I found an internet archive copy of some volumes, but they’re all login only. And I suppose there’s some discord out there that talks about these but I’m burnt out on discord in general. Plus the only other person I knew who read pokemon manga on discord was a power level guy so me wanting to talk about like, characters and story and themes went nowhere.Today’s feature is me writing about Pokemon manga. Opinion piece.
But uh… there’s kind of a limit on discussing manga, a bit? Best you get in English on big sites is mentioning Pokespe/adventures which is referred to as “the manga” despite the fact that Viz has published other manga like Diamond and Pearl Adventure, Ginji’s rescue team, and even a bunch of ash tie ins and his movie adaption mangas (which is a different story to tell). It’s big enough to the point that trying to look up more unknown stuff just brings up Pokespe. Smaller sites talk about older manga but problem is those forum spots are mostly dead—no necroposting please.
But there’s still a few problems I have outside of that, like namely that the manga that is mostly well known is gatekept by out
of context panels to the point that it’s almost the only discussion. Even I myself have fallen into the hole of “what’s the darkest moment no one talks about in Pokespe ”
which was then proceeded to be used as bait for a joke on Twitter. Yes, I know that it’s a bit jarring to see some panels in Pokespe when most of the pokemon franchise
is family friendly barring maybe like, some scenes of implications. But I watched DBZ as a child which aired on TV and remembered thinking about Pokespe,
“I need to read more of this, it’s cool!” when I first finished the book when I saw it in middle school all those years ago. Pokespe isn’t even labeled as shonen
in its home country but instead has been labeled as kodomo (children’s) manga for the entirety of its run. In an even more bizarre contradiction the most popular
of the manga is also niche and the furthest I’ve ever seen people normally go is through just the RGB arc which again adds to the cyclical problem.
Some people on the YouTube sphere have tried to change this public opinion with their videos but it can’t really be changed if more popular channels
continue to run with the same old gag of no context panels (minus Dengeki/Electric Tale which I can understand why because the goon energy in that one by the artist is insane.).
To keep this light though, I’d like to link to the internet archive version of jb2448 alongside this neocities page I found which has been useful for seeing which manga are still around.
Pokemon Manga on Neocities
Archive of JB2448
Mood: jkklajfejsjf
In a TCG book titled “Pokémon Card Strategies for Adults” Bill’s JP name is labeled as the author, where it then described that he was born in pallet town and then studied with Oak on Cinnabar island. The last name is different (Sonezaki compared to Kido), but then there’s also Dengeki Pikachu/ Electric Tale where he is in fact working with oak. (That one is all over the place though with it’s incredibly questionable …everything.) He’s a graduate of a JP magazine exclusive tie in fictional university. Celadon University was referenced in both the anime and Pokespe while also having a gift magikarp with dragon rage given out.
The infamous poliwhirl Fearow Pokespe panel is because it tried to eat Bill while he was turned into a ratatta. He also gets his house broken into during the yellow arc by Blue (girl) plus he has one of my favorite moments in GSC when he gets the teleporter working and all the friendly characters send in all their Pokémon to stop Lugia and ho-oh. In How I became a Pokémon card he’s one of the featured characters in a chapter, befriending a dratini in a time period where people were afraid of Pokémon.(As an aside, I wish more people could pick up and translate Pokewake. Please.)Today’s feature is on Bill, featuring reposted bits from my twitter thread on Yellow Legacy plus extra info I recalled.
Yellow legacy made me think about bill again and how he’s one of my favorite bits about gen 1 eccentricities and this extends to supplementary material and merchandise as well.
This is a man who works in the IT department for computer maintenance with digitized monsters and has a huge massive amount of PCs for them. It’s so funny that all the people in the Cerulean center were seething about him. Somehow the rival missed the entire teleportation incident plus Bill has been multiple different Pokémon depending on the game picked and it’s brought up in Alola as a thing. He has had both a British and southern accent because of his Kansai dialect. He has a little :3 smile. He has a fan club in johto where they reveal that he’s lactose intolerant.
I think he should be in masters. Leaf already mentioned him once.
Date: IDK
Mood: jkklajfejsjf
(I wrote this one when I was sleep deprived, cohost repost.)
Somethinh I like about Pokémon as a franchise is that there’s something for everyone in all sorts of different aspects that’s not just the games
You want to see cute slice of life stuff, there’s concierge
You want cool shonen stuff, there’s
pokespe and Diamond pearl adventure and all sorts of other mangas
You want to do math, there’s competitive
You want to be a Pokémon, there’s mystery dungeon
You want to break your hand, there’s ranger
Lots of anime episodes and movies and spin-offs that might feature one of your favorites (sorry porygon)
I just like that. It’s not like something where it’s completely homogenized
Okay, I really meed to go to bed, the keys are getting blurry agajn.
See, it’s the inherent uniqueness of the franchise that makes me enjoy it because really, you can pick any Pokémon and it’ll be someone’s favorite or they’ll have some kind of story attached to it. There’s so much you can do with Pokémon and it’s various pieces of material in all aspects so it really can potentially be a franchise for everyone in like. The creative aspect way. Not like. The existential capitalist dread way. That’s still there though.
Gamefreak’s got a few earlier works that it likes to reference in pokemon sometimes like Pulseman's Neo Tokyo Theme being referenced in Barry's theme and the SS Anne being named after the computer Pulseman was born on (there's a lot more Pulseman references like Rotom but I want to look into the game and see if I can find them before checking wikis). The Mario and Wario game that's in copycat's house is a game that GF developed. In the Gen 3 prototypes there's a sprite of a character from Mendel Palace/Quinty in the data. There's also a potential mother/earthbound connection in the fact that Ape Inc eventually became creatures Inc that developed pokemon. It's neat spotting some of these or learning about them afterwards. Harmoknight is talked about in a pokemon center in XY. Maybe the next game will reference Drill Dozer or Pocket Card Jockey?
Mood: jkklajfejsjf
Let's go, weird hacks!
There's something to be said for the way pokemon hacks have developed and how people tend to gravitate towards the best ones, meaning that a lot tend to end up being left in the dust. The thing is, you don't really appreciate the best ones until you come across those that are absurd in their values and make you, the player, question what the dev was doing or intended to do. The game in question? Pokemon Cintrine.
So buried in this seemingly unfinished demo is a complete pokemon game… in the most surreal way possible. Screenshots don’t match the total bewilderment I found in that a good amount of the game was functional, but the player just had to go out of their way with other tools to make it work in a manageable way. It’s kind of like, completely unfinished ROMs are their own mysterious thing because it’s easy to see where the author’s intents were going but due to either a lack of interest or cancellation it’s never finished and then it’s up to people like me to explore what remains of it and see how it could’ve gone. I basically watched a youtuber do the exact same steps I did with a different hack and my thoughts are if it’s like, entirely abandoned and unpolished then I think it’s fine to just go ham with breaking the entire thing down. I had fun doing that just because of the genuine curiosity. Pokemon kinda is a rabbit hole of its own in varying bursts of quality, original ideas, and it's ripe for potential. Even if it is uh. From an incredibly unfinished hack. (What I was thinking of was the term kusoge, translated as uh. crap game. I don't think the game is crap, but obviously it's not on the same level as more polished ones. I had to basically activate the game shark for it.)
Tl;dr, to appreciate good pokemon hacks you have to play through weird pokemon hacks.
