10 Ways Pokemon Was DARK!

The world of Pokemon is beautiful, the people are friendly, and even the villains don't seem

all that threatening. But just like a ditto, things are not always what they seem. Today

I'll be crushing your childhood dreams by laying out 10 reasons why the Pokemon universe is

actually a nightmare hellscape. I'm your host, Michelle Wynn Bradley. Now, let's dive into why there's the word monster in Pocket Monsters

Number 10, all the homeless children. Shut your eyes and imagine you're 10 years old again

or 11 if you're a Lolan. You wake up, get out of bed, and are immediately greeted by your mother

who kicks you out of the house and tells you to go catch some monsters. And it's always your mother

since dads are pretty much always absent. Anyway, you're officially a homeless child

Congrats! In fact, the Pokemon universe is filled with homeless children and they all possess at least one fully lethal pet

that does basically whatever they want it to. In the games, when you win a battle

your opponent gives you money and vice versa. Which, like, who is giving these children enough money

that they can gamble it in what are essentially high-level dogfights? Maybe they sold their dads

Who knows? No wonder they're all milling around in the wilderness. You lose three battles and you've blown your money for the next week

Good luck buying food or renting a hotel, unless your level three Zigazoo knows payday

Number nine, the weird power distribution. But okay, you somehow manage to make it past the hordes of young vagrants

and make it to your first town. Who's in charge here? Well, it seems like the gym leader is

Yeah, the person who's obsessed with electricity or ice or whatever that spends their entire day in a highly themed, probably booby-trapped building

that's way fancier than anything else in town, waiting for a child to show up so they can crush their spirits

They're in charge. Sure, the occasional city has a mayor or something

but usually the gym leader is the only person of power in a populated area

so is the person with the strongest Pokemon the one that gets to preside over a town

What are their qualifications? Have they ever governed a large population of people before

Do the citizens pay tithes to their Pokemon battling overlord? Surely this has to lead to some pretty massive rifts between the ruling class and the citizens of any given town

And if Pokemon battles are how you determine your place in society, anyone who doesn't have a Pokemon must be seen as a second class citizen

Number eight, so many killer creatures. So you beat your first gym leader, you're feeling good, and you're ready to get this adventure really started

So you head off into the wide world This is what you always dreamed of except these cute and cuddly creatures you been imagining aren so cute and cuddly Take Muck and Grimer for instance They are just living piles of pollution Their sludge can literally poison you and we walking around acting like

it's normal that you have the power to burn human flesh and that Pokeball in your pockets

And remember that episode from the anime with the giant tentacruel that straight up demolishes

a city? Why are children allowed to run free in a world with living heaps of garbage and actual

real-life sea monsters. Not to mention the giant murder bees, the 40-pound rats, which I am taking

the high road and not making a Princess Bride joke about, and actual ghosts. Number seven, actual

ghosts. Yeah, the ghosts need their own section because we don't talk about this often enough

Can we take a second to recognize that there are actual ghosts that actually exist in the Pokemon

universe? And just listen to their entries in the Pokedex. Haunter, its tongue is made of gas

If licked, the victim starts shaking constantly until death eventually comes. Gorgeist

It unwraps its prey in its hair-like arms. It sinks joyfully as it observes the suffering of its prey

Yamask. Each of them carries a mask that used to be its face when it was human

Sometimes they look at it and cry. Until death eventually comes? Sinks joyfully as it observes the suffering of its prey

And I'm sorry, Yamask used to be a person? And now it's a ghost that can be caught like an animal and made to battle

And it's fully aware of what's happening. That alone is a nightmare scenario. Case closed. Video over

Okay, not really, because it doesn't stop there. Number six, the unfortunate mistreatment of animals

At this point in your Pokemon journey, maybe you've acquired a few too many Pokemon to handle

You want to train them all up, but you're busy and you just don't have the space on your little Pokebelts

So you go to the daycare. You drop off a weak, defenseless little Eevee, maybe a Magikarp, and continue on in your adventure

It stays there for weeks, possibly even months. alone, confused, probably missing you

But hey, at least it's stronger, right? Imagine dropping your dog off at doggy daycare

and returning for it half a year later. Oh, hey, Scarfie, long time no see

Come on back to me and I'll immediately put you to work fighting other animals for sport and money

And I know, they supposedly enjoy the battles. I get it, I've heard the arguments

But there's a reason we don't see as many straight trainer versus trainer Pokemon battles

in Detective Pikachu. It's because watching adorably realistic and fluffy Pikachu get smashed into the ground

with Rock Throw or burned alive with Flamethrower is unsettling and would make children cry

Number five gods but make it casual But okay back to the Pokemon themselves Not only are all the regular Pokemon actually scary nightmare beasts but the legendary Pokemon are straight up cosmic horrors Remember the legendary birds

Yeah, they're not just cool birds. They control the weather. And if they get upset, the weather goes crazy and people suffer

We saw all of this in Pokemon the Movie 2000, where Lugia, the beast of the sea

telepathically communicates with his fellow birds while they try to destroy each other

And we can't mention the birds without specifically talking about Ho-Oh, who, in case you didn't know, has the power of resurrection

Like, Ho-Oh can bring Pokemon and probably people back from the dead

And this is a Pokemon a 10-year-old can capture. There's actually a theory that Ash and Pikachu died in a lightning strike

pretty early on in their journey, and Ho-Oh resurrected them, which is why they never age, but that's, like, a whole other video

The point is, a 10-year-old could bring people back from the dead with their pet, Ho-Oh

That's a pretty intense power to give to a literal child. Not to mention Arceus, the legendary Pokemon you're able to catch

in diamond and pearl. Arceus is a god, the creator of the Pokemon universe itself. And need I remind

you, a 10-year-old is able to catch it and make it do their bidding. A 10-year-old is responsible

for a god. Not just a god, the god. Number four, the world is a civil engineering nightmare. So let's

pretend that you are that 10-year-old who is now in possession of god, or maybe multiple gods

who knows. You've got your super strong and traumatized Gyarados you left at daycare, and the rest of your Pokemon are battle-hardened from all those run-ins with feral children

What do you want to do with your team? You take them to the Pokemon League. How do you get there

Ah, that's right. I forgot to mention that none of the cities and towns in the Pokemon universe

are connected to each other in a safe and passable way. If you're not a Pokemon trainer, there's basically no way you can traverse from town to town

You're stuck. There's either a dangerous Pokemon-ridden forest, a mountain, a desert

a pitch-black cave full of bats, or a massive ocean in the way of you and the next town over

Where are the roads? You can't even take a cruise in peace because we all know how that turns out in the Pokemon universe

And we already established that if you don't have a Pokemon, you're basically a second-class citizen

So you're stuck in a town where nobody likes you and you can't even move

And we haven't even gotten into the organized crime syndicates that just run through all the cities at their leisure

Number three, organized crime. No matter what region of the Pokemon world you find yourself in

you're going to be in constant fear that your partner Pokemon will be stolen out from under you by a team

a.k.a. a gang of villainous adults. Team Rocket Team Aqua Team Magma Team Galactic Team Plasma Team Flare Team Skull Team Rainbow Rocket and Team Yell are all out here trying to steal and misuse Pokemon for whatever ridiculous end goal they have in mind

And that's not even mentioning all the side series with other teams. But who's gonna stop these weirdly fashionable gangs

Why a single 10-year-old, of course. It always comes back to the 10-year-old

Or I guess in this fun little scenario we're playing out, it's you! 10-year-old you

None of the adults in the Pokemon universe are apparently up to the task of taking down a group of evil thugs

even though there's a whole police force of identical women and the odd dude. But no, they're busy standing on street corners waiting for the opportunity to fight you, the 10-year-old

Talk about a waste of resources. And actually, let's talk a little more about all the identical people in the Pokemon universe

Number two, predetermined fate. So it's a running joke that Officer Jenny and Nurse Joy are kind of just in every town

It's all fun and games until you start to think about the implications of anyone who looks like Jenny or Joy

and the Pokemon that Poké Center and police force are always using. Like, if you are born with pink hair and blue eyes, do you get to choose your profession

Or are you automatically a nurse? And do all nurses have to have chanseys

Do chanseys get a say in what they want to do? Or, alternate theory, is this like a whole Clone War situation where OG, Jenny, and Joy are duplicated into an army like Jango Fett

It definitely seems like the Pokemon universe has very little free will. But hey, at least Nurse Joy and her Chansey have guaranteed jobs, unlike 10-year-old you

Which brings us to our last point. Number one, you have no future

Let's say by some miracle, perhaps performed by the god you own, you defeat the League of Evil Villains trying to take over the world

beat the Pokemon League, and become the Pokemon League champion. That's all fine and dandy

But what happens now? And for that matter, what happens to the previous champion

We know that when you win a Pokemon battle, you get cash. And when you lose, you give your opponent cash

So assuming that being league champion is your job, you're gambling your money every time you face a new trainer

And if they beat you, not only do you pay them, you lose your job

There's no benefits, no health insurance, no job security. And keep in mind, you're a 10 year old drifter at this point

So good luck maintaining your position until retirement. At some point, you have to turn to something more stable, right

And you're 10, so you're not in school. It's like taking a really early gap year, except instead of finding yourself in a foreign country

you're pitting extremely dangerous animals against one another for money in various towns across your home region

Uh, good luck with that. But honestly, I'd still want to be part of that world

Would you join me in the dystopian world of Pokemon? Or would you rather stay tethered to reality

Which is also... sort of dystopian