When I mention Pokémon, I assume all of you listening will instantly think about making the toughest decision of your life as a child, in the old game boy games at least – do you pick Charmander, Bulbasaur or Squirtle? It does take a long time to figure out which Pokémon you want because it’ll be with you for the whole game. For me however, this always ends the same way – picking Charmander. Then you’re enthralled with starting off your very own Pokémon adventure, ranging from beating up your rival, doing chores for Professor Oak and then eventually getting down to catching all the Pokémon and on the road to be a Pokémon master.
So the idea is to catch them all, this has been drilled into the heads of children who had what I like to call, a “complete” childhood as it is the theme song to the season one of Pokémon. Sounds simple enough right? Just go round beating up wild Pokémon and throwing balls at them to catch them. You’d think this would be an easy job when there are only 151 Pokémon, right? Wrong. The producers thought it would be great to add a million more Pokémon to the equation, making it pretty much impossible to keep track of the number of Pokémon, I personally get confused after 151. I mean, why change it? My best memories of playing the Pokémon games and watching the TV series were of starting out in Pallet town, seeing our hero who we all know and love, Ash Ketchum getting his first ever Pokémon, his famous Pikachu.
So yeah, from this there are many adventures – everyone has to remember the emotional rollercoaster episode of Ash first obtaining his Charmander. There Charmander is, abandoned out in a storm with his tail, once proud and aflame, slowly dimming because of the treacherous storm. That is until Ash hears of an abandoned Charmander in the rain and instantly takes it upon himself to save this lost and afraid Pokémon, people around the world will remember this episode and it really embodies the love that our hero has for Pokémon and what they mean to him, in turn this Charmander wholeheartedly trusts Ash and agrees to go with him – rejecting his old trainer who left him in the storm. It’s episodes like these that I recall when I talk about Pokémon, not the newest episodes that have all kinds of different Pokémon involved in them - they just tend to sound silly to me.
As the years have progressed, Pokémon progressed with them leaving behind the old and, in my opinion, favourable “generation I” Pokémon and replaced them, essentially, with new kinds of Pokémon which I feel don’t measure up to the original. This process has been going on for many years now – the new Pokémon that are brought in are known as different generations, so it goes from Generation I to Generation V so far. I tried to watch one of the new Pokémon seasons and after seeing the starter Pokémon are called things like “Oshawatt”, I don’t even know what this is, but it’s blue and like the size of a small rock, I was disgusted that it was not the amazing Pokémon that we all know and love such as Charmander, Squirtle and Bulbasaur, im fairly certain that the producers must be running out of ideas of new Pokémon until they eventually bring it all back to the amazing days of generation I.
One thing that hasn’t changed through the years is, of course, the endeavours of the evil Team Rocket and their constant ingenious, but ultimately futile, attempts to try and steal Pokémon to appease their malevolent boss and leader of Team Rocket. Team Rocket is in every single episode as far as I know and they managed to sing their official theme tune to, foolishly, alert our heroes of their presence and even their intent in every single episode! These guys are a classic signature of Pokémon that I hope will never change, I mean who doesn't want to see Jessie, James and Meowth blast off again? Anyway, I believe that I’ve rambled sufficiently to bore you all, sorry about that! Anyway I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s broadcast.
I’m Jack Webb and thanks for stopping by, Winchester.
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