For those of us who are at the end of the long academic trek through college, how can we continue our passion in anime while balancing work and other life priorities? I want to explore a bit of Anime, including Pokemon, and how it affects us as we move into different stages of our life.
I was inspired to write this from a talk that was given at my university’s Anime Club titled: Panel: The Past, Present and Future of Chicago’s Anime Scene, by Anime Chicago and my own passion here on Pokemon Crossroads.
This is In Real Life, a new column on Pokemon Crossroads dedicated the intersection of Anime, Pokemon, and living life. I’ll be using some research, some math, maybe XKCD style. :)
It has been a month since ACen has past. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times, if I can steal from Mr. Dickens’s list of seeming paradoxes. For one weekend, those around Chicago, the midwest, and the con goers from across the nation descended upon a spit of land called Rosemont, next to Chicago O’hare International Airport.
How does an anime community sustain itself after college, or high school, or grade school? But before we can answer this question, what brought them all together?
How did you first start Pokemon and what brings you back to it again and again? The friends that I know can’t stop buying the games, partially out of nostalgia, but mostly because they really enjoy the games!
For me, Pokemon represents a world where we can be who we want. We can competitively battle, we can competitively breed (Go Brock!), we can competitively groom. The list goes on. I knew a friend who spent countless hours getting his bred Pokemon to have perfect IV’s. For me, I’m a traveller. I love exploring the world of Pokemon. I’m also a tactician. I love exploring the battle system and how everything pieces together. Lastly, I’m an avid reader. I love going through the story and experiencing the events.
This was extremely different than when it first came out. When I was in the 4th grade, I remember that people bragged about having the fastest time to beat the elite four and “my Charizard shiny [card] does 100 damage, and so I’ll beat all your cards in 1 hit” (“Your Chancey will die on my second hit”). The trading aspect to get the other Pokemon in the other cartridge was very annoying.
But really, the Pokemon games were built around a social aspect that has grown to trades over the Internet! Who would have thought in 1996 that we could trade Pokemon with anyone in the world? I would argue that Pokemon was a social game that predicated Facebook.
What keeps us dreaming and coming back for more? Pokemon is on its way to releasing its next game, X and Y, (and Zed is in the works, I’m sure.) But games aren’t released constantly, so what keeps a community going? Why are we still here instead of going to the next best thing?
We gather together to talk about what we love, and if what we love is Pokemon, we’ll gather to talk about that. We gather to share ideas and to express new ideas. In the case of PXR, its a fandom focus. We gather around to appreciate the creativity of others in the space of Pokemon. And personally, not all stories are created equally. How does one series, like Pokemon or Star Trek have such a huge following while games or movies like Mario or Titanic do not? What makes Doctor Who so appealing while The Great Gatsby not?
What makes a great franchise? Ash Ketchum lives one adventure of many adventures that we can play from devices that live in our pocket. A story, a spirit and an adventure. Pokemon is truly a universe that we can see ourselves play in.
