Alright, no matter what you were doing before, it's unimportant now. Shut your face hole, because we have to talk about something important - something crucial. We have to talk about Pokemon. More importantly, we have to talk about the profound impact it's had on America, on me, on my fiancee, and on the bulk of my friends. See, Pokemon is one of the most important phenomenon in popular culture since Star Wars and no one is really sure why. All that can really be commonly agreed upon is that it is here, it has had lasting influence, and that anyone who hates it is likely a card carrying member of the National Socialist Party. Allow me to elaborate.
It all began in the year 1998, when the first Pokemon games, Red and Blue, arrived on the shores of the United States. Monica Lewinsky was a household name, the Rugrats were the most popular show on children's television, Seinfeld was at the height of its popularity, and the last Beanie Baby had committed suicide in a drunken and drug induced state of depression in a dark and dingy motel room just outside of Texarkana, Texas. America needed hope, and a crazy newfangled Japanese collecting game had been delivered from upon high to fill the gaping hole in our collective lives.
The games caught on more or less immediately, owing to the ubiquity of the Game Boy platform on which it was published and the easy to learn yet difficult to master style of gameplay which was its hallmark. Overnight, a range of stuffed animals, a collectible card game that no one knew how to play, and a Saturday morning anime were unleashed upon the nation to feed its ever growing Pokemania. This is significant from my vantage point, because my friends and I were, at the time, in the prime market for just this sort of thing. See, while it now seems so blatantly commercial, you have to understand that when this sort of thing hits you when you're young it can become a genuinely cherished childhood memory - especially if your childhood was somewhat less than rosy It was really my first RPG - as was the case for many of my friends, I suspect - and the sense of adventure and discovery that I felt when I first left Pallet Town was only ever equaled upon my first departure from Seyda Neen in Morrowind some years later.
So you have to realize, if you aren't a geek (which, reading this particular blog, you're probably a level 12 nerdlinger so I guess it doesn't matter) that a nerd's first RPG experience is a sacred and sacrosanct thing. It's a hugely important thing that will forever be cherished in some capacity or another, and I think that it is this factor to which Pokemon owes its enduring popularity. So many of us grew up with some Pokemon game or another in our Game Boys and DS(es?) and it's such a sentimental part of so many gamers' catelogues that I highly doubt it will stop for the foreseeable future.
Now, as popular as the games are in the United States, they're an order of magnitude more popular in Japan - the land that festoons airliners in Pikachu paint schemes, produces PokePorn, and has entire stores dedicated solely to Pikachu and his Pokepals. It's my opinion that this owes largely to the Japanese cultural obsession with collecting things, a mechanic which the Pokemon games (and merchandising) are largely dependent upon. After all, this is the country which has several hundreds of varieties of Kit-Kat bars available for purchase at any given moment, with rare Kollectable Kit-Kats fading in and out of existence at any given moment. Seriously, google that shit. It's a real thing. The Japanese love to collect things. I mean, how else would Yu-Gi-Oh! and Digimon have caught on and lasted there while being merely imitation fads in the United States and elsewhere abroad?
Anyway, while America's Pokemon fever is more or less in remission, Japan still exhibits something akin to fever and rashes upon the release of each new Pokemon game, with television specials and entire magazines devoted solely to the games. Imagine the American reaction to Star Wars in 1977 or Western Europe any time someone mentions the World Cup and you have a general idea of what happens when a new Pokemon game drops. Really, at this point, I imagine that's solely what keeps Nintendo in business. That, and old people who seem to have confused the Wii with a fitness device.
Now, while America is much, much less obsessed with Pokemon than Japan is, I think it's still safe to say that you would be hard pressed find a single nerd (now a much larger and mainstream segment of popular culture than they were in the past) that won't admit to a degree of fondness for the franchise. After all, most of us owned Red and Blue when they came out. A great sum of us can still recall the elation we felt when we finally beat the Elite Four, the bragging that came from the first of our friends to fill out their PokeDex, and the first bastard to own a Game Boy Advance and a copy of Ruby or Sapphire.
The thing to take away from my rant is this: Pokemon has had an enormous impact on the popular culture of the United States and elsewhere, especially Japan. I mean, if you're reading this you can probably tell me which Pokemon was your favorite as a kid, unless you're Elisabeth. Personally, mine was Pikachu. But whatever. It's a huge franchise and it's had an enormous impact on a lot of our lives. It was an integral part of many of our childhoods and anyone who owned it as a child and says they don't look back upon it fondly is a damnable liar. Seriously, man. Just, seriously. I'm done here. Pantsy out.
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