4 secretly horrific things Pokemon promoted...

I'd rather Pokemon than this thanks, Japan

Childhood moulds us into the adults that we eventually become, depending on which people you meet and how well you were influenced by your parents to remain socially acceptable through teenage years. However, if you were born in the eighties or nineties, that old-fashioned method of bringing up children was now obselete, as parking a child infront of the television was the new hip and rad way to teach the minor the proper way to act. Through the medium of cartoons and kids' shows, television attempted to do just that linking morals and life messages to the child's feeble intellect. This gave parents the time to do parent things whilst you were distracted by the glowy flash box. The biggest craze within these programmes, was Pokemon, a Japanese master piece that covered every market available to nerds globally with extraodinary success. These little pocket monsters connected with every child, whether it was the action of the battles, unusual sights of the creatures or the simple bright colours usually found in anime. But revisiting some old episodes, I noticed some recurring themes I got from the second viewings that only an adult would be able to see. Therefore  I give you four secretly horrific things Pokemon promoted, because as a child we couldn't give a shit about propaganda...
 

1. Animal Captivity
The idea of a Pokemon trainer's quest is to catch as many of these Japanese named creatures as possible and use them in battles to fight other Pokemon, until one faints. Hmm. On the surface that doesn't seem legit, however the cartoon dresses up the trainer/Pokemon relationship as a friendship, even if the trainer has only just caught the Pokemon and not established any time in hanging around with it. It just becomes his/her property automatically, they just seem to click. Let's go back to when the trainer first catches it then, the trainer uses its own companion to beat the wild creature to a pulp, until he can claim it as his/her's own and sentence it to life imprisonment within a tiny red and white sphere. Um. This doesn't add up.

Surely the Pokemon would absolutely hate the trainer for capturing it from the wild and making it his own? If a guy with a cap casually strolled up to me, clobbered me 'til I was bruised and beaten like a thrown about peach, then dragged me to his house and kept in me a sphere with no air holes; I wouldn't grow to love him. There is only one explanation I can think of for this atrocity...all Pokemon trainers are animal captivists. They lock up wild animals for sport and watch them get their arses handed to them by other animals to make financial profit from gym members and audiences during tournaments. I can't see bear baiting or cock fighting (ha, cock) being any different!?

"Why?"

 So I guess there's only one question everyone wants answered; what happens inside a Poke ball? Well, I have a pretty good theory...it's a prison cell. Like a little personal zoo, with cages that are portable. Of course the Pokemon have to love their warden, otherwise they'd starve to death as the trainer feeds them, or are never used in battle, let alone being let allowed outside of the Poke ball to wander about freely. They'd remain in the constraints of the Poke ball for all eternity. Just to think, I used to play Pokemon and be one of these knob-heads. Coincidentally, that's the name I gave to my rival... "KNOBHEAD WANTS TO BATTLE". Made me giggle every time...
 

2. Atheism
I love the irony of this point, since Pokemon is fictional, however the programme was strictly Darwinian in it's theories. It stuck by the scientific route of creationism and left religious views aside completely, which in a way makes a better programme, otherwise the answer to every question would be "God did it", like magic can be used to explain everything in Harry Potter. 

A bit of Radcliffe, for the ladies.

 Evolution is rubbed in the face of the religious audience, as throughout the cartoons the Pokemon evolved into bigger, tougher and frankly better creatures. I wonder if Christian families knew that they were accidentally teaching their children the Theory of Evolution. Seriously, Ash might as well wondered onto the screen, sat down and read the Origin of Species page by page.
 

3. Invincibility
Is this one such a bad thing? I mean a collection of cartoons promoted this, from Superman to Tom and Jerry. But the answer is yes, as the amount of claims Pokemon intices children to go along with, can be daunting. Mostly thanks to Team Rocket and their antics. For example, setting people on fire thanks to a jet of flames, won't just give you burnt-black face or disgruntled look, it'll burn you and probably melt your face off.

Can you imagine a child seeing a bonfire and jumping in it because they think that all they'll gain out of it is a powdered soot smudged across their face? Or, a more realistic one, a child sticking their finger in a socket because they're expecting their hair to stick up and a yellow glow to surround them whilst they vibrate slightly. But none of this matters if you get hurt, 'cause you can just pop down the local shop, and buy a potion that sprays onto you to make you better. The magic of science. Maybe I'm being slightly emphatic about this, but its basic general knowledge a child should know that these things will probably kill you. Depends how easily influenced the child is I guess...

Well, this is bullshit.

4. Leaving home young
The ever pubecent Ash travels across region upon region of the Pokemon world, meeting new friends and having adventures. Let's face it, he's having a whale of a time, like a pig in shit. Just to think, all of this adventure started when he was just ten years old, he got a Pikachu for a present, and off he went into the big wide world. Wait. He was ten? At that age my home was my world, the loft seemed to be a new adventure for me and Ash is leaving home and making friends with people like Brock.   

The creators say when they first met, Brock was seventeen. Can you imagine a ten and an obviously horny seventeen year old hanging out together alone? One year later and the police would be onto Brock. Besides if this is promoting leaving home at an early age, kids all over the globe must have been influenced to have some independence and fly from the nest, attracting all kinds of people and pedophiles to them. No wonder we have a rise of homeless children in the UK when things like this were being shown to us as a child and being portrayed as fun. In some cases, that's all it takes if a child's domestic life is abusive or traumatic.

And you know what, all these points I've just made, mean nothing. Pokemon was awesome, and still is. Infact I might break out my Game boy and enjoy some animal-imprisoning, homeless atheism right now. I'm gonna choose the Squirtle and fuck Brock's Onix up...

Let's do this...