A Little Respite with “Poketoons”

Recently, I posted an essay that I’d been working on for a while. I don’t blame you if you missed it; it didn’t really get the traction that I expected, and at such a length and dealing with the subject matter that it did I probably shouldn’t be surprised that it came and went without much fanfare. Often the writing you’re really proud of doesn’t hit the same way that some one-off “just for fun” type post does; It’s just the nature of posting your writing on the internet. In any case, after spending a lot of energy reliving some heavy material (and writing, editing, and re-editing it), I found myself in the mood for something a little bit lighter. Lucky for me that a very cute clip of animation happened to grace my Twitter timeline and I headed over to YouTube to chase after its source.

The clip marked the release of the latest “Poketoon,” a series of one-shot animated shorts streamed on the Pokémon Kids TV YouTube channel. The philosophy behind these particular short-form animated episodes, as opposed to the regular serialized TV series, seems to be more focused on presenting stories about single Pokémon using various animation styles. The 6 episodes that currently exist vary in length and tone but they’re all very fun and unique, proving in their existence the storytelling potential inherent in a franchise that’s so incredibly vast and culturally well-known.

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My personal relationship with Pokémon has generally always been a little bit distant. Though I enthusiastically watched the first season of the television series and played the first gen Gameboy game (I bought the Pokémon Blue cartridge and had my friend buy Pokémon Red so that we could trade with one-another), the later entries in the series left me pretty lukewarm. I recall buying one of the games in the “X/Y” generation because I had quite a few friends who were into it, and playing it for about 3 hours before getting bored and setting it aside. I’ve always enjoyed the character designs and theoretically, based on my gaming preferences, I should really enjoy the games, but I’ve never really been able to recapture the magic of those early first-gen days.

I think the reason why I was drawn to the Poketoons series is that the various short films do a good job of capturing the essence of what makes Pokémon appealing. They aren’t bogged-down by lengthy storylines that require a ton of context and they aren’t focused on the quests and battles that one might think of when they recall the main line TV series. Instead, the shorts are more focused on the ways in which Pokémon fit into the real, mundane lives of the characters who are centralized in the various narratives. Some of the protagonists are children earning the hearts of their first Pokémon as new trainers. Sometimes the protagonists are the Pokémon themselves. There are a couple of shorts that have no dialog at all, relying on contextual storytelling to relay the narrative. I think they’re all unique and enjoyable.

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I could spend a lot of time talking about each specific short and why I enjoyed them, but instead I think I’ll focus in on the 2 I liked the most. The first is Poketoon 4, “Wait Here, Magikarp!” which is a story told through images and music. It begins with a kid at the lake helping their grandfather to catch Pokémon. The kid plays a recorder, the spritely sounds of which attracts an enthusiastic Magikarp. Unfortunately, upon their return to the Pokémon sanctuary, the kid isn’t allowed to keep the Magikarp – the theme of kids needing to earn their parents’ trust before they’re allowed to take in Pokémon runs strong and true through a few of these stories. As the seasons pass, all the other Pokémon are adopted from the sanctuary except for the Magikarp, who continues to wait for the kid’s return.

I’m a bit of a sucker for stories told without dialog; my spouse and I have occasionally gone out prior to the Academy Awards to watch compilations of both the animated shorts and live-action shorts nominees, and we’re often left with the feeling that the animated shorts are more satisfying simply for the fact that many of them are able to relay their narratives utilizing more tools of the visual medium and without becoming overly-reliant on dialog (this isn’t to say that none of them contain spoken dialog, but many of them do not). Instead, they tend to turn to more variable filmmaking tools – music, sound-effects, visual framing, etc. – to tell their stories.

“Wait Here, Magikarp!” is one of these types of animated stories. Much of the mood is conveyed through the speed and tone of the music, as well as the complexity of the instrumentation. When Magikarp finds itself alone in the pool near the end of the story, there’s nothing left but silence – until it’s broken by the return of its friend! Yes, I’m definitely a sucker for these kinds of happy endings. The tale is simple and timeless, and definitely a lot of fun.

My other favorite episode is the most recent one, entitled “I Turned Into a Gengar!” In it, a group of students embark on a test of courage after-hours at their school, and a quiet girl named Shoko is roped into the ordeal somewhat against her will. As the kids encounter a group of ghost-type Pokémon, Shoko is somehow transformed into a Gengar. It’s all she can do to try to convince her fellow students that she’s not out to spook them, especially since the circumstances under which she continues to meet them only emphasize her scary new look. Eventually she has to use her newfound abilities to rescue her classmates from certain spooky doom, so that they don’t end up trapped in the school forever.

This short is just charming through-and-through, whether we’re talking about its (age-appropriate!) scares, its great animation, or its utterly-adorable character designs. The comic timing in this short is wonderful, too; one of my favorite moments occurs when the kids happen to see Shoko in the bathroom. She turns to meet them in a wholly unnatural way, causing them to shriek in terror and run away. The animation does a good job of emphasizing the cartoonishness of the action, providing a lot of great movement to partner with the bubbly character designs.

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The other shorts run the gamut in style, from “Scraggy and Mimikyu – Chase the Beans,” which references the classic Loony-Tunes (and their contemporaries) animated style, to “The Pancham Who Wants to be a Hero,” which feels much like a storybook come to life. It’s fun to see the familiar creatures of the Pokémon franchise given free reign to embody these different animated incarnations.

I don’t have anything particularly deep to say about Poketoons. I think I kind of wrung myself dry trying to write about some very complicated feelings and experiences of mine and then worrying about how they were going to be received, so these cute cartoons for kids became a little bit of a nice brain reset for me. But I think one thing worth remembering is that “uncomplicated” isn’t nearly the insult that some critics might claim it to be. In fact, being uncomplicated and positive and appealing to a wide audience with art can often be more challenging than targeting more niche interests; it requires being able to touch on shared human feelings and experiences in ways that don’t inadvertently insult or drive away viewership. In this case, it also requires some amount of cross-cultural appeal. Perhaps that’s really the essence of Pokemon’s success in the first place – its central concepts of partnership and adventure touch on feelings that are common in many cultures.

In any case, I enjoyed these shorts quite a bit, and if you’re in the mood for something fun and relatively uncontroversial, I’d recommend you check them out.

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Poketoons are available on the Pokemon Kids TV YouTube Channel for free, with English-language closed-captions for episodes that contain dialog.