A Cinematic Odyssey: 5/21/10

I would like to apologize for any negative connotations I made towards Pokémon and Spirited Away in the last issue. They are good animes and I only used them as examples because I don’t know enough specificities about bad anime to use for examples. Like most kids of our era, I grew up with Pokémon. Not the video game—because my mom wouldn’t buy me a GameBoy—but the TV show. I watched the first generation intently on VHS from Reel. I have fond memories of the cliffhangers at the end of every episode and their resolution about five minutes later with another episode. Pokémon rocked.

But as I grew older, Pokémon started to suck. With each generation came stupider sidekicks, Pokémon and Team Rocket contraptions. By the time it was called something like Pokémon SPF: the Final Countdown, I was done.

Then in sixth grade, my friend gave me his Gameboy Advance and a copy of Fire Red. After I started the game over—for he named his Squirtel “Condomfuck”—my eyes were opened to the wonderful world of Pokémon. It was a magical place where you could battle a plethora of enemies and Gym Leaders with one distinct goal: become the best Pokémon trainer… ever. It seemed to never stop in an experience that kept me up all night every night.

It is a fantastic experience that everyone who has played can recount stories about. For example: to get Groudon used to weaker balls before hitting it with an ultra ball, I used a net ball… AND IT CAUGHT HIM. A friend once trained his Nidoking to perfection and got lost in the Seafoam Islands and had to restart. It is an experience, but after you’ve beaten the Elite Four and there’s nowhere new to go and nothing new to see, you are hit with a crushing dilemma.

You’ve trained these Pokémon to high levels, given them hilarious nicknames and given them perfect moves. However, there’s absolutely nothing left to do with them. Every trainer defeated, all the lands scoured, every cave spelunked. So, do you play the Elite Four over and over and over again, or do you start again? Either way, you realize how meaningless it has all been. The game taunts you by showing exactly how many hours you’ve wasted. By this time I usually stop, get out an old favorite book, and vow to not play again because it’s all worthless. I did the same thing with Farmville and so far I’ve been off the stuff. However, Farmville was never fun, Pokémon is and always has been. Every year around this time—maybe because of school ending stress—I start a new adventure into a dead end. But this year my epiphany of doom came sooner. After I caught a Snorlax, defeated a gym leader and raised an Aerodactyl from level 5 to 25, I realized that I had a problem. I think I’m going to put the GameBoy down and start an old favorite, The Island of Dr. Moreau… a book.