Picking Up Pokemon Journal

June 24, 2024

So I’ve been back to casually playing magikarp jump and I’m around 4 leagues in but wondered what the endgame was for this game since there’s 8 leagues. As it turns out, the final jump match is against Red! And it requires getting up to around 100-200 generations of Magikarp and up to around rank 80-90. I’m only on rank 25. That’s going to take quite a bit.

During this little thing, I’ve found out some info.

There’s 425 free Diamonds from achievements Found out there’s a Ghost girl event by screwing around with the TV and I Accidentally got one of the karps eaten at the actual pond because a Pidgeotto swooped down.

So here's the Magikarp jump strat I’m currently using. do training sessions, ignore any chance games that could lose your karp when not training, go to league, since getting coins happens regardless whether you win or lose and you get events that could reward you that's it the real goal is getting the level up enough to retire after the league because the maxed out magikarp add to the motivation bonus which lets you level up a karp faster.

i have meowth for coins, pikachu and litten for JP, and Piplup to give me an extra training point I checked reddit and the strat was popplio for sunken treasure but sunken treasure is RNG. Getting everything up to level 25 nets support candies so once you get berries up to 25 stop or just invest everything into only 2 berries as to not dilute the pool Then since most training is RNG on what you get focus on leveling up everything to 25 and then maybe the higher JP ones at a bigger number

June 19, 2024

Still re-editing the hell out of that Pokémon hall of fame post as I search through my dead tumblr and alive pillowfort for possible dates that I missed. Wait, I’m dumb, I could just find the physical games again and just look at when the clear dates were if I still have the saves on them. Oops. I’ll get to that when I can, hopefully soon.
Update: the Pokémon Diamond cartridge is uh. Freezing my 3DS. I don’t think I’ll be able to verify it at all outside of my memory. Update 2: Why doesn’t alola let you see the exact date of when you cleared the game? I had to go to this random old guy who didn’t help and only said the clear party and the ribbons aren’t dated so I had to check when I caught Tapu Koko because that’s when the credits rolled. Also, I beat AS in like almost a week, must’ve been playing like a fiend when it came out….

I've been goofing around and playing a translated copy of Pokemon Green and it's kind of fascinating how much I just assume was in the OG was actually an FRLG addition. What do you mean, Mankey's not in an early route? Anyways, it's kinda accidentally turned into a Squirtle Solo Route because I just start mashing A whenever it's not a pokemon I want. I'm trying to do a "catch em all" thing. Not "train em all."

June 10, 2024

It’s kind of fucked up thinking that the gen 3 games are still recent only to realize that the reason is because people still use them for rom hacks and that the base games are 20 years old at this point. My memories of leafgreen as a child might as well have been supplanted by every hack I’ve played at this point and the fact we’re on gen 9 is something that does not register in my brain. It’s basically the same thing that happened to me when I saw fanart of the XY cast with the rest of the protagonists only to see the release date of that artwork was a decade ago.

Personal Semi Related Pokemon Thoughts

I’m not a genwunner in the slightest in spite of what I say my favorite gen is, it just happens to be that a lot of my early pokemon life was based on gen 1 stuff because that’s all we had in our house minus whatever came on the TV and the copies of GBA/ DS games I had (literally I had gen 3-5, everything but Johto).

My love for johto is a different story that I’ll get into much later. My sibling was the one who had experienced some of the Pokemania and most of the stuff I had was hand me downs from them— VHS tapes of the Indigo League, the First Movie which I rewinded and replayed and changed the color hues until the tape spat out, some Orange island tapes… Then I discovered the first emulators on my iPhone back when GBA4Ios wasn’t called delta and I really got sucked into a rabbit hole. Like I’m talking about using emuparadise and coolroms to play games I haven’t seen in years now. I also had a best of yellow copy I’d always check out from my school library and then I eventually started saving up money to either buy copies from the book fair or just read the copies there for free (which is where my gen 2 adoration started between the GSC arc and the movies of that generation). Feels like the only Kanto thing I haven’t really revisited in a while is Indigo league and that’s because I know if I start watching it while I’m still trying to watch XY I’m just gonna drop XY and never get to Z. The vibes are basically two different shows.

i have like secondhand pokemania because my cousin was into it and my sibling like grazed around it with merchandise and VHS tapes and movies most of our 2000s stuff was actually stuff from the 90s

when I was a child I was a little shit, I remember one time my parents had guests over and they hogged the TV and giratina and the sky warrior was supposed to be airing so you know what i did i left the house and i went to my neighbors house to watch the movie weird how i basically lived through all those different cartoon and TV eras and now they're all vaulted onto various streaming services disney movie marathons probably don't exist anymore huh does horizons even AIR on TV or is it straight to netflix

Ideas from Cohost Sometime in Late May 2024

Mysterious things of the Pokémon canon that keep me up: Overthinking whatever’s going on between Leaf, Blue (Pokespe), and Green (LGPE). Clearly all based off unused girl but aside from Blue wearing Leaf’s outfit in spe there is zero confirmation on if there’s just… two identical girls? Name change? Personally I just go with them being separate girls. One’s got a blastoise, other’s got a venusaur, they’ve got entirely different friend groups, one’s a more nice peppy girl and the other has extreme chaos energy (seriously, what other character throws poke balls at the player to try “catching them.”) They can coexist.

I've picked up Hex Maniac Advance as a side thing to try out various fangame making tools (also why I picked up essentials and PSDK). I was excited to find out there's a sprite ripping feature but the first thing I got was something that's already in the official games. Gotta say, it’s really useful for me to have retained some knowledge from High School with the one language they pushed us into learning but I need to work on actually retaining it and I have no clue where I’d start aside from my brain saying “just play games in different languages and write down translations for everything” and the other part of my brain saying “well, what if you lose the notes, then what?” Suppose this is one of those things I just need to throw myself into doing on an impulse like what I’m doing with the rom hack tutorials. I need to relearn Spanish and learn French, the language barrier will not stop me.

What happened to humans in mystery dungeon anyways, RT had there be like abandoned labs and structures. Did they go to space? There’s clearly some existence because of Explorers bad future?

So, Pokémon masters was a nice gacha distraction (I say, not having used either of my accounts in months.) Unfortunately for me all my thoughts in regards to a Pokémon gacha game are just “I need the weirdest picks and deep cuts possible, I want to see Green (rival) with his stadium picks where he has stuff like Dodrio and Milktank on him. I want them to put in rangers characters and Hayley from my Pokémon ranch and the magikarp jump kid. Put in the battle revolution guys and people from the mangas.” And I know none of that is possible because it would be the world’s largest copyright clusterfuck.

Thinking about Pokemon contests for a moment since I'm reading through RS. The system's surprisingly in depth when considering the berry gardening, the pokeblock and poffin cooking system, the accessorizing aspect for a pokemon, the moves and audience appeals, plus all the different ranks... Outside of the anime which made it a focus for some of the companions it would be neat to see a spinoff or fangame focused just on contests, I think it would be interesting.

Summer of Pokespe Readings (2024)

The funniest out of context things I can think of in between the arcs is the concept of Red and Deoxys being brothers and /or Red is a father and Deoxys is the son and the time there was a villain wearing super armor and then Gold spent legitimate money to make an exact fake of the costume and wear it at the same time as the villain.

RS Arc (Finished June) I like early RS but not late RS as much. Kinda apprecaiate that it finally gives a depiction of the super legendaries as super legendaries that are capable of causing disasters but it’s like an entire volume’s worth of nothing but that. Entire panel spreads dedicated to them is very impressive. Somehow it managed to pull off emerald’s duel legendary plot before emerald happened and then Ruby and Sapphire started wearing their emerald outfits too so I guess Kusaka lucked out on writing that or he was told ahead of time that would be a thing. There’s a lot of different moving parts like the aqua (sub leaders of sea scheme) and magma admins (with their memory flame thing) both battling against the 3 gym leaders and 3 other gym leaders and then Steven also brought in the elite four, so there’s a lot being added within a single volume with a lot of buildup that somehow makes these two volumes feel slow. The whole mirage island training arc segment in the midst of the super crisis is probably what does it for me because it’s not the hyperbolic time chamber get back out there Steven needs your help. Plus they lost the bet because of the time technicality. So there’s a bit about the arc that I kinda don’t like so far that I feel like is pretty much the primary reason that people like this arc and it’s kind of hard to describe outside of me being like “I wish Sapphire was less of a static character and that the two had more time to interact before the entire reigon literally ended.” I feel like a problem is that Ruby has more dynamic character development and has a parallel with Courtney/Marge (I was reading the Chaung Yi translations) with being a contest goer whereas Sapphire does not have anyone in Aqua to bounce off of. I’ve likely said this all before, haven’t I… And it’s totally weird because I haven’t had this issue with any other arc’s characters! Like the RGBY cast, the GSC cast, both of them together, the DPP cast, the BW cast is probably the best one because they basically had a redux of this arc minus the traumatic backstory , the XY cast I especially believe is ride or die.

(A few seperate posts from Cohost that weren't part of this review) The ORAS versions of Archie and Maxie effectively overtaking their GBA counterparts has given me this sort of strange effect upon seeing Pokespe’s Maxie that lives in a cave and “actual legitimate businessman Japanese White Archie.”

I really do like the parts of Pokespe where they take some NPCs and elevate them to a more important role even if it’s for a brief moment (like the Super Nerd and Jr that were in the yellow arc)— it makes the world feel connected and lived in when they make cameos later on. Gabby and Ty were always an interesting bit of RSE moving around and interviewing the player for the TV cameos— the first games to do that feature in the series! (Of course, now I’m talking a bit ahead of the arc but the TV aspect is an important plot point for later on and now since it’s what allowed Norman to locate Ruby to begin with.)

I like the bit regarding the gym leaders debating on which team is in the right because of how much sides have been pushed by both of them; sure, Aqua might’ve turned off Mt. Chimney and caused a town to have a crisis but they’ve also been legitimately concerned for the environment and helping out Roxanne and the professor while meanwhile Magma’s tried to get that volcano back to normal helping Flannery . Make no mistake, they’re both criminal groups and have tried to off multiple people and Norman’s reason for not taking a side and ditching in relation to the possible threat of reprimanding from the association is due to his son being directly traumatized because of the Pokemon association. This reread has actually made me think way more when I actually recall the recontextualized bits from my memories.

Yes, I understand that a fundamental part of the narrative protag split before the weather Crisis is Sapphire rejecting the lifestyle Ruby has where he isn’t clearly using the best of his ability because they are both traumatized by the same incident and unaware of it: why did it have to be the caveman outfit again though that is so not weather appropriate when you’re facing a tsunami. Ruby also lashing out similarly and externally on his Feebas sucks but he’s done this before where instead of facing the problem he ran away and shoved it under the contests and it was noted. Now that things are blatantly worse he can’t pretend to be as ignorant. But at the same time now that Ruby’s actually locking in it feels kinda weird that there was entire offscreen segment of Sapphire training? I’m unsure how to feel about Sapphire at this point if you can tell by how many of my posts have been just on Ruby. Course I know what her deal is but despite her being in the lead of the bet and the 2nd protag and rival to Ruby it feels like she’s been around less. I guess what I’m trying to say is I can read through all of RS and be like… “eh, I dunno… I mean, I can kind of see it working…” and then when I get to the confession I shrug and go “that’s nice.” I'm not a franticshipper but I can see how it could work. There’s a lot I could say about Ruby and his dad, and you know, the Celebi thing, and how some people died and that’s very dark but it literally gets wiped out of existence. I don’t know …the arc was alright. Some good, some bad. It kinda felt like this was like the super duper ruby sapphire emerald chapter and then they have a battle frontier chapter after it. Doesn’t help that they spend a bunch of time with Wally and even have him set up as the next dex holder (which was changed for releases) only for Emerald to be the new guy but I’m over that. I feel like this one having all of these concepts like the Rayquaza and Salamance and green jewel connection was a good thing but… Idk. It’s also kinda retroactively funny how much this arc caused trouble for the ORAS arc because they outright just kill Archie and Maxie twice.

FRLG Arc (Finished June) At this rate I'm really going to reread all of Spe within a year. I just copy pasted this from my notes with zero cleanup.

The FRLG reread I did in between the RS arc was kinda funny because I was like "okay I'll only read 1 chapter" and then I read the entire thing There's a lot to be said about the way Spe utilized the remake content as the revisit for character development and plot before they were children in RGBY and now they're teens. all the PC guys being here is neat, like I said, earlier arcs were good with cameo usage.

Like how the Sevii islands are the focus and Deoxys because of the birth island thing. three new rocket generals even if Sird was originally a TCG card however I could not stop seeing the three beasts without thinking "BEAST MODE BABY" because my brain has some quirks I guess. the confirmation on Silver being giovanni's son that was Kusaka originally taking an insane lucky guess. also really funny how Lorelei showed up and Green went "weren't you actively trying to kill everyone" and she did not acknowledge that. Girl went home with zero repercussions. only thing I don't think I liked was Blue's parents (even in my OG reading). but that's because they are more or less plot motivation because the girl just wants a normal life and can't have that because of being a dex holder. It's kinda interesting to see how it's like, Red doesn't have a good reason to fight because his family members are just his pokemon, which I mentioned before in an earlier post. really funny to think that he is technically a brother to an alien.

(The previous post) Pokespe Red’s arc in FRLG is such an interesting way to take a character who for the most part was a hero protagonist and turn it on its head by pointing out that “yeah, it kind of is weird that he has no parents in the picture at all (that got taken hostage) or family to protect and only had Poliwag and it’s a plot factor” and “outside of being good at fighting, who is he as a person? Is it selfish for him to only be here for the sake of fighting? ”. It’s almost borderline deconstructing his character trope. An interview with Kusaka said that Red does have parents but they never bothered showing up to anything he ever did which sucks so badly because they were perfectly fine with ignoring their son at the tournament and also when he went missing for years and also every single time he got into a life threatening situation. I refuse to take that as canon to Spe.

dex holding is basically like being a sailor senshi since it means you're destined to get into world ending threats even though that's also like that in the games pokedex status is quite strange. it's seen as a status thing in spe because all the dex holders have a title and respective talent now in the games it's basically an app you can download on your phone so it should be accessible to everyone

we are probably never getting a BDSP/PLA follow up that deals with Sird which is kinda dissapointing because the concept of the bootleg pokedex was interesting and Sird kinda lives rent free in the minds of Spe readers like me. it does make me want to reevaluate my HGSS position though because like the way Gio and Silver's dynamic was in this one is like night and day with that one i guess it could be because giovanni was like. dying. Okay so up next I finish RS and then E and then I move onto other stuff, I was just supposed to reread RGB and I've already gone through 4 gens worth of Pokespe because I also read the XY arc.

Emerald Arc (Projecting to finish in July?)

Currently working on fixing up pieces of the site like a fiend, don't think I've been this locked in in months lmao. Having reposted everything now, did I seriously just make most of my posts during May and then dip afterwards? Lmao.

Since I'm working on article bits for readability I'm reminded that I had a whole time frame in March where I read a lot of pokemon manga, everything I could find on sites and a single fan comic that was about Ash being a world champion during XY.

I want to state my opinion on Pokespe is that I will defend the RBGYGSC arc and BW arc with my life but every other arc is on it's own. The first one is because it pretty much is like Pokespe before it turned into well, there's a reason people tend to mostly post just the stuff from later arcs to say "oooh it's so dark ahhhh". (Funniest phenomenon is that MATO, who pretty much made most cute artwork also drew the infamous Arbok panel (by the way, I will remind everyone of the fact it regenerated every chance I can.)) I don't really check in with later Pokespe arcs much because it's not as exciting, it's melodrama. And like, some characters are incapable of catching a break and I don't want to keep doing marathons of arcs just to see something like example: Silver's mental downspiral because every time he's not a tiny cameo the boy is just suffering from the sins of his father! I defend the BW arc because back when it was first releasing and translated people put it down for "not being close enough to the games." I like it for being different from the games! If everything was 1 to 1 it'd be boring as hell. However the BW2 follow up was so ass in my mind that it's kinda crazy one of my favorite and least favorite arcs are back to back.

In fact, since I brought it up, I probably should put down my current rankings here...

• Yellow
• Gold Silver Crystal
• Black and White/ Diamond Pearl Platinum
• Red Green Blue/ RS (1st Half)
• XY
• HGSS/ FRLG
• --- (this is where 7 would go)
• RS (2nd half, post confession)
• ---9
• ---10

Unranked: Sun and Moon, Sword and Shield I need to reread these: Emerald I don’t recall liking these ones: Black White 2, ORAS Currently ongoing: Scarlet and Violet On a rating of 1 to 10 with 1 being the best and 10 being “I would probably not read this one outside of a marathon.” Once I finish emerald I'll go for the full explanation.

Pokespe Arc Ranking Explanation/Breakdown:

My favorite arcs in Pokespe are the early gen 1-2 ones, then after is BW tied with DPP, then XY. I’m very open with saying that I might be biased towards liking the first 14 volumes more than later arcs because of how different the tone is in comparison to later arcs. It’s not to say that I’m not a fan of later arcs in Pokespe, it’s just one of those things where if I’m not engaged I tend to recall less of it more which is what happened with FRLG on my first read and then I never went for a reread and the emerald reading I just spedread so I could see the heroes no longer be statues and never properly paid attention to the new guy because I didn’t like him. The added drama kind of also is a turn off for me because while it was fine within the first few arcs it was applied to but it kinda becomes difficult to sit through and marathon when the protags are constantly going through something in nearly every arc, some of them can’t catch a break (Silver has it the worst and I need a follow up story for HGSS just to say that he’s doing okay.) Plus the whole thing with Sird never being followed up on in a satisfying way makes it a bit hard to go through FRLG+E knowing that she’s still out there somewhere during DPP. I like my pokemon stories to be more lighthearted and whimsical rather than being complete edge fests and despite the panels shown off, I can assure you that the BW arc is not edgy at all outside of those two moments and has my favorite protagonist duo in the form of the dreamers. I like DPP because it’s mostly a return to form with the comedy duo and the dawn equivalent being equally as goofy by playing their straight man. Even though I say all of that, I understand I’m a total hypocrite because one of my favorite arcs in Spe is the XY arc, which can best be described as a thriller with a bunch of moments people have posted as being edgy (the essentia Pinsir panel comes to mind.) It’s good to have a balance in mind and from what I recall some strike it well and some… do not. I feel like my memories of FRLG are far too muddy for me to give it a proper ranking. I always did like that the remakes led to a follow up story right until ORAS because ORAS had the problem of the villains both being dead so they uh… ORAS Spe did a lot of things. I don’t think I liked it very much.

I can’t exactly rate BW2 even though its a part of BW without being biased about the fact that it took 7 years to finish because of the development cycle of Pokemon games at the time and that the plot moved at lightning pace without ever giving any of the new main characters enough time to properly develop— like you’re telling me that Blake was experimented on as a child and he goes right back to working for the people who did the same things to him and I’m not supposed to see it as a parallel to Whitley being in a cult as a child and think “oh, she’s gonna break him out of the cult mentality somehow” but nope. He just says it. The others have no lasting impact on my mind despite me reading them recently but that’s because they have the problem of not lasting long enough to have an impact (Sun/Moon, Sword/Shield) or I still need to reread them. Last I finished was GSC and then I started RS so I’ll do a back to back of RS to FRLG to E and finish my marathon there.

Marathon Edit: I accidentally went ahead of the RS reading and finished FRLG in one go since it’s only 35ish chapters to go through and this is the part where in my head it’s kind of difficult to evaluate in comparison to the first arcs but this one is more “mature”. The nature of pokedex holders I feel like is the most defined by this chapter where it turns out that they just have these things happen to them. The thing that stuck out to me the most was seeing that one gag from Crystal return and realizing that these are all kids in this situation. I do wish Green’s parents had more screen time or dialogue because they basically were a plot motivation the entire way through. I’d rate RS higher based on the re-reading but the final chunk is slower than expected and I feel like Sapphire despite being the 2nd protag had way less character development in comparison to Ruby. Changed my mind, RS is one of the ones I feel like I’m never gonna make my mind on where it would go or not. It’s all over the place based on how I feel about the second lead and how the 2nd half is pretty much battle after battle after the confession and how in the end I feel like it’s just too Ruby centric for me to rate it even though I like this Ruby sometimes.

On speed up, grinding, and rare candies. Opinion.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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

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.

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.)

Today’s feature is me writing about Pokemon manga. Opinion piece.

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.

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.

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.

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.).

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.

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

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.

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 HIBPAC. Please.)

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.

I need to have a buffer between the Pre-Picking Up Pokemon Posts and the Misc Posts I made before hand and also a template I can use for entries so I don't forget.

I need to have something to fill out the filler space but sorry I'm gonna talk about Pokepasta Again

The HGSS fandom era of Pokemon is an era I wasn’t in but based on the remnants of what I’ve found in spots like deviantart and crawling old fics on FF.net there is a good chance that there was an overlap between the existence of FRLG Red as a separate iteration from Red, pixiv red, and various creepypastas in that time frame for the English fandom (because Lost Silver was created only a few months after English HGSS released) , which is fascinating to me now because pokemon is a decade away from that context and those kind of creations will never exist in that kind of overlapping vacuum again due to how the world has grown. Speaking on FRLG Red and Gen 1 Red it is incredible how for a few years people absolutely were in this divided battle on which design was better or not— it’s that exact argument that led to the creation of Pixiv Red. I like both designs for different reasons but it’s also simultaneously funny how there’s another distinct discourse on if Leaf and Green from LGPE are the same or different characters. Meanwhile, everyone accepts that Blue (rival) is the same guy throughout. What a fascinating design thing.

Okay, last Pokepasta related post for this post: there’s a lot of ones related to playable games that fall under “haunted cartridge territory” but are there more that have been made into actual playable games? I know that Easter egg and lost silver both had a few playable ones, same with Creepy Black (and that one’s incredibly accurate), one of the devs who made a combo Easter egg/lost silver game is developing a strangled red game but it’s been a while I checked on that. I think that’s all the ones I know that are playable aside from the abandoned loneliness one. That was a FRLG hack and I think it’s lost media now? There's Wrath of the Titan which was a modified HGSS and Platinum combo based on the screenshots on the Trollpasta Wiki. And there's False Red, which has a playable copy. pokemon is about living with nature, good winning over evil, and just adventuring and having fun. But sometimes I go "put that fella into a situation."

(I wrote this one when I was sleep deprived.)
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?

In pulvinar in eros ullamcorper sollicitudin. Phasellus imperdiet vulputate sapien nec eleifend.

Repost from Cohost. Today I had a dream that Pokémon masters added a Halloween unit that was super busted but everyone was mad because it was just Blue/Green/Rival just wearing a sheet with holes over his head to be a ghost. I think at one point he took the sheet off and wore it like a cloak for the rest of the dream. That’s all I remember. Not sure if that’s stranger than the last one.

The other Pokémon related dream I’ve had in a while was also kind of weird. I was playing through a copy of Red and whenever I’d beat the game I’d end up back at the start like in a loop. I kept getting weird hints too like there was someone else playing alongside me. It wasn’t anything scary, just more surreal. Maybe I’ll write something for it.

I've been collecting misc dreams from my discord DMs as well. Most of these dreams came out that I recall were during the smash ultimate DLC period and like… FGO’s LB6. I had a lot of dreams regarding Saber Caster. Honestly, a good majority were just me dreaming about smash bros and not much else exciting that I recalled or wrote down/DM’d to anyone.

I had one about this Tweet Trend called "Timmyposting" where people made wishes a la timmy turner. A time I thought I was already awake and working, a time I had a lobster roll, and the last one I dm'd about was this time me and Saber Caster tried to survive a zombie apocalypse. I think I recall the last one well because she casted a huge spell that saved the world, but she vanished after it.

I also had a recent dream on 6/19 but the way I summarized it was stupid so let me resummarize it. I was sleeping and I woke up because in the dream I was assassinated, it was 5 am when I woke up so I went back to sleep to kill the assassin.

Sometime in March I was concerned bout my shoulders and neck from playing so many games in the gamer position so I went into playing no pokemon games and instead I immediately got into reading Pokemon content including a bunch of manga outside of Special. This will probably be moved to the journal.

Sun and Moon: Horizon
There was a manga before horizons came out that was supposed to promote sun and moon and it’s just called Horizon which makes it probably hard to talk about. It’s a story about a guy and his dog (rockruff), barely focused on actual plot and just full of little OCs and whatever. Pokemon Horizon would’ve been one of those mid forgettable tie in manga to me if they did not add in the rival to be a little weirdo with powers and I am a big fan of Pokemon trainers who are little weirdos with powers, it’s why I enjoy Pokespe so much. It was made to promote sun and moon except for the fact that they obviously did not receive anything about the plot so they immediately made up their own thing. It's quite egregious with the designs of some characters but I've noticed that a lot of fanart for characters that are tan just defaults to white for some bizarre reason.

Diamond and Pearl Adventure (Volumes 1-6) Diamond and pearl adventure I had such a hard time finding this one again but it’s a read that goes for having high energy and making the Lucas equivalent a guy who lived like a pokemon like Tarzan and what not. Also has another rival that I like, but maybe that’s just because I like antagonistic rivals. It kind of sucks that the site I used to read manga has been dead forever. Where would I read the golden boys? I kinda need that one to incorporate into Stay Golden's plot... thing...

Dengeki Pikachu (Viz) a fascinating take on the anime adaption for that point in terms of lore and only lore, the it's actually insane how much the artist got away with because uh.. yikes... There's a lot of stuff that was obviously left out for the target audience but I think it's take on worldbuilding for the anime is interesting. There was some serious gooning going on in there though, the censors had to go all out and understandable, I wouldn’t want to see any of that either!

Pocket Monsters (Clefairy Manga), whatever I could find translated
so the funny thing about generation 1 supplementary material is that nobody had any clue how pokemon's direction would pivot so you end up with absolutely incredible things like how unhinged pocket monsters is or the sheer fact they hired a doujinshi artist for the electric tale of pikachu. i have never seen such incredibly off model pokemon in my life. they're fascinating. i understand why this was never localized either, there's no way they could properly censor this at all with all the ball jokes it would be impossible, it would never fly in any other country outside of the select ones it was brought to. "it's that jackass clefairy" is a line I definitely need to use at some point. The wildest thing about this is that this is the only manga that has ever been officially referenced because it shows up in the anime in the movie episode in the gen 3 anime. The other wild thing is that it gives Red and Green actual names and implies the color thing is a nickname. The other more weird thing is that it makes the Firered redesign of Red a separate character, a trend I haven't seen in nearly over a decade now! Kind of fascinating how there was one period where it was Fire, Leaf, and Green/Blue was the exact same except for the internal data calling him Terry and the only one who managed to keep their name out of that whole thing was Leaf.

zensho/ unabridged/ the complete story (completed)
it's a straightfoward adaption of Gen 1 RGB except it uses satoshi and shigeru as the main names and its weird to see a red like ash even if that's not the case and just a case of canon divergence not setting in. there has not been a manga adaption that hasn't had a non verbal red yet. total coincidence that this one is a canon backing source on what happened to the gen 1 rival's parents in which the theory was that they died. also has a sabrina that isn't completely evil and more of a pacifist which is never seen with her much in early adaptions (special had her be a rocket member, the anime... did a lot. ETOP had her try to fight black fog, that's the giant haunter or whatever.)

reading all of these back to back has given me the confidence that I can write anything I want in the pokemon universe and it'll make sense somehow

Varied Selection of Creepypastas (Pokemon Centric.)
Something in my brain obviously stopped working because I started reading a bunch of pokemon creepypastas. Most pulled from an old forum site, a few I listened to audio readings, and a few I went to the wikis for. There were many ideas but I could tell majority of them were written by teenagers. Turn off your brain while reading and you'll enjoy yourself more. The fundamentals of a Pokepasta without a fourth wall and as an in universe story interest me more than “ the cartridge bled at me and Red said my IP address out loud.” That’s never happened in the ones I selectively read though. Like the one with the meganium clone was good (by the standards) but that’s because the plot just revolved around the player not liking their weird creation and wanting to be rid of it much to its dismay.

I’ve noticed that there’s barely any popular ones past gen 2 and that feels like primarily because of lavender town and mt. Silver ending up as the most focused on weird locations solely because of a follow the leader mentality. Lost Silver was one of the big ones pre FNF boom. Actually, it still manages to be one of the big ones. But I feel like it's also become too separate from it's position almost a decade ago, like no one associates him with BEN or the other guys because they didn't reenter the culture because you know, creepypasta's are fundamentally weird. I understand why no one in the greater pokemon fandom likes them because they immediately go "oh that's gore, that's gore of my comfort character." Also no one's ever gonna match my exact level of being like "oh shit, there's themes" because everyone who is now involved is too busy drawing human characters, where are the monsters. Where is the existential tragedy and dread.

Missingno being the big bad in a few of these is also funny in hindsight because of the failed run where I tried to use it and it completely sucked so I rerolled the save. I wonder if that makes me one of those people that dodged a proverbial bullet. Wrath of the Titan was great* though, even though that one wasn’t even a creepypasta and read like a serial drama about a flying evil shiny snorlax. CloudMk3 you’ll live on forever in my mind. *By the standards of Pokemon Creepypasta but this one clipped into being a Pokémon story that was more of a commentary on shiny breeding .

In pulvinar in eros ullamcorper sollicitudin. Phasellus imperdiet vulputate sapien nec eleifend.

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.

Pokemon TV is officially sunsetting in March, so I went out of my way to check out what exactly remained on the app after all the logistics of watching the app slowly lose all momentum. There’s only one season of the original series, the sun and moon saga up to journeys, and all of the pokemon short series and specials that were released over the years. Why is it dying anyways? The reason Pokemon TV is dying is because the distribution rights for pokemon is a nightmare, like a good chunk is on Hulu, Netflix owns the OG and sun/moon plus horizons and amazon probably has a bunch of it too. Also apparently having a nonprofit thing and hosting it has cost a bit of money and add the previous problem and its like… why keep it? Plus it’s redundant because all of the shows that I watched on Pokemon TV that weren’t the ash anime are uploaded to YouTube and they’re all shorts minus origins and Hisui so there’s not really a reason to have an app dedicated to it if someone can just watch it on YouTube I recall years ago when Pokémon.com had a little avatar maker and a bunch of flash games and I used it for dream world but all that stuff is gone now alongside all the features TV used to have, like more seasons and movies.

So here’s the things I actually watched with Pokémon TV!

Generations: I think the disparate rate of male to female player character ratio was kinda unbalanced in this one, also, Cheryl’s Chansey is that of nightmares. Next.

Origins: it was a good OVA series though I could’ve done with less charizard screen time. also its pretty funny how the final episode was like “look, mega evolution, that’s pretty cool!” and the gimmick is dead. I like the Red in this series, he’s simply a guy. Makes me feel bad for Blue/Green in this iteration since he kind of took Ls the entire time.

Twilight wings: Is the pokemon world unionized? Are the flying bird taxis on the union? I dont have any opinion about galar since I haven’t played it and only know things secondhand so it’s quite difficult to gauge this without being like… hmmm. Im normally okay with overemphasis on a pokemon, but something about Leon’s charizard acts as my personal kryptonite. Likely because it’s his ace and not even a galarian pokemon . It’s beautifully animated but that really doesn’t change the fact that I have no real attachment to any of the region so I’m just here going it looks pretty nice and having no emotions about the trainer cameos. This entire region based on just the show feels like it’s got a complex about Leon for being the unbeatable champion. The wooloo episode with Hop makes me feel bad in hindsight because he ditches his wooloo in a box in the game. It’s a really screenshottable aesthetic show, I suppose. Where are these hospitalized children’s parents.

Bidoof’s big stand: the world hates him. They want him gone. He got attacked by birds, the staraptor did the dizzy explosion reaction. Bidoof only was caught to be an HM friend and he won by stalling. It was incredible.

Pokemon evolutions: Good arceus never stray from the sugimori art style ever again lest we see the depths of what real humans would look like in pokemon amen. I don’t have anything else to say because it was just like generations in the fact that they condense one part of the game into the short and nothing else. Least they remembered that women exist.

Hisuian Snow + Poketoon: hisuian snow is kinda beautiful but it kinda makes me wonder why they have all this promotional material like twilight wings and have it star a character that doesn’t even cameo in the game hisuian snow has quite different vibes from the rest of the pokemon shows i’ve watched because hisui as a whole “we’re in the timeperiod where we have no clue what’s up with these pokemon things and we’re trying to survive” so its less of a story about monster taming and more about monster surviving but then there’s pockets of hope and friendship like from this show then it’s immediately contrasted by poketoon which has complete and utter style no matter what episode its on because whoever decided “let’s have a series where we have different animation styles for all the pokemon was a genius” but the pancham episode has a narrator that completely sucks the life out of the episode

Pokemon path to the peak: Well it’s about trading cards. I have no clue what’s with some of these production art styles being so non pokemon, same thing happened with the big stand. My thoughts were “It’s certainly out of my age range” and “Its not yugioh thats for sure” Does anyone remember that GBC card game? I’d love to see something like that. I like how the dad’s advice was “idk use your imagination” The whole time I’m watching it I’m like “it’s not that serious, it’s just card games, the adult division would’ve destroyed this child”. It was a fun watch though but that kept nagging me the whole time.

And that was really it. I’m not interested enough to get through the ash episodes that are still available when I can barely get through XY and those are on Netflix anyways. It’s kind of sad to see it go but it was pretty much dying for years anyways, I completely forgot I still had it downloaded.