"I Choose You"

Anybody who knows me in real life knows one of my all-time favorite fantasy settings is the world of Pokemon. I've been in love with the series since the original Pokemon games of Red and Blue and the anime, way back when I was a little kid. I think I originally got the Blue version while my older brother got Red, but I later got Yellow. Then, for the second generation, I'm absolutely sure I got all three of Gold, Silver, and Crystal. The third generation was when I got Sapphire, and the fourth generation I got Platinum. For the fifth-generation games, I chose the White Versions for both the first game and the sequel, mainly because I thought Zekrom was cooler. In the sixth generation, I went with the Y version. The Sun version was my generation seven game. Finally, for generation 8 of a now twenty-five-year-old franchise, I chose Shield.

Regardless of when and where you start in the franchise for the games, the "story", for lack of a better word, was relatively straightforward for each game. You the player character are a new Pokemon trainer who is tasked by a professor who is going to have a tree-themed surname--I am not making this up, every single professor in the main games shares a name with a type of tree--with exploring the region and completing an in-universe encyclopedia about the titular creatures that live in the region. The only way to fill these pages is by battling, capturing, and training the Pokemon.

However, everyone knows it would be suicide to send young children up against creatures where the supposedly canonically weakest creature of the bunch--Magikarp--is capable of jumping over a mountain using its otherwise useless Splash attack (which is more than enough force to kill a person), so the professor or someone close to them is at least a decent enough person to give you a Pokemon to defend yourself with. This introduces you to your starter Pokemon and one of the first big choices in the game: a Grass-type starter, a Fire-type Starter, and a Water-type starter, with an elemental rock, paper, scissors attached to them. So, which Pokemon are you going to take with you? Most games usually don't allow you more than one starter, and your choice will influence certain battles against other in-game trainers so you'll have to be careful with this choice. Me, personally? I usually go with the Water-type starters with the exception of a few times I found the others more my speed. For instance, in the generation four games, instead of the penguin Water-type Piplup, I felt more attached to the Fire-type monkey Chimchar. I also picked the Grass-type Chespin over the Water-type Froakie since I felt that Froakie was overdone in Generation 6.

Once you have your starter, you go out into the world and try to complete your task of catching all of the Pokemon you can. Now, you don't have to throw a Poke Ball, the device designed to catch Pokemon, at everything, since there are plenty of Pokemon that can transform, or "evolve" into other Pokemon, once certain requirements are met. For your starters, gaining enough experience points is usually enough, but for others, outside forces are necessary. You will have to use evolutionary stones on Pokemon like Pikachu, Clefairy, and Growlithe to evolve them, but it comes at the cost of them not getting any stronger moves via leveling up, so you have to be careful when you do this. Other Pokemon require a bit of real-world socialization by trading Pokemon with other people, like Machoke into Machamp, or Kadabra into Alakazam--again, not making this up. Some trades are a bit more complicated since they require held items and sometimes even specific other Pokemon. Generation II, my personal favorite generation, introduced Pokemon evolving by how much you made them happy, which was how I got one of my all-time favorite Pokemon, Togetic, from the otherwise cute tagalong Pokemon Togepi. There are other methods, but these are the most common.

However you get the new Pokemon, eventually, the game will place what limited plot it has in front of you in the form of the Pokemon Gym challenge... or if you're in Alola in the Generation 7 games, the "island challenge". Regardless, you're up for a boss fight against a foe that uses a particular Pokemon element, and you're going to need to know what type is strong and weak against what other types quickly. For instance, that elemental rock paper scissors that I mentioned earlier? Grass-types are strong against Water-types but are weak against Fire-types. The other two follow the same pattern. This is why when you're building your team of six Pokemon (since you can't have more than six carried at a time), it's a good idea to have a diverse team. Not that the bosses you run into will do the same, though, but they're there to test you. And there are at least eight of these per game before you get to the endgame, where you take on some of the strongest trainers of the region and the Champion of the Pokemon League, taking your place as number one.

The real foes, however, are the criminal organizations you run into. Yes, in this children's franchise, there is organized crime aplenty, and it's up to a child to stop them. However, it varies between the games how seriously you ought to take the threats of these guys. Some organizations like Team Rocket want to simply take over the world by stealing strong Pokemon from trainers and using them to overpower everybody. Some organizations are well-intended extremists who simply want to make the world better or improve their lives. And then there are people who are just plain power hungry or want to commit atrocities for the sake of doing so. Yeah, for a fantasy world filled with hundreds of different creatures, sometimes the humans are the most complex.

Back when I was young, I also watched the anime. Yes, it's a very, very LONG haul now with over a thousand episodes and still counting, plus twenty-four movies and several animated specials--yes, it's longer than One Piece--but I loved Ash and his friends growing up. While common misconception indicates Ash is a terrible trainer, people don't understand how hard being a Pokemon Trainer in real life and making a profession out of that really is. Several of these Pokemon could KILL you in real life just by being in their presence, and Ash is doing his best. Not to mention the time and effort it would take to travel around a vast region by foot all almost all of the time (he only traveled by Lapras for the Orange Islands because there was no way he could swim throughout the entire Orange Islands and boats were too expensive for a kid to pay for all of the time). Ash also has never finished a League not qualifying for it, and has always placed in a League tournament no lower than the Top 16, which is an impressive track record in real life sports!

The best part about the world of Pokemon is that it has a LOT of spin-offs. While hard to put them all in the same continuity, the fact that the series portrays the Pokemon world as so vast there's an infinite number of stories that could be told on it brings warmth to my heart. One part of the world doesn't really have Pokemon "Trainers", but "Rangers" who live and work alongside wild Pokemon to help protect the natural environment... and stop terrorists, because of course you do. I've never actually played the Ranger games, but I do respect the work those guys do. There's even a spin-off roguelike series called Pokemon Mystery Dungeon where you actually play AS the Pokemon and can understand what other Pokemon are saying as you go on adventures. My favorite spin-off, though, is the Orre duology.

The Orre region is a bit of a cyberpunkish modern wild west, and your player characters Wes and Michael are tasked with stopping an eviler than usual villain organization named Cipher from taking over the world with their weaponized Shadow Pokemon. These Shadow Pokemon have been horribly experimented on, and turned into cold blooded fighting machines. So, Wes (and Michael in the sequel) have to use a nifty device called the Snag Machine on their left arm to throw Poke Balls... at the other trainers' Pokemon. This is a big deal because not only am I a lefty in real life, but because in the regular Pokemon games, you can't actually catch another trainer's Pokemon. Yet these are the two games in the entire franchise where you not only are allowed to do this, but you're outright ENCOURAGED to commit theft! Because absolutely nobody is going to treat these Shadow Pokemon right except for the protagonists in-universe, so we have to save their souls and purify the Shadow Pokemon through the power of friendship. Oh, and one of the best villains in this franchise debuted in this franchise. Miror B, famous for his four Ludicolos, his theme music in both games, and giant red and white afro.

Pokemon is a franchise that has been everywhere in Nintendo, nowadays. It's on mobile with games like Pokemon Go and Masters. It's tried its hand at DOTA and 3D fighting games. It's been one of the founding series of the Super Smash Bros. franchise with Pikachu and Jigglypuff being two members of the original twelve, and more Pokemon keep getting in with Pichu, Mewtwo, Squirtle, Ivysaur, Charizard, Greninja, and now Incinaroar all becoming fighters. It's even gotten a live-action movie based off a spin-off game starring Ryan Reynolds that once competed with Avengers Endgame and still made a killing at the box office! The series has hit its milestone of twenty-five years, and judging by the fact that Pokemon is making a prequel open-world that plays similarly to Game of the Year 2017 Breath of the Wild with Legends: Arceus, it's safe to say Pokemon is here to stay.

Would I want to live in the Pokemon world? I'm not sure, though. If the wild Pokemon were feeling malicious, they would have easily wiped humanity out if they wanted. However, they're pretty casual about coexistence, since a lot of people in the series live alongside them. I know I'm not going to be a trainer, since I can barely get my dogs at home to listen to me, though! But maybe I could, if I was living alongside Pokemon, find a way to work with them. You know, have a Psychic-type help me with my writing or grocery job. That would be nice.