Will and James talk about volume 2 of today's manga and address how the satanic panic spread to Pokémon.
Email: WeAppreciateManga@Gmail.com
117: Pokémon Adventures vol. 2
Chapters 15 to 27, 'Wartotle Wars' and 'Kalling Kadabra'
Story by Hidenori Kusaka
Art by Mato
English Translation by Kaori Inoue
Lettering and touch up by Wayne Truman
The Pokémon trainer Red is witness to his Bulbasaur evolving into an Ivysaur after fighting a Mankey (basically an angry monkey monster). Red encounters the feminine Pokémon trainer Green who tricks him into buying counterfeit items. On their second encounter he manages to get his money back and learns that her Wartotle is the evolved Squirtle that she stole from Proffesor Oak. But Green gets the last laugh because she manages to steal Red's two Gym Leader badges. (That is what Red gets for showing off)
Once Red realizes what happened to his badges, he finds out that the Rocket gang is chasing after Green, in response he infiltrates the gang's HQ under a casino (sometimes depicted as a pachinko parlour) there he disguises himself as a member. Red learns of Mew's incomplete clone, the powerful psychic bio-weapon Mewtwo and that Green has a data disk on Mew that Rocket is after. Red helps green fight Rocket and with the help of her Trickster Pokémon, Ditto, who can mimic the appearance of any Pokémon, she manages to defeat Rocket and as a favour to Red, gives back the badges she took.
Not long after this we see Red fossil hunting as he cuts through a route with a man named Giovanni, the gym leader of Viridian City. Red does not know that Giovanni is spying on Red. Upon determining that Red is not a threat to him the two then part ways and Giovanni gives Red a Fossil.
After numerous adventures including being stranded in the safari zone with no Pokémon and almost drowning before being saved by Misty. Red ends up having to save the Fire Pokémon expert Blaine from the Rocket gang. Blaine is a researcher who worked on cloning Mew for the Rocket gang but has changed face and is now out to stop them. Blaine learns that Red has a fossil and so he sends him on Rapidash back to his lab. There Red figures out how to use Blaine's fossil machine to bring life to an extinct Pokémon. And so Red acquires an Aerodactyl and uses it to save Blaine from the Rocket gang. Causing the gang to retreat.
In some way to go anywhere means to go forward and to go far means to return. Red returns to Pallet Town to meet Professor Oak once again, only this time it is an imposter. And no, we will not spoil the identity of the imposter on this podcast.
The volume ends with all the Rocket gang members having captured all three legendary bird Pokémon, Koga has the ice bird Articuno, Sabrina has the fire bird Moltress and Lt. Surge has the electric Pokémon Zapdos. The final battle between the Rocket gang and the trainers will take place in Saffron City. In the meantime, a psychic barrier has been put up on Saffron City until then.
A Little Context:
· Satanic panic of the 80's saw a resurgence with Pokémon, the franchise was accused of teaching kids about the occult according to theists. This is due to many things. One is that Kadabra (Sabina's Pokémon) looking suspiciously like Baphomet, a humanoid goat person, with the star on his head indicating a pentagram).
· But some people have used more outlandish excuses to convince others that Pokémon is a way for the Devil to take control of kids, (note that that the prior link is the full video of which only a small fraction was heard on this episode) albeit the argument is more against Capitalism being aimed at children if anything.
· kids had seizures whilst watching an episode of the Pokémon anime. This did in fact happen, although not due to some unexplained magic phenomena. The seizures occurred because there was one specific scene in what is considered a "banned episode" of the anime known as "Electric Soldier Porygon" where because of the flashing lights on screen it induced a seizure in those who had photo-sensitive epilepsy. A positive of this episode is that it helped create awareness of the condition with it now being standard practice not to have scenes like this in TV, at least not without disclaimers.
· Did the Pope (John Paul II) actually give Pokémon his blessing? According to a new York Times article the response to the first movie coming out had the Vatican denounce the controversy, Sat2000, a satellite TV station run by the Vatican said "The trading-card and computer game is "full of inventive imagination," The game did not have "any harmful moral side effects" and was based on "ties of intense friendship". Sat2000 also said the game told simple stories which allowed children "to enter directly into the story" through role-playing adventures. Also, according to Father Jeffrey V. Romans, his blog states that "oftentimes, these fears and crazes come from a lack of knowledge about a subject or a couple of pieces of sensationalized journalism. Don't fall into the devil's trap! Let's all endeavor to take a close look at these types of subjects before forming a fiery, ironclad opinion".
