It starts with a weird cartoon
Growing up, I had been exposed to the classics in terms of western 90s cartoons: Batman, Spiderman, Superman, Jake Long: American dragon, Jackie Chan animated series, etc. We were not lacking for good cartoons on Danish television in the late 90s, but that all changed one January right after the turn of the millennium.
A new weirdly drawn cartoon started airing on one of the public Danish TV channels.
It was unlike anything else on the air. About a guy who woke up late for his 10th birthday, because apparently you got a “Pokemon” when you turned 10. A pet with fantastical abilities, like breathing fire, or making arc lightning. They ranged from yellow mice, to orange lizards, to green plant-animal hybrids.
Now, leave aside the nightmare that it would be to have such a creature as a pet — an 8-year-old mind didn’t think that far — but what it did catch onto was how you were supposed to ‘train’ these pets to be the best they could be, and the protagonist of the cartoon set out on that challenging journey while being just as much of a greenhorn as everyone watching.
And apparently, one of the things you did while coming-of-age was going out, exploring the world, learning everything about Pokemon, and proving just how much you understood through collecting badges.
What’s that you say? A 10 year old being let loose in the world with no supervision? That sounds horribly irresponsible.
Yeah, of course you say that as an adult. As a child? Can you imagine the liberation of heading out into the world with no supervision? No adults to decide for you, and you aren’t scared, because you have a pet that can protect you.
That’s the first thing Pokemon does right: It knows its audience. On the surface level (which is all that children care about) it’s about children being empowered to make their own decisions, and being rewarded whenever those decisions are for the betterment of both humans and Pokemon.
Me, and an entire generation of children, were subsequently hooked on Pokemon. Pokemon cards started appearing in stores, and we’d beg our parents for another pack of cards to trade with in the school yard.
And the adults took notice.
“The new fad”
Most adults chalked it up to a short-lived fad. Why wouldn’t they? We’d been playing with “Dracco heads” in the school yard before, and I distinctly remember news articles proclaiming this “Pokemon” thing the latest in a series of fads that would last about as long as a mayfly, coming and going as abruptly as Dracco heads did.
My parents gave me a newspaper article about exactly that sentiment. I remember it vividly: it was called “Diller og døgnfluer” (Fads and mayflies to those of you who do not speak Danish) - and I hung it up in my room, unaware that my parents probably intended for it to be a reminder that Pokemon was a fleeting thing.
Oh how wrong they were
Because days turned to weeks, turned to months, and that newspaper article kept hanging there in my room because to me, it was a sign that a newspaper had written about Pokemon, and that meant it was big. As I write this in 2025, 25 years after that newspaper released that article, I wonder if I am the only one who remembers it, or whether there’s a journalist out there still eating their words.
During the next months, Pokemon cemented itself as the thing in the school yard. It was everywhere, and when my grandmother took me into a toy store and I wanted a Pikachu plush.
She argued that the tiny 350 DKK — 545 DKK / 73 € in today’s money — yellow mouseplush was expensive. So if I was to get it, I would have to cherish it for a long time.
I was so sure of myself that I even asked her if my littlebrother could have one too, and the fact that my grandmother went along with it has been cited to me as the day that my grandmother truly assumed the role of a grandmother, because it went so thoroughly against how the adults knew her.
I still have that plush. It’s faded yellow now from use, but it’s still intact and still cherished: it now holds my phone whenever it is in its charger alongside the two pikachu-plushes of my brothers.
Fitting for the archetypical electric mouse.
Then my 8th birthday arrived
My parents got me a Gameboy Color and a game for it. That game was fiery red and it had a dragon on it.
They showed me how to put batteries in the Gameboy, and how to plug the game in, and let me take it from there.
That 8th birthday of mine will forever live in my memory as the birthday where I barely interacted with the guests. I was so engrossed in this new game - it was my first experience with the depth of electronic games.
One problem: I was 8 years old and Danish. I didn’t understand a lick of English.
Did that stop me? Nope. With the stubbornness that can be found only in children, I just pushed buttons and progressed by way of brute forcing. But the game was still quite difficult.
But I got a head start, and that meant I was the guy in the school playground to ask for help in the Pokemon games. It was my niche.
It was the thing I was good at.
And the cartoon continued, the games continued, it was a thing that lasted for years. The newspaper article still hung in my room, though my parents didn’t pay it any heed when I pointed it out.
They were more concerned with what my little brother - the middle one - was doing.
There was a very good reason for that, and it’s not a happy one.
Tragedy strikes
This website is supposed to be a place where I list things that have brought me joy. But it is impossible for me to truly explain the kind of happiness that Pokemon provided me without briefly touching upon the tragedy that struck my family during my formative years.
My littlebrother, the middle one, lost his battle with braincancer.
The severity had been kept hidden by the adults throughout the years. It was just a long-term illness, nothing to worry about. The healthcare system was there to help my littlebrother.
I didn’t grasp that there were things they couldn’t cure back when I was a child.
When my littlebrother died, I was 12. My world collapsed.
But the pokemon world kept chugging. It became my escapism from the sadness of reality. Was it a healthy way of coping? Probably about as healthy as anything my parents did. There’s no denying the impact the death of a son and brother has on a family. Therapy can only do so much.
Pokemon continued to offer a view into a world of wonder and joy, exactly what I needed in those trying times.
It brought smiles to my face despite the loss I felt.
That’s how much joy Pokemon has to offer as a child.
Growing up
Time inexorably passes, and I inevitably left the intended audience for Pokemon. Teenage years have a way of flooding your body and mind with hormones that makes you want to distance yourself from everything childish.
Pokemon became this thing in the background as education and dating began to fill more and more. I was behind on the curve on that second part - for numerous reasons - but education grew harder and more responsibilities began to be placed on us young adults.
Most things pokemon were packed into storage boxes as I matured, the only exception being me and my late brother’s pikachu plushes. I had promised my grandmother I would cherish them, and even back then I kept my promises.
They followed me all the way to university and into adulthood proper, and nowadays I sit here, writing this as an early-30s adult.
You might think that Pokemon is for children. Surely, it’s got nothing for adults. And that’s where you’d be wrong.
Because as I’ve matured, I’ve come to echo the words of the author C.S. Lewis:
“When I became a man I put away childish things,
including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up”
Yes, Pokemon’s target audience is pre-teens, but look beyond the protagonist of the “weird cartoon” and the games, and you find that the setting of Pokemon is a Solarpunk masterpiece.
If you don’t know Solarpunk, allow me to introduce you to the genre:
In the 60s and 70s, Science Fiction was the go-to literary genre, spurred by the space race and the Cold War: Humanity was going into space, with all its wonders and glories. It was the final frontier, as Star Trek so eloquently put it, and our developing technology would take us there.
In the 80’s, Science fiction gave way to the genres of Cyberpunk and Dystopia: a reposte to the utopian ideals of the science fiction outlined above: Technology wouldn’t solve our problems, it would amplify them. Whether by way of nuclear war, the AI apocalypse, or overpopulation, technology would see humanity consigned to an existence as little more than cogs in a machine.
And in the 90s and 00s, as the world began to awaken to the climate crises that looms over our heads, cyberpunk and dystopias gave way to what is known as Post-Cyberpunk and Solarpunk.
Post-cyberpunk carries on where Cyberpunk left off, with one key difference: Technology isn’t the cause of the shit. Yeah, we might end up as cogs in a machine, but you’ve got a phone in your pocket with access to the sum of human knowledge, and medical science has advanced leaps and bounds.
And then.. there’s Solarpunk. It is the vision for a future where humanity flourishes in tune with nature. The technology isn’t lessened by this, it’s adapted. You’ll find windmills, solar arrays, green engineering in our structures, and rolling unpolluted landscapes.
It’s sustainable, it’s breathtaking, and it’s aspirational. It’s a vision for the future where our current problems are solved and we are all the more empowered for it.
As I’ve matured, these are the smiles that Pokemon now offers me - a look into a world where humans live in harmony with the Pokemon they have chosen. It’s a look into what we - if you ask me - should all aspire towards, because while Pokemon might not be real, the values the setting espouses are absolutely worth fighting for.
