Oh, that is just bullshit.

this is what PETA does.
have you READ their mission statement?
What saddens me is I am very much in favor of treating animals humanly in all ways.
Our feed animals can be treated and slaughtered in much much more humane ways than are currently done.
PETA however is completely uninterested in what can be reasonably, logically done.

sadly in an ironic twist, PETA gives animal rights movements a bad name.

Even more ironic is that PETA is exactly who Team Plasma is modelled after.

we can't take them serious anymore

You say that as if we ever did take them seriously.

I'm amazed it took them this long. Pokemon has existed for 14 years in America now. And they JUST NOW noticed it.

Oh, and as for their thoughts on it...

"Much like animals in the real world, Pokémon are treated as unfeeling objects and used for such things as human entertainment and as subjects in experiments. The way that Pokémon are stuffed into pokéballs"

I stopped right there. Pokemon are not "stuffed into Pokeballs". The balls are hammerspace devices that contain a large simulated environment inside to keep the contained Pokemon happy. And bull fucking shit they're treated as unfeeling objects--one of the main points of the series is learning that befriending your Pokemon is more important than any number of battles.

Just as they are explaining in the games for the past decade

Yeah, that was hammered into our heads right from game 1. Blue/Gary lost to us because he didn't love and respect his Pokemon enough.

PETA in pokemon = team plasma. :D

That about sums it up.


I heard stories from my friends in USA while the SPCA would find stray dogs and cats new adopted homes, PETA will just euthanize the animals instead. I find that really odd. so yes, always call the SPCA for strays, not PETA. you'd be causing the animal more harm, paradoxically.

Eh it's virtual cockfighting, pure and simple, but hey, better fake animals than real ones eh?
--Onni

No, it really isn't. I fucking hate when people say that.

Thats because the truth hurts. Look at what one does in these types of games, you capture 'em, raise 'em, train 'em and make them fight each other for your amusement and furtherment in the ranks. In some games the fights are to the death.
--Onni

Uh, no. None of them are fights to the death. Battles also aren't illegal fights, no one is required to use Pokemon for battling, capturing is not as forced as anti-Pokemon people like making it sound, Pokemon don't need to be trained or convinced or programmed to fight because they already do it purely by nature, pretty sure dog/cock trainers don't typically show love and compassion and respect for the animals, and I'm pretty damn fucking sure Pokemon trainers never attach blades to their Pokemon's feet to make them deadlier or beat on their Pokemon.

So yeah, take it from someone who's been a fan since it first started way back when, you're wrong.

Dude, I'm not just talking Pokemon, I'm talking the entire GENRE of the games. Yes that is true, you can go without capturing or battling. If you don't want to play the game and keep the character at level 1 experience and never win any badges or tournaments. You'd might as well not even buy the games. Then hey, you're all set. You have to remember where these games come from. Japan has a very poor record on the ethical treatment of animals front. In rural parts it's not uncommon for them to pit two bulls against each other and make them fight. This is the way of strange animal males, you get them together and they fight. It is their natural instinct to do so, so they can get females. Man just puts them in a pen with no way for the loser to escape.

"Dude, I'm not just talking Pokemon, I'm talking the entire GENRE of the games."

So... Puzzle, adventure and strategy with a dash of JRPG. Yeah, see, there's not exactly a genre that Pokemon created or a single pre-existing one it fit into, cause there's no other franchise like it. It's just a children's strategy adventure game that happens to be about raising weird creatures, meant to simulate the creator's childhood experiences of playing in fields and forests that have since been paved over and cut down and catching bugs and small animals to study them.

"Yes that is true, you can go without capturing or battling. If you don't want to play the game and keep the character at level 1 experience and never win any badges or tournaments."

I was giving an in-universe example. Above all else, the series teaches that bonding with your Pokemon is more important than any number of battles won. Very first game, your character's rival loses to you because he didn't love and respect his Pokemon, he only treated them like tools.

"You have to remember where these games come from. Japan has a very poor record on the ethical treatment of animals front."

Cause lord knows no other country could come up with a game about monsters fighting. No, it could only be the one with a bad history of ethical animal treatment. Which they're getting better with, might I add. Pointing out what some hicks in the countryside do is moot, btw, since you can do the same kind of finger-pointing at rural Americans and it won't exactly paint a complete picture of America.

"It is their natural instinct to do so, so they can get females. Man just puts them in a pen with no way for the loser to escape."

That's pointless to bring up in this discussion too, as Pokemon of both genders apparently just fight for the hell of it even in the wild and have a very easy method of escape when they lose.

Dude, if you are going to reply to my posts do it as a whole like you had been, not this quoting it and answering sections bit. What? Puzzle JRPG etc? Nah man, they're virtual critter raising games with a dash of gladatorial combat tossed in. What other games are the main rivals of the Pokemon Franchise? Digimon and although not seen in some time, Monster Rancher. In both you obtain, raise, train and put your critters into combat where there is a definite possibility of them dying in combat, but die they eventually will because they are mortal, they have a lifespan. The whole non-mortal combat in pokemon is pure marketing to keep it friendly for the young crowd the game is aimed for. After all, how are you going to explain to little Timmy that his favorite Raichu got so beat the hell out of that it died? You can't so they don't die. To illustrate this further, take RPG games. No, I am not talking like JRPGs or others that you play on a computer or console, but real sit down and play with your buddies with paper, pencil, dice and rulebooks RPG. In AD&D once you hit zero HP your character is considered dead, then it was revised in many a game to say ok they're not dead but knocked out, once you hit -10 then they're dead. In Pokemon zero is not death, but in other games it is. The sting of loss has been removed because hey, they can't die. Get 'em well send them in again. There's no "Oh shoot, I shouldn't have done that, now my best critter is gone." consequences. Leave out in-universe s€^t, we're talking game mechanics. The story is always going to justify the game mechanics. Your apathy towards the treatment of real animals leaves you biased, and unable to connect to their treatment. It is truly frightening when one can tell you about such things and you feel nothing, yet get all up in arms about FAKE critter fighting games getting a black eye. Let me tell you something mister. Putting two bulls in a pen and letting them fight until past the point where one loses a horn may fly out in rural Japan, but out here it gets you cooling your heels behind bars. Not outraged? You should be.
--Onni

Okay, first off, yes it most certainly is the genres I mentioned. Second, Digimon was a Tamagotchi that got adapted into an anime meant to cash in on Pokemon's success and Monster Rancher was another strategy game with the fights as side shit. And fucking excuse me? APATHY towards treatment of real-life animals? FUCK YOU. Where in the name of FUCK did I "feel nothing, yet get all up in arms about FAKE critter fighting games getting a black eye"? Oh, right--NOWHERE. I care deeply about real animals, I signed a fucking petition this year to get an inhumane marine park closed down, I donate to local shelters, and you call me fucking apathetic towards treatment of real animals because I defend fucking POKEMON and point out that Japan isn't the only place in the world that could think up the concept of monster battles?!

We're done here. I shouldn't have even tried explaining shit to someone old enough to be my old man who clearly has no interest in or actual knowledge of Pokemon and seems determined to paint it in as negative a light as possible.

You are right, Digimon started as an offshoot of the Tamogachi first, but then came the anime series. Monster Rancher revolved around the making of your critter via disc data, raising it, training it, then putting them into combat, moving up the ranks until it either died in battle or died of old age. The only way around it was to put them on ice at the peak of their game and combine them with another monster being as they cannot breed. The only strategies were in the context of the duel, strategy games in and of themselves revolve around multiple units.Yes the apathy is present in the flippant, dismissive remarks given. But perhaps given your love of sea creatures I should have given the example of Japanese fishermen who herd entire pods of dolphins into bay shallows, let marine parks take the prettiest ones and then slaughter the rest for meat. The practice is universally conemned, but they don't give a hoot, only barring press from filming it now. Yeah other places could have thought up the concept but they didn't because the game series was by and for the most part precident setting. Nobody ever thought of it in a video game before and made it work. Had it come from elsewhere no doubt it would have been vastly different. Nah, your big mistake was to engage a fellow gamer who has been at it for longer than you've been alive, whose first first console was the Atari 2500. I'm a Digimon and Monster Rancher player. I'm not gonna be apologetic, anyone can see how this can be a stepping stone for little kids to desensitize them to brutal animal on animal games because with the candy coated veneer ripped away that's what this is. It doesn't take a degree to recognize it as being as such a simulator, any more than the army uses FPS simulators to train troops. That being said, I'm an adult and have no interest in such RL bloodsport, but VR, damned straight I do, I can easilly detach myself from that fact and immerse myself in it. I want my VR critters to be death on wheels. But Pokemon is like Mortal Kombat when they started taking out the blood and fatalities that gave it it's name. But hey, it's a well funded well greased whitewashed sham gotta give 'em points for that. As much as we like to say that the better angels of our natures rule, it frequently doesn't always. As a species we like having things fight and die for us. Like the man said, "The beating heart of Rome is not the marble floor of the senate, but the sand of the coliseum." All that being said, yeah we're done, we are not going to agree on this hot button topic and shall have to agree to disagree.
--Onni

"anyone can see how this can be a stepping stone for little kids to desensitize them to brutal animal on animal games because with the candy coated veneer ripped away that's what this is. It doesn't take a degree to recognize it as being as such a simulator, any more than the army uses FPS simulators to train troops. That being said, I'm an adult and have no interest in such RL bloodsport, but VR, damned straight I do, I can easilly detach myself from that fact and immerse myself in it. I want my VR critters to be death on wheels. But Pokemon is like Mortal Kombat when they started taking out the blood and fatalities that gave it it's name. But hey, it's a well funded well greased whitewashed sham gotta give 'em points for that."

Oh, gimme a fucking break. I know not one single solitary person who grew up with Pokemon and became desensitized to animal cruelty. Your logic makes about as much sense as saying shooter games turn gamers into murderers.

Well that was a short parting of the ways, with live and let live and all that rot. That being said, that's the thing, due to the nature of the beast, you cannot make such claims. You don't know everyone, so how can you say definitively that no one has not? You can only speak for yourself and perhaps those about you whom you know quite well. As for the shooters, well it's a common knowledge that modern battlefield simulators are naught more than just more advanced FPSes, and that these simulators and shooters have been used as recruiting tools. But of course once one takes real fire that's when it all suddenly becomes real. Practically anything can be linked to a behavior, and given the mixed kettle of fish that human nature is, you can't say with any certainty that it's not so, because more likely than not, it is so in somebody's case somewhere. That's the way people work. *Shrug*
--Onni