In Defence of Pokemon

Often, I hear parents complain about Pokemon. For those who do not know what they are, I am talking here about the fantasy world where humans and creatures called Pokemon coexist. The Pokemon can be domesticated and trained for battles by Human trainers. Pokemon are all strange looking creatures, often resembling some kind of animal and with a name that is almost always a mangling of some real words with makeup words, resulting in gibberish to the uninitiated.

I think these parents are misguided and are themselves turning into a curmudgeoning generation that mistakenly bemoans the lack of taste/ethos/skills in the young ones. Rings a bell? It should, since it is a recurring theme.

But to the point. The movies may not be your cup of tea, but most of the major literary themes can be found in there -- love, ambition, jealously, rivalry, sacrifice, courage, perseverance, duty etc. The Pokemon world is coherent enough to suck in the watcher and appeal to kids. The one movie that for me signifies this quite clearly is Lucario and the History of Mew, where Truth, Friendship, Sacrifice and Duty feature strongly. Please forgive your children for not watching De Avonden (talk about boring), but do not accuse them of having no taste.

Then there is the computer game on the Nintendo DS. In game terms it is a grind, full of micro-rewards, a very effective way to draw people into games. What I see in my own kids is that they learn to cope with setbacks, think about ways to succeed and persevere through it. The game is in english and they try very hard to understand the words, even picking up a number of them. I am amazed at how much they can already understand of the text. Besides the solo version, the game offers easy ways for groups of kids to hook up and play/trade/fight/chat together. Calling it anti-social just becase the means for conducting social traffic is not well understood is not doing it justice.

Finally, there is the trading card game. This strongly stirs the collecting fever that seems to be part of our genetic heritage. The cards of the game come in four varieties: common, uncommon, rare and ultra-rare. A tried & tested tier system that was first introduced by Magic the Gathering. I am surprised to see how easy markets are formed ad hoc and anywhere by groups of kids with their books, boxes and single cards stuffed in pockets. They deal easily and smoothly. Yes, there are some negatives, for example stealing and ripping off smaller kids, but more importantly, I see my own kids building up stamina, tolerance for trading away their own property, empathy for what the other kid wants (Theory of Mind anyone?) and developing savvy in what constitutes a good deal.

The last reason why I think Pokemon is not bad is deeply personal. My youngest son is suffering from Selective Mutism, which is often misunderstood by people to be shyness. It's hard to explain the affliction, but it is probably best described as a persistent, strongly rooted refusal to speak in certain situations with certain people. The affliction is curable by therapy and one way for kids to overcome Selective Mutism is, in clinical terms, if the price of persistant silence is higher than the social cost. Ever since my son has been engaged in trading Pokemon cards, he often found the cost of maintaining silence too high, and sometimes breaks that silence to fuel his trades. This blends in nicely with his therapy and has every appearance to speed up the process considerably. You can imagine that for this fact alone, the Pokemon movement has my undying gratitude.