I visited the house I grew up in over Spring Break. My family moved a while back, but we haven’t been able to sell it yet, so it sits empty. The room that our Christmas tree would always light up was being painted, and I was taken back to when I was 12 years old — just about to leave primary school — when I got “Pokémon Black 2” for Christmas. I was about two years younger than its protagonist, but a year older than the original protagonist of the series’s progenitor “Pokémon Red and Blue.” Now, I’m 21 years old and adults make up more and more of the franchise’s market demographic. Even with all the arguments that Pokémon will forever remain a franchise for children, the reception for the series is dying off. A once universally-adored series seemed to be running out of steam, reliant on formulas and gimmicks now decades old.
Here’s the thing, though. Through all the noise and the rightful frustration of the infamously irritable Pokémon fanbase, its creators did strike gold with the franchise’s original core concepts. The biggest accomplishment of the Pokémon games is their ability to tie stories so closely to gameplay. Every encounter has the potential to give you a new battle partner for life in your quest to “catch ‘em all,” and every turn-based battle victory is another step on your journey (to be the very best, like no one ever was). It’s what made the series — largely relegated to 2D top-down chibi sprites — so immersive.
The core mechanics have never changed as the franchise evolved from Generations I to IX between six different handheld consoles; the formula just became more and more refined with each Gen, adding new Pokémon along the way. Fans were satisfied because it felt like each evolution was a new chapter in the same story that pushed the limits of their handheld homes — but this seemed to peak around Gen V, with the “Pokémon Black and White” games for the Nintendo DS. From here onward, the series became reliant on battle gimmicks that wouldn’t return in future games and balancing nostalgia manipulation with proper tribute to the past: Gen VI’s Mega Evolutions, Gen VII’s Z-moves, Gen VIII’s Dynamaxing. These weren’t new chapters or refinement of a formula, but tired tropes being repeated. When new Gen VIII titles were announced for the Nintendo Switch — a truly innovative next-gen console in and of itself, being a next-gen home console that was also this generation’s handheld — it felt like a new story needed to be written, an expectation that was betrayed by the derivativeness of “Pokémon Sword and Shield.” However, is Pokémon ready to tell a new story?
Enter Ash Ketchum. Or rather, exit Ash Ketchum, as the Pokémon anime protagonist wraps up his last episodes after 25 years. During those two and a half decades, he’s remained just 10 years old, as everyone around him was also ageless. He’s received many a costume change and art-style innovation, sure, but he’s never really changed or grown up as a protagonist. Of course, this leads to numerous fan theories on his supposed immortality, but it’s clear he just operates in a “floating timeline” — one that keeps the show updated in the present without accounting for aging. But in many ways, Ash’s eternal youth and marginal maturing symbolize the state of his franchise. That’s why it’s so interesting that they’ve now chosen to finally let him move on, to introduce new protagonists.
Enter “Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.” I’ve written on it at length, but there’s a variety of interesting innovations I didn’t mention: defying Pokémon starter patterns, breaking Pokémon Professor naming traditions, bucking the games’ story conventions entirely. Yes, the games operated poorly at launch and these issues aren’t quite yet resolved, but they’re still vastly interesting entries that aren’t getting enough credit for what they attempted to do — finally tell a different kind of story. Playing through these Gen IX games felt like they were trying their absolute hardest to give the series a new starting point — making “Scarlet and Violet” just a shade different from “Red and Blue.” But did we ever really want Pokémon to change? Are we wishing for what used to make the series so special to us? Or are we slowly realizing that maybe that spark is gone, that it left when we grew up?
Enter me — or rather, enter my empty childhood bedroom, in the house I visited before break. It hasn’t been repainted and sits now as an empty blue box. Of course, it’s not empty to me. I stand at the entrance and I see the bed where I used to read “Pokémon Adventures” manga on my iPod Touch late at night under the covers. I see the desk where I’d sit and watch every Pokémon YouTube video — every Top 10 list, every Ash Ketchum episode, every bit of gameplay — I could. And of course, I see the chair I spent countless hours in on my navy blue Nintendo DSi, lost in the world of Pokémon. I want to reach out to that kid, to reach out to that simpler time and take it as a salve for myself.
Pokémon hasn’t wanted to grow up. I empathize.
But despite everything that fans clamor for — better animations, even larger worlds, next-gen graphics — this series is still going strong because most of its customers are either returning to the world they’ve long inhabited or introducing new generations of kids to its stories. The series developer Game Freak has maintained a super-small team of close-knit developers who have been working on the game since the series’s inception despite having more than enough funds to hire more people — all while still trying to bring the franchise into the future. “Scarlet and Violet” comments on this duality of past versus future, not only in its themes but also by presenting primal and futuristic Pokémon that contradict canon and shouldn’t exist. These forms are fittingly titled “Paradox Pokémon” — because it’s impossible to move forward while pining for the past. Maybe it is impossible to fully recapture the magic of our childhoods, but we can still make more memories.
As the stresses of growing up kept me up at night, I’d play Pokémon music to lull me to sleep. I’d make some of my closest friends throughout middle and high school bonding over Pokémon. And now I’m here, writing this article, having Pokémon to thank as part of my passion for digital culture and the arts as a whole. So please — to Game Freak and to the fans — let’s hope we’ll grow further together. Farewell, Ash Ketchum. You were the very best.
Digital Culture Beat Editor can be reached at sjohri@umich.edu.