PETA on Pokemon: Maybe It Has A Point

story: Ben Deeter

PETA certainly isn’t my favorite organization. I can get behind the essence of what it stands for, but I don’t empathize with all its actions.

I can’t endorse its comparisons of the poor treatment of animals to slavery and the Holocaust, its distortion of scientific evidence to support an agenda and its founder’s call for a hunter to be hanged.

However, after much thought and much reflection on my own childhood, there’s one completely inconsequential thing where I see PETA’s point: Pokémon.

The popular Japanese video game involves capturing and battling fictional creatures with various powers. PETA is opposed to the very idea of this franchise, at one point saying that the games “paint rosy pictures of things that are actually horrible.”

Despite it being a totally unrealistic video game, Pokémon is pretty messed up from the creatures’ perspective. The catching and battling of Pokémon, the two essential actions in the games, capture this with stunning clarity.

Battling is pretty self-explanatory. Players make their Pokémon fight, shouting at them to use specific battle moves until the other creature faints. I might be crazy, but it sounds a little like dog or cock fighting with more human participation, making it all the more messed up.

Capturing Pokémon has more parts than the simple brutality of battle. The process begins by battling a wild Pokémon until it’s almost too weak to fight.

The player then throws a softball-sized Pokémon ball (Pokéball) that somehow traps and captures the creature (don’t ask me how, that’s just how this shit works, ok?).

When not in battle, the creatures are stored in that tiny space. We don’t know if the critters are awake or if they’re forced into unconsciousness. It’s not clear what that environment is like.

The games’ creators have offered little clarity on this trivial pursuit. One Pokémon game developer said that it’s likely “very comfortable” in there. I suppose locked cages usually have a pet’s favorite blanket or toy inside. And prisons provide a bed, right?

“Very comfortable” indeed.

The main arguments against this bleak reading rely on the game’s core message: A trainer can only succeed by treating Pokémon as partners. This is stressed in several ways, but most notably in the main conflict of the story.

Each game has a mafia-like “team” that uses Pokémon as means to its own end, usually involving world domination. Only the player, together with Pokémon, skill and the power of friendship, can overcome such evil.

How grand. People and Pokémon working together to achieve greatness. Except, there’s an uncomfortable wrinkle here too.

Only a handful of Pokémon ultimately get this special treatment, and they’re usually always the most useful and powerful in the game. The hundreds of others sit in storage, resigned to their fate as stats and fodder for beating the game.

The reason for this comes down to practicality. It’s just easier to have a team of six Pokémon that give the player an advantage through the entire game rather than try to rotate through hundreds of creatures.

It’d be great if players gave each creature the same love and quality time, but that would take a game that millions already play for hundreds of hours and turn it into a chore. An ethical chore for sure, but a chore nonetheless.

As much as I dislike saying it, PETA’s probably onto something here. But ultimately, I can’t fully side with it because it’s a video game. These creatures are digital and fake, and as long as the cartoonish cruelty stays between the thumbs of our youth, real animals will continue to remain unaffected.