Picking Up Pokemon

Occasionally I dip onto Geocities archives for various reasons, usually boredom. I went onto the pokemon page of the anime web turnpike and there’s a lot to say about how different pokemon was in that gap of time between gen 1 and 2. Most webshrines were dedicated to the anime, Marill was still called Pikablu, some people hated 4kids localization choices even then because of the “Americanization”, and ash had slanderers even back in the past. The games didn’t have Red and Blue, they were just Ash and Gary online. I also learned from Geocities looking at early webrings for Gary but the first pokemon manga to be considered the manga online wasn’t actually adventures. It was electric tale of pikachu. Well, actually, back then they were localized as comics. Link to Archive Link to Archive the one piece of adventures fanart I've found so far out in the wild, neat, huh. People had the AB trick for pokeballs out too. The pokegods were just considered real at some point too. Link to Archive Link to Archive Some people got GS early so they had some translation names when they used their guide, and some would say Cyndaquil was the least popular pick. Whatever old fan translation people were using would still have Red and Blue be Ash and Gary. It’s a very neat time capsule. Link to Archive I've gotta say that the most interesting part to me is the fact that decades later after only being able to see screenshots of the elusive spaceworld demo of gold and silver it's actually playable in different formats based on hacks and whatnot. Link to Archive Link to Archive Here's some other cool links I found, so I guess this can be considered a sequel to my pokemon findings page. Link to Archive Link to Archive The original names for Ash and Gary for the dubs were Casey and Bailey based on some early sticker sheets and can also be backed by TCRF’s early localization rejections Link to Stickers Link to TCRF They got Ash and Gary from rearranging Satoshi and Shigeru… Also there was a running theme of naming towns after gems and gym leaders after plants.

fascinating thing about mewtwo is that he's never actually said to be explicitly a team rocket thing within the games as far as i've checked in the pokemon mansion scripts and there's only an in game rocket connection with Rainbow Rocket which is years later Origins is the more canon accurate one being a savage feral beast versus the anime one which speaks and stuff and was super dramatic and also Dan Green I think.

So the animation interpretation kind of like… glued itself onto the games one. (Wasn’t there a girl one at some point during BW or did I misremember that. How. Is mewtwo like a template that can be copy pasted or something? Open source code clone?)

it's just that the animation and manga happened to do it (a rocket connection) first and that's why origins never says they're connected but mr.fuji/ dr.fuji is, that's why he made the pokemon house in lavender town because his pokemon mansion used to be for pokemon (and he found mew on faraway island)

Even Blaine has a connection where he mentions Mewtwo in Zensho and Masters that he was connected to Fuji There's a photo in pokemon mansion with Fuji and Blaine together

So the timeline goes like this: Dr Fuji and Blaine team up,
Fuji meets Mew in Guyana/Faraway Island,
Mewtwo

The in between is the canon divergent parts (Anime with Ai and Rocket, manga with Rocket.) Ai is a fascinating character but there’s already a whole website dedicated to her and mewtwo so I don’t want to say it in a way when that site said it way better but basically Dr. Fuji (who looks more like Dr. Tenma from Astro Boy within the animation than anything else) tried cloning his dead kid after she died in a car crash but the clones kept dying and one of the last ones connected to mewtwo and taught him about life and joy but mewtwo subconsciously erased that when she died alongside the other pokemon clones. None of that is in the 4kids version by the way.

Thinking about it, Mewtwo was probably the first interaction I’ve had in my life with a character who is shadow the hedgehog coded (clone/lab experiment, revenge on humanity, sad dead girl, so popular they came back, annoying character teaches them to be good (sonic and mew)).

It’s pretty weird that there was a “normal” Mewtwo red caught for the dex completion but everything after masters wise just has this evil Mewtwo. Giovanni really said “my cool experiment commission now” for rainbow rocket.

Spitballing ideas I’ve had in mind that kind of copy pastes stuff I’ve written from cohost already. i’m mostly doing this because of my ability to do and then immediately drop projects. FG as in fangame, not fighting game. Pokémon’s too vast for that since the roster’s always getting bigger every game and we’ve already had pokken and close combat and type:wild. I like coming up with ideas but actually making a fangame? Probably never ever, I’ll stick to struggling with one hobby as opposed to multiple.
Copy paste snatching some stuff from the recreation page too.

In terms of ideas I’ve had for like fangame stuff…
game focused solely on double battling like colosseum/XD but with more options
game that had you with a set team the entire time and you start off at the top and end up at rock bottom having to find all your teammates again
game focused on my fan concept, Big Unova, and takes the protagonists through like a more western southern area (like Texas)
Slice of life game idea
I once had an idea for a mystery dungeon game where they did detective stuff and dealt with like… an ultra beast mafia. It was a very silly idea.

I have a hamster wheel in my brain and it’s name is Pikachu and it’s got a chokehold grip.
A thing that I’ve noted that kind of gets my brain going about pokemon is that it’s a world full of like, innovative ideas that could be way more established gameplay wise or story wise but most of the time are pretty much nonessential and secondary to the structure of “get badge, fight evil team, get legendary, become champion” . Gen 7 was the closest they got away from that setup and then it was immediately walked back with gen 8. I like being able to do things that aren’t just battles in the games such as contests and the underground and the dream world once i got that setup and playing minigames and doing puzzles and sometimes I get those in the games I replay, other times I do not. Fan Projects are pretty decent with changing the structure of pokemon setups plus official spinoffs that do different things like snap and ranger and mystery dungeon and trope I/shuffle/cafe but I feel like the lack of spinoffs that do that anymore becomes more notable especially since there haven’t been sequels to some of them in years. The minor problem with playing fan projects though is when I’m playing a good fan project and I’m enjoying myself and oh, oops, it’s a cliffhanger and it’s been dead for years and there’s no follow up whatsoever so I’m left dissatisfied.
I think there could be a switch up with the genres or setup to make an interesting scenario. Things like idk, uh, being on a deserted island with your pokemon, or a game where you time travel, or maybe like an open world path game. These are all based on fangames I’ve played or have been playing pre hiatus. Of course, those things probably wouldn’t be near official but it’s nice to think about like a hypothetical shorter pokemon project that’s like, idk, made in 2D a la octopath traveler. I’d love to see the sprite art style be brought back for a spinoff. Another thing I’ve been thinking about is fan projects that have the player character already have a team or they play in a different battling format. I haven’t really played much of colosseum or XD but like I feel like there could be more pokemon games or projects that start off the player as an established person with an established team. I had a story idea in mind like that where the MC is a person who has lost their team and is essentially traveling the region to get them all back like what happened to Gold in the start of the manga.
Or I could go back to the time travel idea. With ZA seemingly taking place in an either historical or future Kalos that there could be more pokemon games that take place in different eras and periods rather than just “modern day, modern tech.” What about a pokemon steampunk game? Now that’s rad!

Follow up to a neocities post about pokemon villains and also a follow up to the gen 1 weirdness post:

the interesting development factoids of capsule monsters : you as the human player were supposed to fight alongside the pokemon, different color whips which was scrapped because it was too cruel (which it is) but became badges, the general amount of scrapped pokemon we still don't know all of and how it was less of the dungeon explorer of kanto we know now as gen 1 and more of an apparent like... "digital underground dungeons." Like the whole point of the link cable was that the pokemon were virtual beings and the pokeball is a leftover of that concept… I digress. Also the anectode about red and blue being the overseas release solely because it matched the American flag, all can be found on a bunch of interviews.

gen 1 rocket having whips is significantly different in comparison to every other game where it's just pokeballs. Plus the fact they have their sprite where their eyes are shaded over. This actually carried over to the anime where the rocket grunts have eyeshadow/shading except for the usual gang of Jesse and James and Brunch and Cassidy. (What, of course I’d use that joke!) so whips were kind of an “we had it in capsule monsters but forgot to take it out for every sprite” thing like how it’s on Sabrina of all characters. (This might’ve been a factor to why she was a rocket member in pokespe.)

gen 1 cool trainers/ ace trainers also had whips but this got removed for 2 but if you look at the spaceworld graphics the whips stayed (example image I used)

the only sprite that keeps a whip is the tamer class which also has like the giant lollipop which is more or less supposed to be beastamer and therefore not the norm.

A lot of early installment weirdness for gen 1 can be found in the fact that the game wasn’t really fully solidified as a franchise at all with pokemon more or less being a game made by a small dev team who went like “hey, it would be neat if we made an RPG for the Game Boy which utilized trading. Let’s base it off stuff we all like!” Pokemon is ultimately just a series about monster kaiju battles but what if the monsters were your pets and it’s like children’s levels rather than shonen so the minute there’s like a weapon that could actually harm a person you go “woah man put that down” because there’s no reasonable way for humans in pokemon to actually fight back for later generations aside from using their pokemon and anyone who can is a weirdo who shouldn’t be considered unless they specialize in fighting like battle girls and karate guys do. Team rocket stands out as the exception to this because they still have to be the guys responsible for killing Marowak so they can use the skulls for profit so the rocket grunt clubs her to death in origins, or whatever happens in LGPE, but it’s a constant that she has to die for Kanto.

all other teams afterwards having colorful outfits and clear uniforms and cosplay makes them kind of feel less intimidating when compared to like an actual mob and mafia but then they become more colorful looking likely due to the anime and in contrast giovanni becomes even more menacing but like, a multiversal mob is a bit silly. Spreading yourself out too thin with ambitions there man, you’re gonna get owned by like a multiversal Red.

Like ultimately compared to everyone else in the series, team rocket’s goal of money and profit is a lot different than environmental worries or fronts for being better but actual manipulation of people and the contrast is that it’s completely selfish gain and like without a long term goal because Giovanni seemed perfectly satisfied with his ambition of making money and it’s not known how long he was actually running stuff behind the scenes with just rocket . there's not really anyone there for like selfish gain in later gens based on my memories, everyone has some kind of deep esoteric reason for doing what they do aside from like maybe gym leaders because their role is to appear and then exit as soon as the town is left unless you're in a gen that has gym leaders act as active authority and show up, they're the most forgettable of pokemon's large cast of humans because my focus was primarily on the pokemon.

poaching is a real thing, like, in terms of most other teams goals team rocket is simple but effective
"we steal a the pokemon"

Another thing is pokemon has a lot of influence from japanese media that was out during the Tokusatsu/henshin boom (kamen rider, ultra seven, godzilla, super sentai) and I read rocket might be based on a villain group from one of those shows out during that time so what I really need to do is start getting into Toku and then my mind will be totally blown.

Note: This is definitely a contender for the picking up pokemon page, which I’m unsure what to do with going forward.

I definitely didn’t connect the dots beforehand but this is a thing that makes a lot more sense about this part of the GSC arc now: Kusaka definitely played the Spaceworld demo in between the time frame of writing out the Gold and Silver arc before the Crystal arc released. The fact that gold uses a skateboard like in the demo and the plot point of Red becoming a gym leader (like how he was supposed to be in Spaceworld) and how Daisy is a lab assistant, all of that can be found within the Spaceworld demo. Pokespe is reflecting a game that technically doesn’t exist because of how much it got reworked.

Dev history for GSC is fascinating because like it was in between Pokémon blue, yellow, the orange islands arc of the anime and like it’s basically 2 different games based on the spaceworld demo to what we got now. Conceptually a lot of the old maps for the johto demo can be theorized to be in Sinnoh which like aligns with all of gen 1-4 being based on Japan, plus how a bunch of pokemon in Spaceworld were used in Sinnoh in terms of adding in more baby pokemon, and how there’s just a lot of fascinating stuff to consider since GSC was being developed in the time period of 96 to 99 and ended up in an entirely different direction so much that I personally refer to Spaceworld GS as “Gen 1.5”.

Also doubly fascinating how Pokespe also reflects bits and pieces of this unused game . Impostor Oak appearing in spe; the cameos of Spaceworld trainer designs during volume 3, gold’s skateboard, and the whole rocket taking over the magnet train subplot might have been Kusaka just taking what he had from the Spaceworld draft of the manga and just gluing it with the plot of GS.

1997 was the airing of the og anime which meant that gen 2 was being developed concurrently because Ho-oh was the first pokemon shown, plus togepi was also there.

Pokespe also released March 3rd, 1997. And the tankonbon chapters themselves for RGB all release from the timeframe of 97 to 98 with the yellow arc lasting until 99 so within that time frame was the spaceworld demo. (Note: I can’t read Japanese but these show the chapters as they released in the magazine format in chronological order— https://pkspedia.com/02_datebase/06_serial/magagine/poken-serial-magagine1.html)

The spaceworld demo was in November and the arc chapters of the saffron city siege featuring imposter oak were January of 1998. The entire subplot in GSC proper about Red becoming a gym leader in general!
Because he was supposed to be, and Kusaka gets sent games/footage ahead of time so he can start making the manga that promotes the material. These pieces of material I keep talking about can all be found on the TCRF page.
But in terms of “why does Spaceworld use Red as the gym leader but refer to Blue in terms of the name?”

Because Spaceworld Gold was built off of Pokemon Blue (which aligns with sprites for gen 1 pokemon in SW) which was the 3rd version game compared to Red and Green which became US Red and Blue. There’s an weird alternate world out there where Red’s the one stuck with the color name debate.

Correction: Blue and G/S were being developed concurrently. The delay led to Blue coming out first and Yellow being made in order to capitalize on how popular the anime was/keep people interested in Pokemon after the delay announcement.

https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-Pokemon-HeartGold-Version-SoulSilver-Version/Iwata-Asks-Pokemon-HeartGold-Version-SoulSilver-Version/2-The-King-Of-Portable-Toys/2-The-King-Of-Portable-Toys-225900.html

Bonus image in regards to that time frame, stuff like Corocoro scans and anime promotional material . Who could forget about the famous pikablu..

Corocoro magazines sure were the way of leaks, at least right until the 3DS had the demos and pretty much every pokemon was revealed right out the gate. Or people who’d get their predownloads loaded in earlier than street date. That’s how I ended up getting spoiled on the entire Sumo roster.

More from Corocoro from the timeframe of 96 to 98. Fascinatingly even in the 98 stuff they’re still using screenshots from the Spaceworld demos rather than the fully revised gold and silver.

Kinda fascinating how the only Red there is the one from the clefairy gag manga while pokespe red is nowhere in sight because Corocoro does publish pokemon special, I guess clefairy Red and Ash were way more popular at the time.

I got all of these linked off of https://www.zoidsland.com/.

I feel like pokespe yellow is kind of a character that’s fundamentally misunderstood the further pokemon moves from it’s gen 1 philosophies of like people living with nature in harmony with pokemon vs the horrors of technology and as pokemon becomes more technology based a character who’s ultimately representative of like, Mother Nature kind of sticks out in a weird angle. I think this misunderstanding sticks even in her source material. Sort of a companion to my “gen 1 is weird article” like the rocket one and I finished ORAS and she didn’t show up so I wrote this out.

Natural healing and empathy powers are off putting by pokemon standards but things like auras exist so for all we know she’s just got a way to share her aura in terms of giving her retroactive reasoning because thats like what mega evolutions and Z-moves do. Yellow personality wise is kind of like a shoujo character who was thrown into a shonen and her team evolving at the very end when she kind of abhorred that because she couldn’t recognize her team anymore is kind of like her crisis of faith and loss of innocence at least compared to other characters. Wish we got to see more of her reaction but she uh. Fell asleep. Ultimately why i like yellow is that in spite of being a pacifist character she normally tries to give an ultimatum before going full into the fighting. She did threaten to drop the SS Anne on those rocket members that one time and never hesitated once to blow up Lance before the final confrontation on Cerise island. She isn’t whiny about it and I think that’s what makes her stand out at least with other pacifists in media I’ve had to deal with over time. She’d be a terrible game protag what with her team but Pokespe isn’t really all about stats considering how a tepig was able to keep up with alder’s team. She was created in mind to be the exact opposite of Red in terms of not being able to battle or catch well and that is kept up but the level boost thing is kind of also a thing with stats flaring up like the beast aura… now I kinda wish she could show up and interact with Riley. Too bad we’re never getting new remake arcs.

In terms of the whole nature thing as well, pokespe has done this before by citing pallet town as a place that was pristine and free of pollution and the viridian forest is the big example of “magical forest of nature”. The concept of pokemon being able to sense things being awry because they are ultimately beings of nature is also a repeated plot point within spe with things like the absol and the lake verity explosion leading to the pokemon being angry at humans. In terms of Japanese belief systems, Shintoism and Buddhism both have emphasis on respecting nature and the belief that every living thing has a spirit, which would explain why the forest itself can seemingly manifest powers as it shares its spirit as a blessing. Even during something during ORAS I thought “kinda interesting that even though it’s moved past viridian forest it still apparently hints that like the planet/nature itself can like summon people to act for it” and generally, Celebi has also kind of shifted into that direction of summoning people like during HGSS. That’s more of a plot analysis than a meta analysis which was more or less the reasoning of “we need these characters to show up during the remake arc to advertise the remake.” But with later generations games wise, things like Cursola existing and the various rotom phones and ultra megapolis point more towards a heavier science angle, right? It’s interesting in terms of “a new angle thats different from the more simple stuff.” As technology marches on in the real world, the pokemon world also reflects it.

But since gen 1 was just kanto in terms of locations and then abandoned buildings and the philosophy of “let nature reclaim what was abandoned” and there’s a character that is like a nature vs nurture conflict (lance is on the nurture side because I believe he was definitely raised in a way that made him think might makes right especially with the dragon clan) this retroactively makes the arc be like “but why though” especially since the powers that healed kanto and the world basically immediately gave them leeway to start doing their construction project type of things again. The thing she represents isn’t 100% a priority anymore. Of course this is also a speculative bit but since she’s a character that has no real reason to appear since third versions and extra things during the switch were ignored she doesn’t really appear because like, the Viridian forest is her domain, so she kinda just stays and chills. She’s not a fighter like Red and she’s not as strong as him in base form, so she’s kind of like in terms of DBZ comparisons like she’s like the dende and Gohan of the group. (Note: In terms of everyone else gen 1 wise, Red is Goku, Green is Piccolo, and Blue is Bulma.)

Well, cohost has been down for a while and I’ll probably rehost some stuff from the recreation page but how about that teraleak thing?
It’s been a bit since the floodgates opened and all hell broke loose for terminally online pokemon fans, i.e, me. Basically this is on an entirely different level than the gigaleak in that instead of the elusive GS prototype it’s actually multiple prototypes including XY which finally debunked the alien theory. Mega Jynx was real the whole time too! They even found the art for the spiky eared Pichu. There’s all sorts of things that are for the brand coherency just floating out in the world forever now at least until TPCi rounds up the execution block.

It does majorly suck that included in the 1 TB was the data for like, every single employee from Gamefreak and the leaker said they were witholding information for other games but like. Why the heck did you include doxxing everyone there then. You couldn’t have scrubbed that out too if you were gonna keep out newer stuff?

Gen 3’s concept art was so radically un-pokemon like that it’s insane. The entire roster is like the same surreal energy of Spaceworld GS. The most interesting part of this probably was the dev cycle thing where it’s like, GF was juggling multiple projects on multiple game engines that weren’t even all 1 to 1 because HGSS used DP’s and BW’s used Platinum’s at first. Crazy. The Pokémon development cycle has always been kind of nuts huh.

There’s a lot of development material that definitely shouldn’t have been seen, like the scrapped lore documents in gen 4, which was certainly a lot when everyone ran it into the ground on social media. This pretty much proved to me that people saying they want a more mature pokemon game couldn’t even handle the folklore tales which were basically just actual native stories but animal spirits and yokai were replaced with pokemon. Like it got severely toned down for the actual release game, why are people taking content we were never supposed to see as canon. This has only proven a thing I’ve always thought about in the fringes but because of the constant game of attention span rage baiting and like, lack of caring about games as a whole outside of select bits for instant satisfaction and praise leads to a mass swath of pokemon fans having one of the worst reading abilities as a whole fandom and have the worst interpretations. Like I’ve never felt fully confident to say it but like the reading comprehension devil just hangs out on the lawn of the pokemon fanbase watering his plants and sipping tea.

Masters also had a leak but only for pre-development info and now I’m dissapointed that the player characters had a lot more fashion before they got cut to become bland and blander.

I’d update the protag chart more thoroughly since there’s concept art but a lot of this stuff is still new which means it could be fake or more stuff can come out or you know, the more likely thing of the site getting sniped. The only thing extra I’m posting currently is an image of Cal because he’s a guy from a while back who I was like “does this guy have full artwork if there was a portrait made for him for Stadium 2” which he does! It’s just him in a half portrait, but to be fair, that’s better than nothing.

I feel like I'm hitting that wave of when a new season begins and my interest for a thing completely wanes. In this case, my summer feeling for pokemon is shriveling into dust and I want to get back into playing like final fantasy or something. I’m getting burnout, I think.

Putting the console down, turn it off, go outside, read a book or something. It's quite easy to get burnout these days when you only stick to one thing or franchise, right?

I kept getting miserable YouTube recommends about how bad pokemon is now or how every game has always been bad and there’s going to be a new hack to fix it. I get it, you don’t like the direction the games and franchise have been going. People can have their own opinions unless everything they have to say is negative to which I will say "why are you still here then lmao." Reigional and Generational wars are pretty silly. People don't play games with the context of awareness of the game development so knowing something like Kanto was literally compressed to hell and back to fit in OG Gen 2 Johto is a factoid that's been ignored for the narrative of "the kanto postgame is boring" well that's because in the spaceworld demos it was literally 1 town , like the development history for gen 1 and 2 games is fascinating but I digress. the XY chronicles have been the first time I've actually kept a gameplay log for pokemon that wasn't a hack and even that was an exercise for me in “am I being too harsh on this game or am I not being harsh enough or did I play it wrong because I failed the full context of the game itself in terms of what I was expecting? The notes I took paint one side of the story but did I truly feel as angry about the game because my play style was different from the intention? Then what was the intention?”

I have gotta start getting into other stuff, man. Like having more things added to your plate lets you appreciate all sorts of things from different avenues. New shows, new books, new hobbies… like if I’m dissatisfied then I should try other things. And I know that’s a cop out but eventually the well is going to run dry where I’ve completely exhausted myself of a thing and gotten sick of it and it will have an effect on the way I play the game and talk to people about the games. Sort of how I’m feeling on the site revamp tbh…

I fully understand that I’m never going to get a pokemon game that made me feel the same way I felt as a child from when I was playing older pokemon games and quite frankly I do not like open world games so I don’t have any particular extreme “want” for any of the switch games (Please note I was writing this out before I impulsively bought a used copy of Sword but still have zero interest in SV). I would’ve maybe for LGPE if it didn’t have the go mechanics and joycon reliance (I have a switch mini) and I would’ve maybe for BDSP if the models were like ORAS but they didn’t and I don’t have an extreme desire to transfer everyone over to be stuck behind another 5$ subscription service or however much money pokemon home is when bank’s inevitable shutdown means that the pokemon I caught and got from various saves will no longer be allowed to all be together in a single game. Least there’s the hacked transporter/bank save manager but still…

I know this is hypocritical when I’ve designed a good chunk of my website dedicated to just pokemon stuff but I’ve already mentioned that I have hobbies outside of pokemon, it doesn’t occupy my brain space as badly as it used to when I was a child, it’s just the thing I’m currently focused on since I can’t actually play my previous focus thing which was FF14. (Which is where I got this philosophy from because with content lull periods director Yoshi-P went “great time for you to play other games!”) Before that, I would’ve said it was MapleStory, but I have a very incredibly long list of gripes for that game even if I spent a decade on it because I have zero nice things to say about it outside of presentation. (Never ever going back to that game as long as I can help it.)

My first foray into the manga universe might’ve been a best of yellow manga and an immediate reading of the RGB arc, but there’s many that I’ve pivoted to and read in the years as a Pokémon fan. I’ve always enjoyed the versatility of the franchise allowing for all sorts of different kinds of readings and interpretations as seen by the many authors takes and glimpses of their interpretation of the pokemon world, even if some are hit or miss. In fact, outside of early spe my favorite pokemon manga is diamond and pearl adventure. I like seeing the different directions of the world as provided by things like the animated shorts, OVAs, or the anime episodes whenever I saw them as a kid. I think Pokemon should continue to be a franchise that covers all sorts of stories and genres and aspects should be treated as pillars which is the reason why I will continue to refer to manga as supplementary material that expands upon the world and games.

But uh… there’s kind of a limit on discussing manga, a bit? Best you get in English on big sites is mentioning Pokespe/adventures which is referred to as “the manga” despite the fact that Viz has published other manga like Diamond and Pearl Adventure, Ginji’s rescue team, and even a bunch of ash tie ins and his movie adaption mangas (which is a different story to tell). It’s big enough to the point that trying to look up more unknown stuff just brings up Pokespe. Smaller sites talk about older manga but problem is those forum spots are mostly dead—no necroposting please.

Subtracting the popularity part, Pokespe also eclipses the rest of the manga in terms of length— a good majority of the ones I’ve read over years have only had 2 volumes maximum on average. Of course there’s exceptions (try adventure comes to mind) but a lot of the mangas can’t be as long running because they’re normally made in mind to only promote one game and trying to stay current with the game dev cycle would be a huge game of catch up — the BW2 arc in Pokespe took 7 years to complete because of how many games came out during that time frame that needed to be prioritized. I graduated high school years ago and the BW2 arc was still not finished in that time frame, which is crazy, because the arc is only 24 chapters in total. Sure, we can get more manga that cover and promote the game of choice, but something as long running as Spe or Pocket Monsters (both almost 30 years) probably won’t ever happen again due to the cyclical nature of the game development.

But there’s still a few problems I have outside of that, like namely that the manga that is mostly well known is gatekept by out of context panels to the point that it’s almost the only discussion. Even I myself have fallen into the hole of “what’s the darkest moment no one talks about in Pokespe ” which was then proceeded to be used as bait for a joke on Twitter. Yes, I know that it’s a bit jarring to see some panels in Pokespe when most of the pokemon franchise is family friendly barring maybe like, some scenes of implications. But I watched DBZ as a child which aired on TV and remembered thinking about Pokespe, “I need to read more of this, it’s cool!” when I first finished the book when I saw it in middle school all those years ago. Pokespe isn’t even labeled as shonen in its home country but instead has been labeled as kodomo (children’s) manga for the entirety of its run. In an even more bizarre contradiction the most popular of the manga is also niche and the furthest I’ve ever seen people normally go is through just the RGB arc which again adds to the cyclical problem. Some people on the YouTube sphere have tried to change this public opinion with their videos but it can’t really be changed if more popular channels continue to run with the same old gag of no context panels (minus Dengeki/Electric Tale which I can understand why because the goon energy in that one by the artist is insane.).

The last but most important problem is that the manga that aren’t well known also are hard to find unless you really look and then normally aren’t translated (to English, at least). The further you look into the manga list on spots like bulbapedia the less there are that have info on them. Something that ran for 20+ years like pocket monsters (the corocoro Clefairy manga) isn’t going to get anything new or a full translation because well, it’s incredibly weird to begin with (literal toilet humor jokes) but it went all the way up to Galar and even got an anime reference (that one movie that Ash and Gary watched as children in the gen 3 anime). Some are completely gone like the sequel to phantom Pokémon 7 because it was in a magazine and never got manga format. It took years for something like Zensho (the true story) to get a full translation and that was only one volume. Even something that did have an English localization, magical Pokémon journey/ Pipipi Adventure, is barely anywhere to be found online with full scanalations of what was there. I found an internet archive copy of some volumes, but they’re all login only. And I suppose there’s some discord out there that talks about these but I’m burnt out on discord in general. Plus the only other person I knew who read pokemon manga on discord was a power level guy so me wanting to talk about like, characters and story and themes went nowhere.

To keep this light though, I’d like to link to the internet archive version of jb2448 alongside this neocities page I found which has been useful for seeing which manga are still around.
Pokemon Manga on Neocities

Archive of JB2448

In a TCG book titled “Pokémon Card Strategies for Adults” Bill’s JP name is labeled as the author, where it then described that he was born in pallet town and then studied with Oak on Cinnabar island. The last name is different (Sonezaki compared to Kido), but then there’s also Dengeki Pikachu/ Electric Tale where he is in fact working with oak. (That one is all over the place though with it’s incredibly questionable …everything.) He’s a graduate of a JP magazine exclusive tie in fictional university. Celadon University was referenced in both the anime and Pokespe while also having a gift magikarp with dragon rage given out.

The infamous poliwhirl Fearow Pokespe panel is because it tried to eat Bill while he was turned into a ratatta. He also gets his house broken into during the yellow arc by Blue (girl) plus he has one of my favorite moments in GSC when he gets the teleporter working and all the friendly characters send in all their Pokémon to stop Lugia and ho-oh. In How I became a Pokémon card he’s one of the featured characters in a chapter, befriending a dratini in a time period where people were afraid of Pokémon.(As an aside, I wish more people could pick up and translate Pokewake. Please.)

This is a man who works in the IT department for computer maintenance with digitized monsters and has a huge massive amount of PCs for them. It’s so funny that all the people in the Cerulean center were seething about him. Somehow the rival missed the entire teleportation incident plus Bill has been multiple different Pokémon depending on the game picked and it’s brought up in Alola as a thing. He has had both a British and southern accent because of his Kansai dialect. He has a little :3 smile. He has a fan club in johto where they reveal that he’s lactose intolerant.

I think he should be in masters. Leaf already mentioned him once.

See, it’s the inherent uniqueness of the franchise that makes me enjoy it because really, you can pick any Pokémon and it’ll be someone’s favorite or they’ll have some kind of story attached to it. There’s so much you can do with Pokémon and it’s various pieces of material in all aspects so it really can potentially be a franchise for everyone in like. The creative aspect way. Not like. The existential capitalist dread way. That’s still there though.

Gamefreak’s got a few earlier works that it likes to reference in pokemon sometimes like Pulseman's Neo Tokyo Theme being referenced in Barry's theme and the SS Anne being named after the computer Pulseman was born on (there's a lot more Pulseman references like Rotom but I want to look into the game and see if I can find them before checking wikis). The Mario and Wario game that's in copycat's house is a game that GF developed. In the Gen 3 prototypes there's a sprite of a character from Mendel Palace/Quinty in the data. There's also a potential mother/earthbound connection in the fact that Ape Inc eventually became creatures Inc that developed pokemon. It's neat spotting some of these or learning about them afterwards. Harmoknight is talked about in a pokemon center in XY. Maybe the next game will reference Drill Dozer or Pocket Card Jockey?

So buried in this seemingly unfinished demo is a complete pokemon game… in the most surreal way possible. Screenshots don’t match the total bewilderment I found in that a good amount of the game was functional, but the player just had to go out of their way with other tools to make it work in a manageable way. It’s kind of like, completely unfinished ROMs are their own mysterious thing because it’s easy to see where the author’s intents were going but due to either a lack of interest or cancellation it’s never finished and then it’s up to people like me to explore what remains of it and see how it could’ve gone. I basically watched a youtuber do the exact same steps I did with a different hack and my thoughts are if it’s like, entirely abandoned and unpolished then I think it’s fine to just go ham with breaking the entire thing down. I had fun doing that just because of the genuine curiosity. Pokemon kinda is a rabbit hole of its own in varying bursts of quality, original ideas, and it's ripe for potential. Even if it is uh. From an incredibly unfinished hack. (What I was thinking of was the term kusoge, translated as uh. crap game. I don't think the game is crap, but obviously it's not on the same level as more polished ones. I had to basically activate the game shark for it.)