Setua

Tell me about your Marxist analysis on pokemon XD

:3

i live in a college dorm please pay for the wall or they’re gonna charge me $10000+ please please pls pl

anyway.

I’d like to first establish that the Pokémon in Pokémon XD are something akin the proletariat—the working/laboring class. Pokémon XD and Colosseum introduce the mechanic of “shadow Pokémon,” where Pokémon are literally manufactured in a factory that “closes their hearts,” turning them into nothing but mindless battle machines. Shadow Pokémon are aggressive, may attack opposing trainers, and hurt themselves in their rage.

This is all for a pokémon that is nothing but a mindless battle machine—it is literally separating pokémon from their labor. The Pokémon’s personhood (Pokemonhood?) is dismissed simply for the value they possess in exerting power. in addition to the fact that shadow Pokémon are both laborers and products that are sold and distributed, and this echoes how the labor of the proletariat are devalued, seen as “lessers” merely to be used. They are just as much products as they are the means of production.

There’s also the fact that shadow Pokémon aren’t created from conception however—they’re pokémon that were stolen from their trainers and turned into shadow Pokémon. So, in a sense, Pokemon XD comments how the modes of production require foul play in order to sustain constant productivity, and the proletariat are then manipulated and morphed by the bourgeoisie, stolen from their homes, and have the burden placed on their shoulders. Of course, I’m going very surface level with this analysis but you can read the stealing of Pokémon for shadow Pokémon production in other ways.

Anyway, what makes Pokémon XD, and the GameCube Pokémon games in general, different from most other Pokémon media is just how different the orre region is because orre is uniquely low-income.

This is more apparent in the first game, Pokémon Colosseum, where every location is rife with some level of crime and poverty. The buildings are often dated and worn down, there are no established roads between areas (you have to motorbike/scooter through barren desert), the land is so dry and barren that no wild Pokémon exist within the region, and—importantly—the people of orre are rude.

This is less apparent in XD because Michael is a literal child, but in Colosseum, a large portion of NPCs insult and belittle Wes or Rui. In a sense, Colosseum comments how people in poverty can’t afford to be “nice”—niceness itself is a luxury, and this is also highlighted in the high crime rate in Orre. Even Wes himself is a thief and probably murderer, even if the game never explicitly shows anyone dying.

But the brunt of Orre’s poverty however is how a massive global corporation such as Cipher can operate and fly under the radar in orre. Orre does not have the means nor power to stop Cipher from setting up their main base of operations there because unlike every other pokémon region, there is no established “league” or “government.”

So of course the people of Orre buy into Cipher’s plans and often propagate shadow Pokémon because there is nothing else they can do. It’s them versus this massive corporation that suddenly started taking over and buying up land and stealing their Pokémon if they don’t comply (they do this with Duking).

The inhabitants of Orre then too must operate within Cipher outside their own volition. It’s akin to how the bourgeois in the real world occupy low-income areas, buy out every other property, and eventually take over every aspect of a region. When more rural land owners don’t comply, the bourgeois will develop as close to their property as possible and drive them out of their conformity.

Even the location of Phenac City is a literal gentrified area, the only city in the deep desert that has water and literally housed the region head of a global organization. For what is the most “developed” modern city in the game (that isn’t built into a fucking tree), it makes sense that it would be run by Cipher in this way. It allows Cipher to operate on a level of plausible deniability—haven’t they brought this wonderful city to Orre? Haven’t they helped its people? Perhaps corporations can be good for “helping” people via charity.

All they gotta do is give a Pokémon or two (or steal a Pokémon or two) to Cipher and never say anything about their rulers.

This is the Orre region. It isn’t just one city taken over by a big bad—this is an entire Pokémon region and its main trade being completely at the mercy of a global corporation.

It’s important to note just how wealthy, then, Cipher is. Specifically, its CEO—Grandmaster Greevil. Also known as the wealthy philanthropist—Mr. Verich.

Michael meets Greevil as Mr. Verich, whose bodyguard saves him from a street thug. This is painted as an act of kindness or charity—like kissing a baby on camera—but this deed becomes much more insidious when it’s revealed that Mr. Verich manufactured the whole situation in the first place. That street thug attacked Michael because he wanted to show off a shadow Pokémon. Mr. Verich only saved Michael so that the presence of shadow Pokémon wouldn’t alert the public.

Billionaires perform acts of charity as a smokescreen for the actual harm they may cause, whilst endearing themselves to the public eye. For Greevil, saving Michael just so happened to coincide with his intended goal that doubled as a means to increase his public image.

Greevil is also very well liked by the people of Orre, especially in Gateon Port. The sailors at the diner all cheer his name because Mr. Verich will often pay for all of their tabs, letting them eat free for the day. The novelist, a friend of Michael’s, calls Mr. Verich interesting and intends to write a book idolizing the man’s good deeds and character. There’s an old woman who’s in love with Mr. Verich—people fucking love this guy for existing and being rich.

The bourgeois’ charity is not only celebrated but idolized—worshipped, but this “kindness” is merely an act to further their control. Mr. Verich isn’t merely doing this out of the kindness of his heart nor as a smokescreen for his more nefarious side—it’s so he can gain control over the only means of trade Orre has so that he may distribute shadow Pokémon globally more easily. The rich can not only “afford” niceness, but this niceness itself is a commodity that can be bought using wealth to gain more capital.

So in XD, Michael essentially acts as a “union man” by unionizing the pokémon in an act of ideological un-brainwashing via “purification”, which “opens the heart” of a shadow pokémon. The act of purification in XD is interesting because it emphasizes community between pokémon, synergizing their strengths and weaknesses into something impenetrable, and healing them from being mindless laborers for capitalism.

Michael is uniquely free from capitalistic forces for two reasons 1) he’s a child and therefore able to “imagine a world without capitalism,” and 2) he kinda grew up in a commune. Like, if you think about it, the purification lab is a self-sustaining commune that supports its inhabitants and encourages gradual but effective scientific progression in the Purify Chamber. Michael is the “big Communism builder,” and the Purification Pokémon lab is the commune.

I think the difference in scientific progression of the Purification Lab compared to Cipher’s Shadow Pokémon Lab also needs to be stated:

The creation of XD001–Shadow Lugia—and the mass production of shadow pokémon also illustrates how science and scientific “progress” is largely determined by what the top 1% will put their money into. How streamlined scientific progress is for the Pokémon equivalent of mass bioweapons.

But, in the uniquely communist society that Michael grew up in, Pokemon XD reveals that communism is not a stalling of scientific progress but simply a change in the intentions of it. In a capitalistic society, science is driven by capital and the bourgeois. In a communist society, science is driven by a mutual interest in a common societal “good.”

tldr;