I recently saw a submission about expressing how a person likes pokemon because they imagine it as this complex world with all kinds of racial undertones of "superior races" and "control of life" and stuff like that. And talking about how pokemon is a blood sport.

time for some copy-pasta.


Here is my perspective on the whole "pokemon is a bloodsport" idea.

I think people look too hard into this. I doubt when the creators of pokemon were thinking of the idea, they said "How do we make a game where animals mutilate and massacre each other, and make it geared towards youth?" In fact, pokemon was actually inspired by bug-collecting. Yeah, bug-collecting.

The battles are probably the most child-friendly of all RPGs, seeing as most RPGs are fights to the death with swords and other weapons. Pokemon are fights with a pokemon's natural strengths, and it's only until one is KO. Sorta like a boxer. It's supposed to be understood that in the pokemon world, battles are heavily ruled and regulated to ensure it doesn't get out of hand. Not to say death is absent from pokemon, it's just not that common in battles. Pokemon can deal a heck of a lot of damage to each other, and be fine after a visit to the pokemon center. They are, for all intensive purposes, super-beasts, able to control the elements and reach unthinkable feats.

Kids that the games are marketed to do not see pokemon as a Blood sport. They see it as a glorified boxing match with all kinds of different creatures. The trainer would be the boxing coach, the pokemon the boxer. It is our adult minds that warp pokemon from it's happy atmosphere into something that has dark undertones. We GIVE it all these disturbing images. They were never there. We put them there. When I child sees an totodile use Bite, then think "Hehe! NOM!" Yet, when an adult sees it, they imagine a crocodile-like animal tearing the fur and flesh off it's opponent in a caged battle orchestrated by a bunch of heartless, corrupt, megalomaniac humans.

Children understand that the pokemon world is not a world of violence, but rather a world of competition. Only our minds can see it as dark and bloody. And that is NOT what the creators intended the series to be like.