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| Vaporeon, I choose you! |
If you were alive and in elementary school in 1997, chances are that you were a part of the Pokemon craze. You watched the show, played the Game Boy, and collected the cards. Heck, you (like me) probably knew the PokeRap by heart. Even to this day, a good majority of you can and will recite the theme song at the drop of a dime. And we all know the basic gist of the story. 10 year old Ash Ketchum sets out on a journey to catch all (originally) 150 (or 151 if you count Mew) and become a Pokemon master with his partner, Pikachu. On the way he finds and travels with some friends (Misty and Brock...also Tracy for some time until Brock returns) and continues battling and catching pokemon in hopes of becoming said Pokemon master.
This is another one of those ongoing, never ending series. Obviously Nintendo knows what they're doing. Pokemon is one of their largest and most popular franchises and when something makes money, chances are that the franchise won't come to an end until it fails to create a profit. Now I've already done the rundown on the issues of having an ongoing series in this post. So I'll do my best not to reiterate anything that's already be stated there. But Pokemon comes with it's own host of issues. And the fans have their own host of issue as well. For now, I'll start with the fans...
There's an understandable lure that nostalgia has on our memories. Try thinking about something you loved as a child but haven't seen in years. And look at a newer variation of it that has a new host of characters, settings, and challenges. Perhaps even a completely different art style. Somehow the newer version doesn't look nearly as good in your eyes because you had such a strong love for the older version. This is the appeal of the first generation of Pokemon to fans of the series. The more Pokemon designs they created the more they dislike the designs of future generations. Gen. 2 was still fairly decent. Gen. 3 was okay. Gen. 4 was bad. And Gen. 5 was despised. By time the generation for the Black and White games came out, fans had convinced themselves that the older designs were tons better than the new ones. That Nintendo needs to stop creating pokemon designs because the new ones are absolutely terrible. They've convinced themselves that Gen. 1 was the best because all the designs were based off of real animals and/or mythical beasts. This logic fails miserably. Because nostalgia seemed to block out such Pokemon like Grimer, Muk, Ditto, Magnemite, Magneton, and Porygon. All creatures based off of immobile, non-living objects and all from the first generation (by non-living I mean non-organic, flesh and blood beings). What's the difference between a magnet creature or toxic waste creature and a gear or garbage creature? Or even an ice cream one?
As for the series, the problem it has is repetition. Constant repetition. Nothing completely new has happened in the story in years. Every time Ash ventures to a new region, he drops all the Pokemon he had except Pikachu, obtains a new starter Pokemon, and sets out to gather all the gym badges and fight whatever leagues there are. All the while Jessie and James continue to try to steal Pikachu nearly every episode and fail every time. If you started from episode one, you know the basic story for every season following. Story is important. While there's nothing inherently wrong with a small bit of repetition in a story, when the entire story repeats itself that is a story failure that should have been fixed in the pre-production phase. Or the alternative is to just end the series. Once you find that there is nothing new you can do with your story, that's a sign that the project should end. Let the series end with a bang rather than drag it out until you've wrung everything you could from it. Because at a certain point, the audience will slowly fall away.
But in the end, it just comes down to money. For all the faults it has as a television series, Pokemon is brilliant when it comes to merchandising. All the creatures they can make toys and stuffed animals off of, all the games they can make, all the shirt and product designs...it's a cash cow. And Nintendo's out to milk Pokemon for all they can get. In the meantime, I'll continue to be a fan and attempt to "catch 'em all". How about you?
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