Politics in Pokémon
Politics in Pokémon
I love Pokémon, it's my special interest, I've been playing since Gen 1 and have pretty extensive knowledge about the Pokémon world.
However since becoming a communist I've realized that a lot of things are missing from the world, including basic functions on how everything works. Just the presence of police implies there are laws that have to be enforced, which in turn implies people write those laws, etc. We know that there was an industrial revolution, which led to capitalism, being the economic system in all Pokémon regions, meaning all of the contradictions that come with it. There was a war that took place, as alluded to by Lt. Surge, who might actually be from Unova.
In the manga there's the Pokémon Association (PA), a legislative body that determines the laws involving Pokémon, similar to Congress here in the U.S., with each region apparently having its own PA.
In the anime they have the Pokémon Inspection Agency (PIA) that inspects Gyms to see if they're up to par.
They don't explicitly talk about politics and political views (obviously because the series is marketed to kids) but I think exploring these mechanisms could be really interesting, if not for the fact that Pokémon adds another layer to politics because they're creatures with a material effect on the world.
Some people might be more left leaning when it comes to economics and social issues, but might be more right leaning when it comes to trainer regulations.
I'm curious to know what other people think, I'm actually writing a story that explores some of these themes so I'd love to get some ideas!
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The closest thing I could find to anything resembling that is Malie City which is said to be inspired by Johto, and Heahea City being founded by Trainers from Kanto and Johto. Is this what you mean?
Maybe it did happen, idk. It could be an interesting theme to explore since my protagonist is actually from Alola.
I don't agree that Pokémon has no worldbuilding, there's plenty to see if you pay attention and look at the subtext and implications. Just because something isn't explicitly stated doesn't mean there's nothing, if anything that means there's a lot there that hasn't been thought of yet.
Yeah, those are the ones I'm talking about. It's something some random NPC mentions that probably wouldn't get noticed by most people, I just remember it because it really stuck out to me for some reason.
Hm well I don't quite know if it counts as colonization in the same sense that Europeans colonized the world, aside from those two places I don't see a heavy Kanto/Johto presence and everywhere else in Alola sticks to traditions, hence why they don't have Gyms or a Pokémon League yet. Some of the places aren't even developed at all. I do like Alola because of how rich it is, but the physical limitations of the 3DS are what hold it back. But I digress, lol.
Either way it's all speculation because we aren't given a lot of information explicitly since they're not gonna include topics of colonization in a kid's game....but I guess climate change and mass genocide (XY) is fine, lol?
Oh, like I said, it's a liberal, whitewashed version of colonisation. Pokemon games don't ever really get into actual issues and problems (one of the reasons why so many of the "I'm going to end the world because I hate people" villains in the series fall completely flat.)
Even with genocide and climate change, both are treated as effectively non-issues, XY is just a vague "bad guy doing a bad guy thing because he's bad." and Sword and Shield having some kind of vague "energy crisis" that will cause problems centuries down the line isn't really a good depiction of these things. It's the exact same thing with colonisation, all the actual issues of it are ignored to the point it is easy to miss the analogy. The devs don't really try to flesh these things out though, and they were very lacklustre as a result. I think the best pokemon stories are the ones that are much more personal rather than some kind of vague "end of the world" thing.
Yeah, it's why the later games and stories are even worse, I probably will never get over how awful SwSh was...I mean we're talking an energy crisis that won't happen for a thousand years and this dude wants to solve it this weekend? Can't even wait till Monday after the Gym Circuit finals lol?
At least the manga offers more insight, for example, apparently Misty and Erika are filthy rich, both of them have mansions and servants. Something definitely not explored in the games nor anime.
Apparently SwSh had an earlier draft of the script where Leon and the Chairman worked together to rig Leon's matches in his favour. The idea of the chairman working with the champion to boost ratings for his pokemon league would've worked so well with the "soccer stadium" theme of the gyms. Instead we got last minute out of nowhere plot twist evil villain who is just misguided. Easily the most wasted potential out of any pokemon game.
Ugh, absolutely, one of my main gripes with Gen 7 is the fact that it felt like they were trying to do two things at once and ended up doing neither well. On one hand you have the whole Darkest Day twin heroes plotline involving the two legendaries, on the other the whole Gym Circuit soccer stadium with Team Yell (easily one of the worst antagonists ever made). Had they stuck to just one of those things it might have been a much better game (also not misleading us all to think the Wild Area would be the whole game instead of these corridor ass routes).
Maybe one day I'll write a better Galar story that isn't completely lame as hell.