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In 2004, a friend's 12-year-old son showed me his prized collection of Pokemon cards and spent half an hour explaining to me the intricate world of anime' creatures and their evolving manifestations. When he was done I still knew Pokemon no better that I knew Portuguese.
It was all moot anyway -- or so I rationalized -- because Pokemon would be long gone by the time my four-year-old son got within target age, right? (I wasn't aware Pokemon was already 14 years old at that point.)
As you well know, I was wrong. My first worry was when Pikachu showed up as a Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloon in 2006. "Who's paying for that?" I wondered, thinking Captain Kangeroo might be next. But the truth of Pokemon's staying power hit me most when my son recently started playing Pokemon on his Nintendo DS. I quickly realized Pokemon's digital life was even more powerful than its playing card presence -- an "evolution" of the Poke-verse itself.
Now comes word that, starting this week, Cartoon Network is airing the original Pokemon series daily at 6:30 pm. According to reports, there are over 600 episodes.
I understand foreign worlds and languages -- I grew up on Star Wars after all. But the thing I just don't get about Pokemon is the point. Is it simply about collecting? Or dueling? Or evolving? Is there a story in there, or does the story not matter whatsoever?
My brain is obviously no longer wired for deep exploration into complex toy universes disconnected from the real one. I'm not even sure my brain ever worked that way -- the only thing I obsessed over when I was a kid was Super Friends. (And all of them could fit into a minivan!)
Like his ability to play a single video game for hours or watch the same movies over and over, my son's immersion into this world is a path I can't follow. I just nod politely as he futilely explains these things to me, like I'm tourist in a non-English-speaking country. But mostly I feel like Pichu -- the earliest, most primitive version of Pikachu -- very dismissable and pathetically unevolved.
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