Pokemon

About

Pokémon is a franchise spawned from a video game and anime series produced by Nintendo multinational corporation. The title is a contraction formed by the Japanese words “Poketto Monsutā”(ポケットモンスター) which translates to “Pocket Monsters” in English. The franchise revolves around the capturing of strange creatures, the titular Pokémon, and using them in battle to capture more Pokémon in order to “catch ’em all.”

History

The Pokémon franchise began with a video game created by game designer Satoshi Tajiri, who was inspired by his childhood insect collecting hobby. The first Pokémon video games were released on February 27th, 1996 in Japan under the titles Pocket Monsters Red and Pocket Monsters Green for the Nintendo Gameboy. The game proved to be radically popular and a Blue Version was released on October 15th, 1996. Both Red and Blue were repackaged and translated for international release, reaching the United States on September 30th, 1998. Pokémon Yellow was later developed specifically for the Game Boy Color, in order to take advantage of its improved graphics and make the game appear closer to the anime.

Reception

On January 10th, 2007, The Independent^[4] listed Pokémon as the 2nd best selling game franchise of all time after the Super Mario franchise. According to a Nintendo press release^[2], the game series had sold over 200 million units by May 28th, 2010, 14 years after its initial release.

Pokémon characters have made their way into popular culture in a variety of ways. Pikachu starred in a Macy’s day parade balloon, Nippon Airways has a jet painted with Pokémon designs, and for four years an entire two floors of the Rockefeller Center in New York City was dedicated to selling Pokémon merchandise. Various shows such as South Park and Robot Chicken have parodied or mentioned Pokémon.^[1]

Creatures

Nintendo carefully translates the names of the various Pokémon creatures to reflect the different cultures they were introduced to. Each Pokémon’s name is meant to represent their properties, like Charizard (an elementally based Fire Pokémon) has the word “char” in its name to indicate it is a Fire Type. According to The Independent^[3], a study conducted in Britain in 2002 found that children were able to identify Pokémon creatures better than local wildlife.

An experiment involving 109 primary school children aged between 4 and 11 found that by the age of 8, most were able to name 78 per cent of the 150 Pokémon characters such as Pidgeotto, Pikachu and Jigglypuff. The same age group could manage correctly to identify only about half of the pictures of animals and plants, such as “beetle”, “deer” or “oak tree”, displayed on cards shown to them by the scientists.

As of July 2011, there are 649 species that have been included in various Pokémon related media.

Related Memes

I Herd U Liek Mudkips

The “I herd u liek mudkips” is a catchphrase associated with an aquatic Pokémon creature Mudkip. While the origin is somewhat blurred, it supposedly comes from a NSFW copypasta involving a boy and a Mudkip plushie.

Smugleaf

Smugleaf was the name given to the Pokémon Snivy before the 5th Generation English names were revealed. Snivy, along with Oshawott (who was dubbed “Wotter”) and Tepig (who was dubbed “Pignite”) were the three starter Pokémon in Black and White. Smugleaf has become associated with trolling, similar to “U Mad?” and “Problem?”.

Fuck Yeah Seaking

Fuck Yeah Seaking is a photoshop meme involving inserting the Pokémon Seaking into pictures of destruction, along with the words “Fuck yeah, Seaking!” implying that Seaking caused the destruction. This is further backed up by many of its Pokédex entries which state that it has the ability to drill through boulders.

Slowpoke

Slowpoke is used mainly on 4chan, but also in other places as well, as a response to something someone has said that is common knowledge or that is old news they just figured out.

Example:

Poster 1: Guys, did you hear about (really old news)?
Poster 2: (Posts a picture of Slowpoke)

It can also be used as a trolling technique by being posted by the same person who posted the Slowpoke-worthy post.

An advice animal-style image macro series featuring Slowpoke is often used to point out old news.

A Wild X Appears!

“A Wild X Appears!” is a snowclone used to indicate the arrival of a character or object. While inspired by the game, this particular phrasal template was never actually used in the game. In the original 1998 release of Pokémon Red and Blue the phrase was actually “Wild X appeared!”, and in later games it was changed to “A wild X appeared!” A derivative of this is “A wild Snorlax appears!”, typically used with pictures of overweight people.

Fake Pokémon Battles

Fake Pokémon Battles involve changing the attack messages or even the Pokémon themselves for comedic effect.

This practice originates from YTMND. The earliest instance similar to fake Pokémon battles was actually a fake Pokémon card duel. But evolved to be used in other media including videos, animated GIFs and still images.

It’s Super Effective!

“It’s Super Effective!" is a catchphrase stemming from the original Pokémon games made for Nintendo’s Gameboy console. During gameplay, power moves used by various Pokémon creatures could result in additional damages, which was indicated by the message “It’s super effective!”.

The phrase spawned many parodies using other elements among time. It’s usually used on chats and forums to describe or narrate a situation when one party does a certain action which is particularly effective against the other party.

Professor Oak

Professor Oak has been recurring character since the very first Pokémon game and even appeared in the first episode of the anime. In the Pokémon universe, he is well known for his knowledge about the creatures and is widely considered to be the best in his field. Professor Oak is mainly used as an Advice Animal-style image macro, pointing out the various illogical details in the game’s world, and parodies the snooty behavior of the character.

Gary Oak

Gary Oak, also known as “Gary MOTHERFUCKING Oak”, is a character that appears in both the game series and the anime. He plays the role of the rival character and is the grandson of Professor Oak. He is often considered a troll, appearing at the most inopportune moments and points out the player’s shortcomings. His supreme dominance has been also referred to as his “girth” and the fact that you can’t ignore it. On /vp/ (4chan’s Pokémon board), Gary is also used to spam threads that are considered pointless or that break the rules. This act of spamming pictures of Gary is called “Garybombing.”

Flareon Has No Moves

“Flareon has no moves” is a catchphrase among Pokémon fans that references the fact that the Pokémon Flareon has few attacks which can effective in battle. All of the attacks that a Pokémon can learn are part of what is called a “movepool.” A movepool can be ranked by how well the Pokémon can utilize it. For example, a defensive Pokémon with a large offensive movepool would also have a small collective movepool. Flareon is a Fire-type with a sky-high Attack stat, but the only Fire-type move it can learn that uses its Attack stat is very weak.

Top Percentage

“Top Percentage” is a phrase which originates from Pokémon Gold Version and Pokémon Silver Version. One of the NPCs in the game is called Youngster Joey, who has a Rattata in his team. Youngster Joey is one of a handful of NPCs in the game that you can register in the Pokégear, which is essentially a phone. When registered, trainers might call you up at random, sometimes for a reason, sometimes not. One time when Youngster Joey calls you up for no reason, he says “Remember my super cool Rattata? My Rattata is different from regular Rattata. It’s like my Rattata is in the top percentage of Rattata.” It can sometimes be used as a trolling technique, which references how Joey would call the player up at random times and interrupt, and the player would then have to listen to him say the same thing over and over again for no reason. Interesting to note is that Joey’s Rattata has perfect IVs (Individual values), which can alter a Pokémon’s stat, in all of its stats, making it literally in the top percentage of Rattata.

Diglett Underground

Diglett Underground parodies a ground-type Pokémon that is best known for its underground habitats. Although some of its moves involve scratching and growling, its entire body in full-length profile has never been revealed to the audience. This led to much debate as to what makes up the lower half portion of Diglett’s body underground. The only thing known about Diglett’s underground is that it has feet. This is once mentioned in the Nintendo DS video game: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team and Blue Rescue Team.

Pokeparents

Poképarents are advice animal-style image macros where each Pokémon represents a different role in the family.

Pokepuns

Poképuns feature simple lines of text where certain words have been changed by the image of a Pokémon. This makes the viewer guess what originally stood there, likewise to a rebus but used as a pun joke.

Pokemans

Pokemans is the lolspeak version of Pokémon. It is commonly associated with the catchphrase “My Pokemans, let me show you them.” or “Let me show you my Pokemans.”

Spirit Pokémon

Spirit Pokémon is a series of multi-pane comics featuring a Pokémon trainer who finds him / herself in some sort of predicament and conjures up the “spirit Pokémon” for help. Oftentimes, the summoned Pokémon brings comical relief rather than resolutions to the problem in hand.

Fakemon

Fakémon are non-canonical Pokémon character sprites and artworks created by fans of the franchise. Since Pokémon sprites are relatively small in size, modification of canonical Pokémon can be easily done. The techniques can range from simple re-colorings, “splicing” new sprites by combining parts of older sprites, or creating new ones altogether from scratch.

Pokegods

Pokégods are the gods of the Pokémon universe. In the original game, the only Pokégod the player could catch was Mew (Mewtwo was a clone). Mew could only be caught by activating a glitch in the game.

Because the only way to encounter Mew was through glitching, people were easily mislead into believing there were other Pokégods available to be found. It became a common trolling practice to fool people into performing impossible tasks so they could encounter another Pokégod.

In the later games the player could encounter legendary Pokémon that were described as the deities of the Pokémon universe with Arceus being the creator.

Tentaquil

Tentaquil is a Fakémon that originated from a /vp/ thread on 4chan. The name Tentaquil seems to come from the combination of the already existing Pokémon Tentacool / Tentacruel and Cyndaquil, although its appearance is more similar in design to Politoed.

A ROM hack of the game Pokémon FireRed Version called Pokémon: Tentaquil Edition was created in which Tentaquil was the starter Pokémon. Shortly after, a hack of Pokémon Emerald Version featured Tentaquil as well.

Longchu

Longchu (also named Pikaman) is not directly from the Pokémon game series. In Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl, people could change the moveset of the characters by hacking into the game. If a person would give the movement set of Ganondorf to Pikachu, the result would be quite shocking and would create a Pikachu with long limbs.

MissingNo.

MissingNo. is a Pokémon species found in the video games Pokémon Red and Blue. An abbreviation for “Missing Number”, MissingNo. Pokémon are used as error handlers by game developer Game Freak. Fans of the series have attempted to rationalize MissingNo. as canon, which has sparked discussion in sociological studies about the impact of video games upon society.

/vp/

/vp/ is 4chan’s board for Pokémon. It was originally created due to complaints in many boards (mostly from /v/, some from /a/) about too many Pokémon threads. After hearing enough complaints, moot finally decided to make a board exclusively for Pokémon.

/vp/ was created in the summer of 2010. At that time, it received quite a bit of attention. It had a brief period of time as “/tr/”, which stood for “Team Rocket.” The phrase “/tr/ainers” comes from this, which is equivalent to /b/’s /b/tards. Nowadays, /vp/-goers are known as “/vp/oreons,” which is based off of the Pokémon Vaporeon. /vp/ was also given a custom spoiler image, replacing the letters in the traditional spoiler image with the Pokémon Unown, which are in the shape of the alphabet (Unown has 28 different forms; the 26 letters, an exclamation point and a question mark).

/vp/ has spawned many of its own memes. Some, such as Tentaquil have spread outside of the board, but most have remained within the board. The three most common would be “>Implying owls are birds”, “Are you simgle, master” and “Bianca farting/I gotta fart superbad.”

Search Interest

Search queries for “pokemon” have remained somewhat consistent over the years with increases in volume during spring and summer months, and dips during winter months. Some of these increases coincide with the release of new games.

References