Pokémon

Pokémon is a humongous franchise developed by Nintendo's Gamefreak. The man given the credit behind it all is Satoshi Taijiri. They released their first games, ポケットモンスター 赤・緑 (Pocket Monsters: Red and Green). In these games a young boy is sent out into the world to collect badges through battling monster-animals called Pocket Monsters, or Pokémon for short. The game is based off of Satoshi Taijiri and many other Japanese boy's hobby of collecting small wild animals, such as bugs, lizards, and frogs, in their pockets and brining them home for their mother's to see. I don't know why this is a bigger thing in Japan, it's normal for all children...but Japan seems to make it more of a thing. Additionally there are other hobbies based around this concept, like beetle collecting, that aren't found often outside of Japan. It is through this cultural tendency that Pokémon was born.

Pokémon are caught in devices called Pokéballs, to which the trainer is allowed to carry six on their person, and so far no character has gone past that limit. Initially there were 151 Pokémon to collect, as shown by the Pokédex in the game. One of the major goals of the video games is to own an individual of each species. A few of them, dubbed as "legendaries" in English, would be difficult to collect without outside special events or glitches. Today there are 1,015 Pokémon. In-game, trainer is only allowed to carry 6 Pocket Monsters on their person. When there's no room for anymore, they are transferred to a "PC box".

Pokémon themselves are based off of many concepts. In the English-speaking fandom, there's a huge need for them to correlate them with specific kinds of animals, Japanese mythology, and other core scientific concepts. However, some of them have references to Japanese fiction. Naturally, as most things are based off of other media, not just science. The English-speaking fandom also has a tendency to be awfully critical of the world building while still enjoying the series.

The series has endured criticism over various issues. Pokémon are in-universe commonly and "happily" exploited by the humans of their world for animal fighting and occasionally other uses. This criticism of animal abuse and slavery eventually led to the fifth season of games having their villains being extremist Pokémon rights activists who hypocritically fought with Pokémon still. Another issue is race, and Pokémon has bounced back and forth on this issue, from making Jynx's face purple, to making another Pokémon that looks like them, to pulling dark colored characters in and out of the TV show, to making their first live-action movie have a black actor, to making two games based off of old Japan have different levels of cultural diversity and one erasing indigenous heritage, and many other issues. There are also some issues that Americans don't sympathize well with, such as the fifth series TV show having to be re-written over an earthquake and certain Pokémon such as Porygon being too controversial to bring back on TV (as its episode didn't contain a seizure warning and caused 3,000 children to simultaneously seizure when the episode was first aired). Still another issue, and more of a Christian and perhaps other monotheist one, is the canon gods or "almost as strong as god" creatures as well as psychic, ghost, and dark types. Because it is a huge series, it has a lot of battles that its had to face.

On the whole there's no doubt that Pocket Monsters has changed to world. The anime series has been translated into at least 47 languages. Millions upon millions of the first games have been sold, as well as their sequels. They are one of the richest game companies in the world. Their influence has spread to every continent and likely to most countries. While not everyone plays or watches Pokémon, it has become so big that it has changed many cultures forever. Perhaps even science has changed because of Pokémon. In the way that they work or understand animals as well as other scientific concepts and technology. There's even a gene named after Pokémon's mascot, Pikachu, called Pikachurin. The Pokémon franchise continues to spin out games and television shows, and it will continue to change our world.

## References

1. ↑ https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Dub