March 25, 2011
It has come to my attention that besides World of Warcraft the video game I've spent the most time on is Pokémon, but no, I’m not ashamed of it. As I said in my last post the games are for everyone. And seeing as today’s comic is also about Pokémon the count keeps raising.
Part of Pokémon’s appeal is the collection aspect, I mean you “gotta catch ‘em all” after all. Thing is as the fifth generation of Pokémon has been released there are now 649 of these buggers, and some of them either seem a little similar, or are down right uninspired. I mean Pikachu, the most popular of all Pokémon, he’s a rabbit mouse thinger with wacky lightning powers, that’s fricken awesome, I want one. But, Herdier, the focus of today’s comic isn’t special at all, when I see a picture of Pikachu, I think to myself, self, that is a wacky made of creature that can only exist in a land made of pure imagination. When I look at Herdier I think to myself, I had a friend growing up that has a dog like that, I mean looks just like that.
In a way I do believe the guys at GameFreaks have thought themselves into a corner. Each generation of Pokémon has had a penultimate Pokémon. First there was Mew, an über powered psychic, than Celebi, an immortal traveler of time. The third generation brought Deoxys, a evil alien bent of world destruction. Then generation four gave us Arceus, literally the God of the Pokémon universe, as it is said he creather all other Pokémon. So where do you go from there? You made God, a Pokémon, what's more powerful than that? Well with the release of the fifth generation apparently Arceus is just the God of that part of the Poké-world and in fact there other God equivalent Pokémon in this region as well, and just to be even more confusing the penultimate Pokémon in the fifth generation is the first Pokémon that ever existed, and other Pokémon evolved from it.
So lets think about it this way. If the world of Pokémon actually existed it’s a world in which God inarguably exists, but not only that if you have the right kind of magical tennis ball, you can capture God and make him obey your every command. To go even further there are countless other Gods that also inarguably exist, but there also exists a Pokémon so ancient that all other Pokémon have evolved from it. So Pokémon is teaching kids about a world of poly-deism where evolving also inarguably takes place. That being said why doesn’t the Christian Right news media make reports about how Pokémon is warping children’s minds, cause at least there they have a leg to stand on with that argument. :P
