Pokémon

Welcome to the wonderful, amazingly complex world of Pokémon! This impressive creation has captured the imaginations of millions of (mainly young) people around the world in the few years since its inception, and is one of the few genuinely original scenarios of recent times. The scene now includes video games, a TV cartoon series, conventions and plenty of merchandise.

The premise is of a world (called Kanto) of humans and various creatures that can be captured and trained. Once captured they live in ball-shaped containers (Pokéballs) that can be kept in one's pocket: hence the original name Pocket Monsters that was eventually contracted to Pokémon.

To become a Pokémon Trainer is a good way of life, as it teaches the young people who become Trainers respect for the creatures and many other valuable lessons of life. The best trainers aspire to become Pokémon Masters, something that the trainer we come to know best—Ash Ketchum of Pallet Town—aimed to do right from the start of his quest.

The Pokémon understand human speech but cannot speak it themselves, although they can communicate between the various species. However their speech always soinds to us like their own species' name or part of it. The only exceptions to this non-human speech rule are the recently-discovered Slowkings (found only on the newer world of Johto) and a Meowth who taught himself to speak human language and to walk upright on his rear feet only: this infamous Meowth is part of the best-known group of the notorious Team Rocket outfit. Team Rocket's aim in life is to steal Pokémon for their evil boss.

Overall, it is a genuinely lovely story, and totally engrossing. It is hard to avoid becoming emotionally involved with the characters one meets, especially through watching the cartoon series, and even the rascally Meowth in Team Rocket turns out to be to some extent a sympathetic character (I myself have a soft spot for him) once one learns more about his background.

Anyway, here are some resources that I am building up: not yet anywhere near complete, but I shall add to this page as and when I can, while being careful of copyright matters. I am keeping to the original batch of 151 Pokémon, in their fifteen Type categories, at least until I am more familiar with the 100 new ones and the two new Types (Dark and Steel).

 Pokédex: Index of and facts about the original 151 Pokémon

 Pokémon Types and how to battle the different Types

 Hidden Machines and Training Machines