Opinion of Pokemon (20th Anniversary Special!)

[Goldwater]

When I was a kid, my cousins were big Pokémon fans, so I became a big Pokémon fan myself through my interactions with them.  I loved the video games, enjoyed watching the anime occasionally, and collected the cards (though I rarely played the card game).  In my early teens, I began losing interest, partially due to outgrowing it, but also because I had heard rumors that the name was short for "pocket devil" or "pocket demon."  The psychic, ghost, and dark types were a little to much occultism in my mind, although in retrospect, I have to question whether it was more than the kind seen in fairy tales and Disney cartoons.  I still have a soft spot for the games and the cartoon, but not so much for the cards.

More recently, my seven-year old cousin has become interested in Pokémon, in part from seeing my old cards, and probably also due to interaction with his friends at school (which happens to be a church school, but from a less conservative denomination).  As a result, I've regained some interest, but I doubt I will ever follow it as closely as I did before.  The franchise has expanded so much over the years that I doubt I could ever catch or keep up with it now.

In summary, I vote Neutral.  While there are still elements of Pokémon that concern me, the anime and the games are both nice memories of my childhood.

I sure hope the "elements" that concern you have nothing to do with that devil and occult bullsh*t that you bought into as a child.

(BTW, in case you still didn't know, it stands for "pocket monsters".)

[Goldwater]

When I was a kid, my cousins were big Pokémon fans, so I became a big Pokémon fan myself through my interactions with them.  I loved the video games, enjoyed watching the anime occasionally, and collected the cards (though I rarely played the card game).  In my early teens, I began losing interest, partially due to outgrowing it, but also because I had heard rumors that the name was short for "pocket devil" or "pocket demon."  The psychic, ghost, and dark types were a little to much occultism in my mind, although in retrospect, I have to question whether it was more than the kind seen in fairy tales and Disney cartoons.  I still have a soft spot for the games and the cartoon, but not so much for the cards.

More recently, my seven-year old cousin has become interested in Pokémon, in part from seeing my old cards, and probably also due to interaction with his friends at school (which happens to be a church school, but from a less conservative denomination).  As a result, I've regained some interest, but I doubt I will ever follow it as closely as I did before.  The franchise has expanded so much over the years that I doubt I could ever catch or keep up with it now.

In summary, I vote Neutral.  While there are still elements of Pokémon that concern me, the anime and the games are both nice memories of my childhood.

I sure hope the "elements" that concern you have nothing to do with that devil and occult bullsh*t that you bought into as a child.

(BTW, in case you still didn't know, it stands for "pocket monsters".)

I did know that, even before hearing the "pocket devil/demon" rumors.

And the same elements concern me about is as before: the psychic, ghost, and dark types.  Although you could argue that the concept of evolving with stones, and the whole elements concept in general is based on the occult.  I don't know, and if you read my previous post more closely, I bolded the part about questioning whether the occult elements are that extensive.  Realistically, it's doubtful that we can expect many Japanese import franchises to not have some questionable elements, because Christians make up only a very small percentage of Japan's population, and like most east Asian countries, it is deeply meshed in Eastern mysticism.  I actually read an article from a Christian gamers' website that seemed very fair and balanced on this issue, unlike many of the fundamentalist/conservative Christian sites that jump to conclusions and automatically label Pokémon as satanic.  It was by far the best analysis of Pokémon from a Christian perspective that I've seen.

Eh, fair enough, I suppose. I just fail to understand the Christian point of view of being "concerned" when a forum has non-Christian elements, assuming it's not explicitly anti-Christian, which Pokemon obviously isn't. It reminds me of BRTD's "all liberal all the time" nonsense.

[Goldwater]

Freedom games, horrible anime. Voted FF.