| Trainer favors old Pokémon over the new (4/08) | | Print | |
| Written by Scott Davis | |
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Remember when life was simpler, way back in the 90s? Remember when there were no college essays, Advanced Placement classes, theorems or mods to worry about and only about 151 different Pokémon to account for? Well, I do. I also remember the steady decline of the quality of what was for many, myself included, the backbone of our childhood.
In the beginning, there was the god-like trainer Ash, and life was simple. His first Pokémon, Pikachu, was the icon of a generation. We all gleefully anticipated the next 150 well-defined, unique and easily identifiable Pokémon to appear in the show. Everyone had his or her own Pokémon to identify with: from Psyduck, for the goofy fun lover, to Scyther, for the brave and headstrong. The original Pokémon had just a few evolution stages—at most three, if that! And they were simple jumps: Pikachu would become Raichu, and the two did not look so different. There were, of course, exceptions, such as the Magikarp to Gyarados jump. Magikarp was a little red fish that couldn't do more than splash you with a little bit of water, while Gyarados was a large and intimidating dragon-like serpent which would probably take you down faster than you could pronounce its name. The overall appearances of the original Pokémon were much simpler as well. There are exceptions, such as the Tangelas and Chanseys, who look a little silly, Tangela like an octopus wearing a pair of cheap sneakers with a bad hair day, and Chansey like the offspring of a kangaroo and some cotton candy. But they all look like they can take a punch or two and then throw a few back. Another great quality about the old Pokémon was that many of them even resemble common everyday animals: Sandshrew looks like an armadillo, Beedrill looks like a bee, Ekans looks like a rattlesnake (even the name Ekans is just snake backwards) and Jynx looks like a cheap prostitute. With 151 easy-to-pick-up, fast-to-learn Pokémon, life was perfect. Unfortunately for us, life never stays perfect. A Pokémon is like a diamond, a single diamond shines bright and is worth a butt-load of money. But as miners excavate more and more diamonds, each gem loses its value. And, just like that, the original gem has fallen victim to major inflation. These new "poser Pokémon," as sophomore Tom Linford and I like to call them, are nothing but overdone wannabes in the shadow of the legends they follow. As ninth grader Leo Harrington said once during a track meet, "The new Pokémon suck!" I could not agree with him more. Dialga and Giratina, for example, are cluttered with pointless details. They appear to have been drawn to be cute first, survive a brawl later. All of these decorations seem to be aimed at pleasing the modern-day Saturday-morning cartoon viewer's growing lust for adorable, pointless crap. Not the loyal fans that were on the bandwagon to Pallet Town first. The 1999 Pokémon movie, Pokémon: The First Movie, introduced Mew and Mewtwo as the last original Pokémon, numbers 150 and 151 of the icons that made our childhood so vivid. Now, with every new one made, our childhood memories become a little more worthless. |
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