Manly Guys Doing Manly Things

Was this◊ the first thing to come to mind upon reading this comic for anyone else? Or just me, considering it's one of my favorite games of all time?

Man, I really need to track down another copy of that game...

edited 20th Oct '14 8:36:50 AM by FawfulCrump

Man, now I wanna go dig up my gamecube, that game was the shit.

Okay, why have I only just now discovered this comic???

Because you are not omniscient, and the internet is a big place.

Jared still doesn't know how pokeballs work.

Are they supposed to do that?

Breaking the pokeball is actually how you release a pokemon. It took me until reading the comments to notice that's what he did.

Note that in panel 3, he's discarding the two broken halves of the Poke Ball. Jared didn't open the ball, he cracked it like an egg and tossed it. The Gengar is free now.

Jared has no idea how Poke Balls work. His only Pokemon, Mr. Fish, has never had one.

edited 27th Oct '14 9:26:28 PM by TobiasDrake

And yet, Mr Fish is a well trained Pokemon.

Or a badly brain-damaged one.

Mr. Fish is a well-trained pet, but a terribly trained pokemon.

In that he loves his trainer, has a proper diet and doesn't cockfight other animals daily?

He only doesn't because the league banned him for having Mr. Fish devour his opponents.

Well, since my headcanon is that Pokemon are a warrior-race that naturally take to beating the crap out of each other without killing each other, my headcanon goes further that Mr. Fish is a little bit of a psychopath.

That, yes. Mr. Fish is trained like a domestic animal; the hard way. He doesn't have the benefits of a Poke Ball reprogramming him to be 100% loyal to his trainer and do whatever his trainer tells him forever. Poke Balls are basically mind control.

Ironically, this makes Jared more of an actual trainer than most Pokémon Trainers.

edited 28th Oct '14 7:22:28 AM by TobiasDrake

If Pokéballs were mind control:

How is it possible for traded Pokemon, specifically, to disobey at high levels, if the trainer doesn't yet have enough badges proving their prowess?
How is it that the Pokemon's happiness stat can ever be low? And why would the trainer give a damn to begin with?
Why would the mistreated Pokemon N spoke to have the capacity to speak against how they were treated?
Why wouldn't Hugh's sister's Liepard obey him when he got it back?

It's an interesting theory, and a better "no, but the game is actually way darker than you think!" Theory than the endless "dying dream" ones, but it just doesn't work.

edited 28th Oct '14 7:30:09 AM by Enlong

Because being forced to obey isn't the same as being happy. Seriously, that answers, like, all of your questions. A Pokémon can only disobey orders from a Trainer that wasn't the one that caught it, and unless you have the Badge that forces those Pokémon to obey you, they will disobey your commands 75% of the time. That's not, "Whooo, Pokémon is secretly dark," that's a game mechanic.

And Pokémon IS pretty f*cking dark. Yanmask is the soul of a dead human being. Drifloon is a ghostly balloon that abducts children, never to be seen again. Starmie are poached for the jewels in their center. The very first game featured a Pokémon Graveyard in which the player had to soothe the soul of a murdered Marowak - and, on that note, Cubone wears the skull of its deceased parent. Anyone who doesn't think this franchise is already incredibly dark hasn't been paying attention to their Pokedex.

edited 28th Oct '14 7:40:21 AM by TobiasDrake

And why would the original trainer matter one whit if the Pokeball forces them to obey? If they don't want to obey in the first place, and the Pokeball controls them so thoroughly that a person with the power to read their minds can't tell, then it wouldn't matter in the slightest who is holding the ball.

Because the original Trainer is the one encoded on their Trainer ID, and they're only forced to obey the Trainer encoded on their ID. A Pokémon's Original Trainer ID is visible in their stats; no matter where it goes, that Trainer is encoded on them permanently. Other Trainers require badges, which explicitly make higher level Pokémon obey you.

edited 28th Oct '14 7:48:34 AM by TobiasDrake

What, so the id number is imprinted on them? I mean, that could work for maybe Porygon.

Another theory: the id number is registered on the Pokeball, to prevent theft/kidnapping of the Pokeball and Pokemon, respectively, and traded Pokemon respect badges because they're a way of saying "look how strong I am!"

And yup, there definitely are dark bits, though some Pokedex entries sound like 10-year-old researches exaggerating.

But on this particular point, I don't think the two of us will come to an agreement.

edited 28th Oct '14 7:55:09 AM by Enlong

Yeaaah that's really a needlessly Grimdark view.

Yes, the ID is imprinted on them. Upon capture, Pokémon are stored as data inside the Poke Ball. They can be uploaded to P Cs and transferred wirelessly. They learn new attacks from TMs and HMs that look suspiciously like CDs. Every Pokémon's profile contains their OT because it's imprinted on the Pokémon's digital code when they are initially stored.

edited 28th Oct '14 8:35:04 AM by TobiasDrake

Alright.

Well, then. You've got your interpretation of what we see in the games, and I've got mine. They both seem to at least consider what we see in the games, and are unlikely to budge for a different interpretation.

So, I suppose this is where it ends. A pleasure discussing this with you.

I really like how she drew Gengar.

That perfect mix of still creepy but cartoony.

I wonder if it was influenced by Junji Ito's recent Gengar illustration◊ at all?