How Nature Points Up the Folly of Men

by Tjames Madison

1999-05-27 13:11:59

Net Flotsam

Here's another one of those 'net phenomenon deals that just freaks my shit right out. It's a game. It's a cartoon. It's Hello Kitty with an attitude. It's Pokemon, and it's made for little babies, but ADULTS are all into this shit! Why?!? Please write me and tell me how come.

I mean, it's bad enough that there's the whole "white Japanese" rage in the first place. First it was Hello Kitty, and then Keroppi, and all down the line to Sailor Moon (which is all about pedophilia, come on; they dress in schoolgirl outfits and have superpowers: does anybody think the show would be popular if Sailor Moon and her friends were middle-aged nuns?)

Then it went back to Speed Racer. People love that bug-eyed shit with the grossly overstated occidental features and the ass-simple morality plays contained within ("Here is a bad man! We will fight him because he is evil! Now we are winning the race! Yaaaay!"). It's even understandable on some level that, say, the Japanese fetish for schoolgirl tentacle rape is not. Speed Racer = Fast Driver, and all Americans worship cars and the people who drive them. When Speed wins the race, even Jed Sanders can stand up and hoot because he understands the simpler things in life, like drivin' fast and kickin' ass. You just have to ignore the monkey, that's all. Get past the monkey in the ballcap, and Speed Racer is Seven Samurai for Trailer Parks. Whooo doggy!

But Pokemon is... what is it? It's puerile, it's super-cute, it's made for little babies. The little monsters are adorable. The human characters are generic and bland and overreact to situations in the classic Japanimation eye-popping way. It's mostly harmless, Barney on a Vivarin bender and extracted through a multi-cultural eyedropper. There's nothing to it at all. But it's FANTASTICALLY popular! AltaVista finds almost 300,000 hits on "Pokemon" (including a "Pokemon gangsta site for those who love rap.") This is taken more seriously than that Star Wars crap!

I'm not saying this obsession is bad. I'm just saying it's downright weird, and possibly unwholesome. if you don't believe me, look at some of these sites and then tell me you're not worried about stuff you hadn't even thought about before.

Check it out yourself

wunderbar@pigdog.org