Thank you for the helpful background.  Clearly, the preoccupation with 
pokemon is overwhelmingly as a commercial phenomenon.  Does anyone think 
there are more aspects to this than the economic?  I was struck by the way a 
lot of people's views seemed to have been determined by a knowledge of the 
origins of the pokemon characters, not by the way they are perceived as 
dramatic characters by their target audience -- ie children. 

In a message dated 28/10/99 21:13:45 GMT Daylight Time, [log in to unmask] 
writes:

<< There is a strong collecting thrust to the programme
 but the narrative is often inexplicable, from an adult perspective. >>

Thanks to my ignorance, I didn't know pokemon meant "pocket monster" or that 
it was originally a gameboy character. Nevertheless, because I did not have 
any preconceptions when I began becoming aware of the programme earlier last 
spring, I have to say I did not find anything inherently 'monstrous' about 
pokemon.  My daughter's favourite is a sweet little thing called Pikachoo 
(sp?) who just happens to be able to zap a lot of bigger, thuggier pokemon 
with some kind of lightning power.  So the narrative seems pretty 
straightforward to me -- the baddies are nasty to their pokemon (and the 
earth as a whole) and use/breed nasty pokemon in turn; the goodies are just 
the opposite; and each episode is the usual good vs evil story with the 
occasional moral about hard choices, duty, etc (distinctly Japanese, in my 
opinion, in this respect).

It may well be that the pokemon phenomenon signals the advent of a media 
super-system that has, for a change, an East-to-West trajectory.  But 
children just see the characters as yet another species of make-believe 
creatures that can be bought and collected.  Taking all this as granted, what 
strikes me as more interesting is the ideological shift manifested by the 
pokemon phenomenon.  As someone has commented, marketers are aware that kids 
'buy the sweatshirt' and grow out of it.  What surely should be of greater 
interest to parents and adults is what they don't necessarily grow out of, 
what they may retain.  And in relation to an artefact -- such as pokemon -- 
of a media super-system, that retained 'something' may be embodied in 
whatever 'truths' children perceive in the dramatic content of the programme 
narrative.  With the pokemon television programmes, dramatic content seems to 
pivot on the idea that humans, being the only moral agents around, are 
somehow responsible for all extant organic and artificial entities -- and 
that's not just a variation on an age-old universal drama, it is a 
fundamental ideological message -- arguably a more Japanese than Western one. 
 This, not whether the programme promotes the sale of Ninendo games, cards, 
or virtual pets, seems to me to be the more interesting children-and-media 
issue inherent in the pokemon phenomenon: How are children around the world 
receiving this message, and how are they being changed by it?


Jenina


PS.  By the way, I hope I haven't implied that I am anti-pokemon.  I think 
they're great fun, and they have the virtue of being an opportunity to glean 
something of what understand from what they see on television.


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