Dreams of the Enemy

So, who else doesn’t really like all of the generic evil villains out there these days? For a lot of games, it’s enough just to have a villain that is simply evil. Not morally gray, not well intentioned, just evil. Same goes for movies… as far as one can tell, Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars is evil for the hell of it. Really, what does he want? Because “power for its own sake” is about the only answer visible.

Building a massive planet-crushing Death Star and destroying a civilian pacifist planet is another excellent example of what I’m talking about. What point was there to that, beyond just being evil for the hell of it? Try this plotline: Empire captures princess, puts her in Star Destroyer prison cells. Rescue team saves princess, but Empire plants tracking device on their ship.

About the only differences are: the Empire has a lot less ill will (you know, that whole not-blowing-up-a-planet deal) and a lot more Star Destroyers, since they have a lot more resources to spare. The other problem, though, is that it’s less dramatic, which is why in Star Wars the villains needed to be over-the-top; why they needed to be purely evil for its own sake.

It gets old after a while, though. Why doesn’t Team Rocket from Pokémon go into the mechanized construction business? With the number of robots they’ve built for the sake of screwing with Ash and friends, they clearly have the aptitude for it. And they wouldn’t have to go blasting off all the time. I guess it’s just not evil enough (or funny enough) for them to make an honest living and send money and Pokémon to Giovanni that way.

It certainly seems in a few different cases that there’s no internally consistent reason for the villains to act the way they do. The demands of producing an interesting movie or TV show, the demands of drama or comic relief, are the reasons for creating villains that act in these ways. But treating those stories as worlds in their own respect forces the view that they’re acting evil for the hell of it. That the villains have no goals beyond being the antagonists; that the dreams of the enemy are non-existent. And people don’t usually act that way.

So it’s awfully refreshing once in a while to get a series like Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s. As the series opens, the antagonists seem pretty clearly marked. You know, those guys over there that are the guardians of the Book of Darkness. That cursed book that has never been used for anything other than destruction. That tome that will gain limitless power once all 666 pages have been completed. Frankly, at first, it’s a little bit of a cliché storm. (link to TVTropes)

But, much like the first season does, it doesn’t remain clichéd for long. The motivations of the “villains” are laid bare before the season is half over; the dreams of the enemy are apparent to at least the viewer, if not the protagonists. And the master of the Book of Darkness isn’t the textbook villain lusting after power; likewise, the guardians aren’t just the textbook mini-boss squad that seems to gain nothing from being evil. Oh no.

In fact, they’re about as far from that as it’s possible to be. In a refreshing turn from the standard “bwa ha ha I’m evil and I like it” villain, the master of the Book Of Darkness specifically ordered the guardians not to go out and complete the book. She hardly qualifies as an antagonist, and even if one did try to fit her into that category, she’s definitely not seeking “power after power, ceasing only in death,” as Hobbes put it. (Yeah, I can reference political theory too.)

But then, why are the guardians completing the Book? Clearly they must be more typical villains, right? Well, actually… no. Actually, their leader accepted that order fully and completely. Until they learned that the Book of Darkness was killing its master through a curse, one that would lose effect if the Book was completed. Yes, that’s right: they’re acting as they are to save their master’s life.

What does this mean? People aren’t usually mindless drones that are only supposed to act as the antagonist for some greater story, and it’s nice to see a story that reflects that fact. Although they do exist, it’s the rare person that really does act evil for the hell of it. In the world that we live in, everyone has some kind of dream or goal. Even one’s enemy or opponent has their own wishes and desires. Sometimes, those are even noble ones.

It’s all too easy to look at an opponent and dismiss them as nothing more than an object. Nothing more than an enemy to defeat, even to kill. But that’s not what people are like. When war breaks out, the dead are reduced to numbers and the enemy is reduced to just some monolithic force that must be defeated in battle. It’s all too easy to lose sight of the people behind all of those numbers and uniforms.

Note, I’m not saying that war as a whole is wrong because of this. Unfortunately, sometimes force is the only solution to an opponent who carries a destructive dream. But there must be that awareness of the opponent’s status as a human being. And that awareness is one of the things that will help to ensure that we go no farther than we must.

Protection and Destruction

The line between the two is incredibly thin. All too often, the effort to protect something requires that something else be destroyed. This is most obviously seen in war, when armies do battle. Usually with both sides claiming justice; all claiming that their goal is to protect. And all the while, more destruction rains down. Sometimes, it reaches even what’s being protected; the old joke “We had to destroy the village in order to save it” is a classic for a reason.

But then, where can the line be drawn? Just yesterday, I watched the eleventh Pokémon movie, Giratina and the Sky Warrior. (It’s on again tomorrow, February 15^th, at 1900 hours. Although I will spoil a good deal of the plot, so if you want to watch it, I’d read this after you do so.) And interestingly enough, the story of a reversed world and its role had plenty to say about the line between destruction and protection.

The villain of this tale was a man named Zero. Who knows why someone would actually be called by that name, but whatever. And his goal was to take control of the Reverse World by basically taking power from the Reverse World’s sole inhabitant, Giratina. Sacrificing that legendary Pokémon in the process, of course.

But he of course had his noble motives. You see, the fight between Dialga and Palkia from the tenth movie (I didn’t know the Pokémon movies had this much continuity…) had put strain on space-time, and the Reverse World was relieving this strain. The results of this process were fairly severely polluting the Reverse World. And Zero billed himself as its defender, working to prevent the real world from polluting the Reverse World any further.

The strain is visible. Protection, or destruction? Or both? For Zero’s plan, a fairly major amount of destruction was called for. To protect the Reverse World, the real world would have to be destroyed. To even get there with the power to do anything, Giratina would have to be destroyed. In this specific case, it’s fairly obvious where Zero falls. In actually watching the movie, the sheer madness is obvious more than any desire to protect.

Likewise, the heroes are also fairly apparent. But still, the line between protection and destruction exists. By trying to stop Zero’s efforts, Ash and his friends (along with the titular Sky Warrior, Shaymin) were basically saying that the pollution of the Reverse World was acceptable. Along with, of course, doing indescribable amounts of damage to Zero’s Pokémon and assorted gadgetry.

So why is it that the destruction endorsed by the heroes is acceptable while the destruction of the villain isn’t? What is it about their actions that makes them better than Zero? There are a number of answers to that question.

Some philosophies dictate that the massive amount of destruction that Zero would have caused versus the smaller amounts that the heroes caused in the end justify their actions. That purely weighing the different sides of the balance show how Zero’s actions were worth stopping. Likewise, Zero was protecting an abandoned world in which only he would live while the heroes protected the real world and all of its people. That’s a perfectly valid answer to that question.

Personally, though, I prefer the one rooted in intent. Zero’s intent wasn’t really to protect. Sure, he tried to claim that he was protecting the Reverse World. And it’s certainly even true that his actions would have stopped the pollution of the Reverse World. But that’s not what he wanted. He wanted to forcibly take power from Giratina, killing it in the process. He wanted to rule over the Reverse World and destroy the real one. He wanted to destroy.

While the heroes? The heroes at all points were protecting something. Ash and his friends spent much of the movie trying to protect Shaymin, or at least accompanying it when it didn’t really need protection. They put no small amount of effort into protecting the real world, of course. Even more, they knew that it was sadly the natural order of things for the Reverse World to react as it did to the strain on space-time. It can even be said that they were trying to protect the natural order of things. They wanted to protect.

And when Giratina was at Zero’s mercy, Ash, Dawn, Brock, and Shaymin put no small amount of effort into protecting it: a legendary Pokémon that they had actually fought earlier in the movie; one that certainly had no real desire to help them at the time. Shaymin had been terrified of Giratina earlier in the movie; now, Shaymin nearly exhausted itself helping Giratina.

Intent and the will to carry it out can change the future. As such, intent must be where morality is rooted. There are those with the desire to destroy. They can claim that they’re protecting something: Hitler can say that he was protecting the German people; Zero can argue that he was protecting the Reverse World. But intent is what matters: Hitler wanted to rule the European world, Zero wanted to rule the Reverse World.

And if the heroes have to engage in destruction to stop them, then so be it. If the Allied Nations have to engage in World War II to protect the free world; if Ash and Shaymin have to accept the pollution of the Reverse World, then so be it. The line is indeed thin between destruction and protection. And in so many cases, both will be seen at once.

But it can be determined who is in the right. Destruction may be all too common, on all sides of a conflict. And in many of those conflicts, the intent of each side is paramount. Whether to claim protection in order to destroy, or carry out destruction in order to protect… I know which side I fall on. I will make no excuses. I will destroy if I must. But I will do no more than I must, and I will remember why I act in that way.

The Rewards of Honest Effort

In today’s world, Internet connectivity for video games has progressed past a novelty into a requirement. Almost all decent multiplayer games have a system in place to connect with other human players anywhere in the world these days. But that isn’t always enough. In most cases, these systems will have limitations, especially Nintendo’s systems. Without having other ways of communication, without knowing a person in some other manner, it is usually impossible to connect with that person over a Nintendo game on the Internet.

Thus, the need for other means of game play. There are programs that can be downloaded that replicate certain functions of games and allow these competitions to be held online with less restriction. Not just video games, either; there are systems that emulate things like trading card games as well, to allow their play over the Internet.

I’ve tried some of these emulators. As a Pokémon trainer, when I learned about the world of competitive battling for that game, I wanted to try my hand at it. So I got a simulator called Shoddy Battle (their website is here, for the curious) which has as its stated goal “to create and maintain… a computer program that offers an online RPG battle experience similar to one found in the Pokemon games.”

And honestly enough? I don’t really like using it all that much. Now, before I continue, I want to make it abundantly clear that this dislike has nothing to do with the program itself or with any of the people involved. The program works beautifully; the people I’ve battled have (usually) been fine people and a fine challenge for my skills. No, after some personal examination, I’ve come to realize that my dislike has to do with the idea of using a simulator in the first place.

When it comes to Pokémon battle, there are two major parts to the planning. In the real world, strategy is generally long-term planning for a wider situation, while tactics are more immediate methods in a single battle. Pokémon is divided much the same, with the art of team building alongside the actual use of that team in battle. Both are highly complicated affairs for which experience is a major asset.

And when actually playing the game, both require a lot of effort and skill to properly manage. As I write this, I’m laying initial plans for a new competitive team. Even after I finally decide on what Pokémon I’m actually going to use, which is a challenge all to itself, I’ll still have to get those Pokémon with the right natures (natures affect their statistics) and train them properly to optimize those statistics for each Pokémon’s given role. This is a process that will likely take up several hours of game play, spread over days or even weeks, in its completion.

Once all of that is done, I’ll start battling with them and figure out what works and what doesn’t, along with having to deal with the fallout from any mistakes that I make. Each battle will be a challenge all its own, as I’ll have to figure out how to deal with anything that comes my way. And more often than not, I’ll probably fail and end up losing, as competition between human players is something for which experience is important… and I don’t have much of that yet.

But after all of that effort, I get its due reward. I do have a team designed for competitive battling already, after all. And yes, it did take a lot of effort to set up on my game card. It isn’t the greatest team in the world, but it is mine. After all of that effort, there is nothing I enjoy more in the Pokémon games than bringing it out (usually on Pokémon Battle Revolution for the Wii, since I can battle random people over the Internet with that) and trying my level best to take down the opposing team.

I have also constructed a competitive team on Shoddy Battle for use on that program. And after battling with it several times, I started to notice that I didn’t really enjoy those battles as much as the ones I did with the actual game. It eventually got to the point where I all but ceased using the simulator entirely; I haven’t really logged on to that for a while. And I think it has to do with the effort involved in using the simulator.

There’s a reason why I emphasized that the team I built on my Pokémon Diamond game card was mine. After I spent the amount of time that I did, and invested the effort that I did in creating it, I feel like that team has become more than just a few Pokémon that I trained. There’s more than just that time and effort in them now. I feel like I’ve invested a part of myself in that team.

And when I battle with that team that I built, I feel like I’m displaying that; I feel like I’m putting my effort forward for the world to see. The people that I have challenged probably aren’t too impressed with my effort, but that was never the point. I enjoy battling with my Pokémon; I enjoy challenging myself in attempting to lead them to victory.

The problem is… I don’t get that feeling from dueling on the simulator. I haven’t put much effort into creating that team. I still had to decide what Pokémon to use and what roles they would play, yes, but once those decisions were made the rest was nothing more than clicking buttons to do what took me hours in the actual game. The feeling that that team is a result of my effort just isn’t there.

I have no doubt that there are people who would dismiss much of that as irrelevant; this isn’t the Pokémon anime show, in which the relationship between a trainer and his or her Pokémon is of paramount importance. But until computers can simulate the kind of interaction between trainer and Pokémon that is seen on the show­­, I think that what I feel playing with the team that I built is as close as I can possibly come to that same camaraderie.

And maybe it is irrelevant. It certainly doesn’t affect game statistics; in fact, the Pokémon team I constructed on the simulator is superior in that respect, because I have more power to alter certain aspects of the Pokémon on that than I do in the game. But there are still rewards for that effort that I put in. There is a sense of joy that I haven’t found elsewhere, in taking the results of my work and pitting it against the work of other trainers.

Finally, I turned on Pokémon Battle Revolution and played a few battles against people that I’ll likely never see again just a few days ago. It was as enjoyable as it always is, despite the loss that I took. In contrast, I haven’t activated Shoddy Battle for several months now. That, more than anything else in my opinion, shows what my rewards are for the effort I put in. Maybe it’s only me, but I take pride in that effort, and that gives both the results and the process of that effort a joy that I haven’t found without it.

The Daily Life of a Pokémon Trainer

Yeah, interestingly enough, that’s something that even the most dedicated of Pokémon fans know very little about. In the games themselves, it makes very little mention of distances or of time spent traveling, and the day-night cycle is based on the real world’s time. (The alternative is a system like that in The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, where a certain amount of real time, measured in minutes, caused an hour to pass in the game’s world.)

And I don’t blame them for that either; it would have little relevance to the game to have to worry about camping out for the night on the road to Hearthome City. But it’s also impossible that the minute or so that I spend biking from one major city to the next is as long as it takes in the game’s world. This is an adventure that would probably take many weeks or even months to complete; the game ignores those details to simplify the game play.

Okay, so the game doesn’t include many of the minutiae or logistics of actually traveling around on foot, and thus offers no real insights into the day-to-day life of traveling, training, and battle that a Pokémon trainer’s life would theoretically consist of. One would think, though, that we could look at the animated series for more on that, right? After all, there are eleven seasons and hundreds of episodes of Pokémon anime. Surely some of those offer more insights into what the daily life must be like.

And one would be right… mostly. Certainly, there are times when the anime definitely offers a better look. Brock is often shown cooking meals, and he’s just generally well prepared for traveling. (Good thing Ash became friends with him.) Also, Ash and Dawn sometimes do training sessions. (I wish that was possible in the game, to train without battling.)

There are, however, several problems with accepting the picture painted by the anime as the daily life of your average Pokémon trainer. Most of those have to do with the limitations of producing a show that needs to provide ratings and money. After all, it would be incredibly dull to watch an episode of the show that just had them walking along the road to the next town. Yet I have no doubt that most of their days consist of just that and very little else.

After all, from episode 469, Following A Maiden’s Voyage, (that was its title on the western side of the Pacific, anyway) to episode 516 (which wasn’t aired here in America), theoretically lasted a year. That 516th episode, for Ash and Dawn anyway, was a year after they started their adventure in Sinnoh. Now, fairly basic math then tells us that that’s 47 episodes (I’m not counting the 516th) covering the events of 365 days. More fairly basic math indicates that the vast majority of the time they spent traveling was time we didn’t see on TV.

The 516th episode, from what I can gather, was a collection of the highlights of the 47 episodes (and that year of travel) preceding it, but for Ash and Dawn, the 47 episodes could probably be considered mere highlights of a year spent walking through Sinnoh. What does a Pokémon trainer do on a day-to-day basis? If the only acceptable source of information is the games, anime, and movies, we have no real idea.

I do have a good guess, and that is: walking. After all, they don’t really seem to have any more advanced means of transport, and it’s a long distance from one city to the next. How long would it take any of us to walk from Baltimore to Washington D.C.? How about Washington D.C. to Los Angeles? As awesome as the life of a Pokémon trainer would appear to be based on the anime, there’s almost certainly a lot of less glamorous hard work, either walking or training, in between episodes that we don’t see.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere. Daily life as a whole has its moments, yes, but the majority of that day-to-day life is simply work. For another example, I can point to the TV and the Olympics that have been running for the past two weeks. Again, just from the competitions and the glory that we get to see, it looks like those athletes get to do some pretty neat things with their lives. Michael Phelps wins eight gold medals and becomes a major superstar, and the Chinese gymnastics teams win multiple gold medals from team and individual competition.

I wouldn’t want to be in their places, though. For all the glory and fame that they’ve received, and for all of the joy that I know they have from winning such honors, one would think that they lead such awesome lives. Yet I also know that they’ve spent the vast majority of their day-to-day lives training for this kind of event. The life of a major athlete is not all competitions and glory; if one were to randomly pick a day out of their life, I’d be willing to bet that it would be a day spent training and working out, preparing for the next meet. No glory, no accolades, just hard work preparing for the next major event.

Not every day has to be eventful; not every day should be eventful. I know that some days will be more interesting than others, and I know that some will be dull beyond belief. That’s the way life is. I’ll take joy in my moments of glory, and I’ll move on through the days of boredom. Above all else, though, I’ll remember that that’s the way it is. The day-to-day work can’t be avoided or skipped in the end.

Ash and Dawn have to keep moving onward, even if they’d rather laze around and have some mock battles in any given day. That might be more exciting than walking toward Pastoria City, but they do need to get to that city eventually, and the only way to do that is to walk. Phelps, and any pro athlete, can’t skip training often and still expect to win. Daily life may often be boring, but it can’t be dismissed.

The Growth of High Technology:Part II: What's More Important In Life

Possible spoilers from the third Pokémon movie, Spell of the Unown.

I asserted at the end of Part I of The Growth of High Technology that we already have the tools to create happy, satisfied lives. And I believe that the answer to creating such lives cannot be found merely in the pursuit of technology, but rather in the many, varied activities that make up human life today. I believe, really, that the activities that people enjoy are far more important than the pursuit of the high technology, convenience, and ease that would destroy those activities.

In the third Pokémon movie, one of the major driving forces in the plot is a five-year-old girl named Molly Hale. Molly’s father is partially an archaeologist, but is also an authority, as much as anyone is, on legendary Pokémon. And his studies keep him away from home and finally lead to his disappearance early in the movie. Of course, Molly is devastated by her father’s disappearance, especially since she seemed to be a very lonely child to begin with.

However, the point of this story is not entirely what effect the elder Hale’s pursuit of knowledge had on his daughter. The message, I think, is best shared in the ending theme song, To Know the Unknown: “I don’t want all the answers, ‘cause one thing is true: as long as my heart beats, I’ll always love you. So I don’t need to know the unknown.”

As ephemeral as human emotion can be, it is also integral to being human. Love, friendship, anger, and all of the numerous other emotions that one can feel are part of life. The path towards creating a future that all humans can find happiness in includes, along its journey, accepting that the human body and the nature of humanity is as good as it needs to be. We do not need to improve the capabilities of the human body; we do not need to spend our time decoding all of the secrets of the universe.

I will not try to argue that humanity is perfect in nature; the atrocities that humans have committed and still are committing in all corners of the world cannot be denied. However, these problems are not ones to solve by changing or upgrading the human mind. Unfortunately, there will always be those people without respect for their fellow man, either in today’s world or in a future of high technology. And for all of the atrocities that are held up as evidence of humanity’s faults, I can gladly point to even more things that humanity has done for good. I refuse to believe that humans are essentially evil or destructive, not in a world that shows no small amount of respect for the ideals of justice, freedom, and equality.

And I will gladly argue that humans are as perfect in form as we need to be. The human body is not a perfect machine from an engineering standpoint, to be sure. There are so many ways that humans can be damaged, and so many things that we can’t do. The problem with that standpoint is that humans are not cars, to be made as safe and reliable as possible with a bunch of features besides. Humanity has existed for no small amount of time, and become the dominant creature of this planet, so I hardly think we could need that much improvement.

When it comes down to the essential point, focusing on humanity’s faults is no way to create a happy future. As clichéd as it sounds, we need to focus on the positive things of human life in order to create such a future for humanity. What do you enjoy in life? Some, like myself, find joy in the work we put into personal improvement. As I commented in Part I, I’m a runner, and I’d like to believe that I work reasonably hard to improve my running ability. I enjoy that; it’s one of the things that I can take pride in.

And yet, in a future of high technology, I wouldn’t have that joy. After all, it will only take one genetically-engineered runner to make the rest of us completely obsolete. If these technologies come to fruition, I’ll have the choice between upgrading myself or being unable to compete. The ability I have to try to improve myself and work for personal pride will be gone, and unrecoverable besides.

I know there are those people that take pride in teaching, or scientific research, or any number of other activities. Composing music, writing books (or a blog like this one), playing chess… the list goes on and on. And yet, in a technological future where efficiency is the goal, people probably wouldn’t be doing any of them. After all, computers can teach, conduct research, create music, write, and play chess far more effectively than slow, weak human minds can.

Yet happiness lies in those activities. People vastly enjoy many of those, and in a future of high technology, such sources of happiness would disappear. How can we create a happier future in such a manner? Creating a happier future must necessarily be based in embracing such activities as uniquely human, and encouraging the pursuit of those activities that people enjoy.

Going back to the movie, in Spell of the Unown the lives of the Hale family were not significantly improved when the elder Hale discovered more about the Unown, the rare Pokémon that was his particular concern. However, at the conclusion of the movie, the elder Hale returns to his daughter, and the scenes playing during the credits also show the return of Molly’s mother as well. When the elder Hale backed off from his research and came back to his family, their lives improved dramatically.

That is what’s more important in life: not the endless quest for greater power, in the mistaken belief that humanity, either as an organism or as a race, is seriously flawed. Rather, the pursuit of human life, in whatever form. The pursuit of greater understanding, a quest to improve oneself through one’s own hard work, the effort put into a hobby or task that one enjoys…… all of those are what will truly bring happiness to human lives, and those are goals that we do not need the power of high technology to find.

Ten Years of Pokémon.What Have I Learned?

Pokémon. Easily one of the most well-known video game franchises ever, and also one of the most successful. For those people that have been under a rock for the past ten years, Pokémon had its start as a game where the player took on the role of a Pokémon trainer. The goal was to capture these creatures called Pokémon and train them to do battle with other trainers and their Pokémon. I say that that was how the game started because of the fact that it inspired dozens of spin-offs, including anything from photography (Pokémon Snap) to pinball (Pokémon Pinball and its sequel) to dungeon exploration (Pokémon Mystery Dungeon). The derivatives of the original Pokémon games aren’t even limited to video games, as there is also a Pokémon animated TV series and several animated feature-length films, along with a trading card game and any number of toys and accessories.

Despite these many, varied Pokémon items, there are still games that keep to the original format. From the original Red and Blue versions, the games have gone through four generations. Each generation has added new Pokémon and changed the world that the game takes place in. Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl represent the newest games in the series that maintain the exploration, capture, and battle that Pokémon was built upon.

I first played Pokémon almost ten years ago, when Pokémon Blue was released in the U.S. in September of 1998. I’ve been enjoying the games of the Pokémon world ever since. The question now is: was the time I spent enjoying myself pointless entertainment? Or is there some meaning, some lesson I can take from my long years of game play?

As should be obvious, the answers to those questions aren’t simple. Looking back on how I played Pokémon, I’m forced to come to the conclusion that there’s more than one way to play the game.

When I was younger, first playing Pokémon Blue, I wasn’t exactly old enough to worry too much about such questions. I didn’t really worry about how I was playing the game either. I considered it a mark of pride that I could use my Wartortle, a Water-type Pokémon, to defeat the challenges of the third Gym, Lt. Surge’s Electric-type Gym. After all, since I was at a disadvantage, obviously I was good to be able to win with a disadvantage. The fact that my Wartortle was ten levels higher than all of the Gym Leader’s Pokémon didn’t strike me as odd, nor did I think about what that meant for my victory. I was playing the game, and I was enjoying myself. Certainly, there was nothing wrong in what I was doing. And yet, I wasn’t really getting everything I could out of the game.

Fast-forward to the release of Pokémon Diamond. I hadn’t played Pokémon games for almost four years, since I ignored the releases of FireRed, LeafGreen, and Emerald, along with the fact that I had finished and become bored with Sapphire shortly after its release. I picked up the game again, and this time I played very differently. Rather than using my starter Pokémon all of the time, and ignoring type advantages in favor of raw power, I trained every Pokémon on my team. I played using all six of the Pokémon I could have in my party, using my type advantages to overcome the opponents who were now higher level than I was.

The culmination of that was my battle against the Elite Four. (Although, why they don’t just call them the Elite Five is beyond me, since there’s always the Champion after the Elite Four.) That fight taught me how Lt. Surge felt. My Pokémon were constantly lower-level, and for the final two battles, I was facing at least a ten level disadvantage almost constantly. And the first time I fought them, I lost. I didn’t take that defeat too badly though. Actually, I had expected it the whole time. While I took on the Elite Four that first time, I was taking notes, though. They weren’t much more than “use this Pokémon against this enemy” repeated for the entire Elite Four, but that was enough. I was able to limit my losses and conserve my recovery items the second time through, and succeeded in defeating them.

What does that say about the value of the Pokémon games? In the end, Pokémon is a tactical battle game. To win, the player has to be able to either overpower the enemy or exploit the enemy’s weaknesses. Overpowering force isn’t hard, and I managed to enjoy myself using the same Pokémon over and over again. But that isn’t all that I got out of Pokémon in the end. When I came back to the game in high school, I took the second route. I focused on using the weaknesses of each Pokémon to find attacks that would be more effective. I had to plan out my actions and choices of attack to overcome the same overpowering force that I had used years ago.

I had to plan, and I had to think. Strategy and tactics are very important when one plays the game without overpowering force. Since then, I’ve built three different teams, including a Lv. 5 and under team that required a vast amount of planning and effort to create. I faced down a four-Pokémon team controlled by another human being, the issue here being that he had one level 100, two level 90, and one level 76 Pokémon to my six level 73 Pokémon. A seventeen-level disadvantage should not be overcome at all, especially not when there’s a human being directing those attacks, yet I nearly defeated him, and I still can say what I should have done differently to win the battle outright.

In the end, Pokémon has taught me about thinking and planning ahead, about strategy and tactics. What’s the most effective way for me to achieve this goal? How are we going to carry out this order? Answering those questions is fundamental regardless of what the goal is, whether it be the arbitrary target of a video game or the requirements of a job ten years in the future. Being able to make a plan, whether that plan is for a strategic challenge in a video game or a project assigned to a manager in a corporation, can only aid in becoming a better leader.

And I haven’t even begun to talk about the animated series or any of the movies. But those are subjects for another time. For my next article, I’ll take what I’ve seen in anything from anime to video games to address a fundamental human question: why do we fight?