I tried formatting this but internet forums SUCK, so I gave up.
Both the first iteration of Pokémon video games, which are Green, Red, Blue, and Yellow, and the first iteration of the Pokémon manga seek to impart the joys of the quest of catching and loving Pokémon. The manga offers a protagonist, Red, who has the same main quest as players of the game have, but several competing missions and visions of Pokéhappiness are offered as well. The reason for this fragmentation is that while the game offers an effervescent and streamlined narrative in order to immerse players in the game and direct how players should be excited, the manga seeks to present a more aggressive vision of Pokémon in order to provide a conflict and vivacity that is unavailable within the limits of video game form and function for both art and narrative.
In the game, the player is immediately introduced to Professor Oak giving an excited speech about the “wonderful world of Pokémon”, culminating in him exclaiming “[y]our very own Pokémon legend is about to unfold! Let’s go!” Despite claiming this, the legend does not fully become the player’s after all. Oak instructs the player to fulfill his "dream" that he could not fulfill by collecting all Pokémon, stating that this is "a great undertaking in Pokémon history," one special to only the player, at least if said player buys into Professor Oak’s mandate. This dream is a task that required far more time than just playing through the game in order to create a more immersive experience. The player can walk into Oak’s lab and be given an especially useful Pokémon by the Professor, be taught how to battle in some easy battles, be given easy access to healing (and thus have many more battles), and then leave Oak’s lab and be taught how to catch Pokémon in short order to indoctrinate the player quickly into the “wonderful world of Pokémon.” Compared to the peaceful but controlling start of the game, the manga has a much more tumultuous start. The protagonist whom the story spends the most time following, Red, begins the manga by losing a battle, being chewed out by his rival for not “know[ing] [his] limitations,” called a “worm” and shoved to the side by members of the “most evil organization in the world,” Team Rocket, and accused by Professor Oak of “breaking into his lab” when he merely came to seek help to become the best trainer he could be (Pokémon Adventures Ch. 1 p. 5, 12; 2 p. 12; 37 p. 4). Red is given a Pokémon after the misunderstanding with Oak is cleared up to put Red on track for the same quest as the game, that of catching all Pokémon. Despite the quests remaining virtually the same up to this point, the game has already provided a decidedly immersive experience, whereas the manga has provided a tale of rapid conflict and energetic desire, providing two wholly different senses of excitement.
The game holds to its decidedly cheery vision of immersion in the secondary quest of the game, defeating the gym leaders and then the elite four to become Pokémon champion of the world, whereas the manga again uses these characters and situations as a way to foment immense conflict and bloodlust. In the game, one must battle through preliminary, weaker opponents in each gym to reach the decidedly stronger leader. The pacing of the game is designed to keep the player’s levels relatively close to the gym leader’s, providing for competitive and hard battles that make the player have to train more to immerse her or him further. The gym leader’s dialogues are short and incredibly cheery. Before battles they are always corny and rife with exclamation marks and odd capitalization to convey excitement, for example with the very first gym leader greeting the player by stating “I'm BROCK! I'm PEWTER's GYM LEADER! I believe in rock hard defense and determination!” and then complimenting the victorious player gratuitously afterward. The gym leaders, as a collective, are the only characters whose sprites are not replicated, providing further incentive to get to and battle each to have a unique experience, which is further complimented by the sprites’ flamboyance. The Elite Four replicates this flamboyance, with the final member being presumably most flamboyant by being the only opponent in the game to use Dragon Pokémon, as well as wearing a gaudy cape, and then having the player defeat his or her “rival” one last time to win the game. Even after winning the game the player can play on, to battle with friends or catch all Pokémon, but the narrative’s straightforward purpose, that is guiding the player through an exciting journey, has served its end.
The gym leaders and elite four in the manga are inserted into the plot in a much more fragmented manner. In the game, the gym leaders are foes the player beats in a straightforward journey to become the best, and it begins this way in the manga too. The protagonists discover by the third leader, however, that some gym leaders are on the “wrong side”, having joined the evil organization Team Rocket, which lays the groundwork for a conflict that the game lacks, since in the game gym leaders are holy and Team Rocket is a goofily inept evil organization. The gym leaders are inserted over and over again in the manga to provide conflict instead of merely appearing once and then being discarded from the narrative like in the game. The gym leaders and elite four both give their own moralizing speeches in the manga instead of short, cheery quips like in the game, such as the third gym leader, Lt. Surge, ranting about how he has gained “real power” by joining Team Rocket and throwing Red’s hapless Poliwhirl off a boat, providing further grounds for an irreconcilable conflict (Pokémon Adventures Ch. 26 p. 9). The Elite Four is far from its role in the game, as Lance is trying to bring about the end of humanity with the exception of a select few elites like himself. Acts like him hyper beaming a crowd of onlookers at a surfing contest give the manga a genuine sense of cruelty and mean-spiritedness that the game never comes closer. For instance, in the game the head of Team Rocket and eighth gym leader, Giovanni, says that he is “impressed” with the player for beating him and that it was an “honor” to battle with the player. All of these changes serve to refocus the quest from enjoying a straightforward, immersive journey, to an immense struggle between good and evil with repeated life or death stakes, and then eventually life or death for the whole world as the story turns into a bizarre, dystopian conflict.
The greatest change between the game and the manga is certainly the strangely science fiction and dystopian plot that emerges midway through the manga’s plot. In the game, the player marches through about twenty battles in the first battle with the leader of Team Rocket in Celadon City, then a decidedly immersive thirteen floor, forty battle quest with puzzles in the second battle shortly afterward. This is the single greatest immersion of battling in the game, and the “evil” is still very cheery and nonthreatening, like having taken an entire building hostage but harming no one. In the manga, the three main protagonists, Red, Blue, and Green unite to defeat three of the four evil gym leaders of Team Rocket who have captured legendary Pokémon of supreme power and are using them for to try to take over the world. In the first conflict, the good gym leaders have recruited an actual army in Celadon to ward them off, and in both conflicts the Team Rocket members try to kill all the protagonists and other gym leaders. The protagonists defeat Team Rocket, but the huge building they were in is toppled and half the city left utterly wrecked. Compared to the game serving up cute towns with decidedly cheery music in the form of modified piano high notes, this becomes a stark change. The situation becomes far more dystopian when the conflict is between the protagonists and Elite Four, as the Elite Four sends out massive amounts of Pokémon to destroy every city. At the same time the badges, used in the game to battle the Elite Four and become the champion of the world, are used here for science fiction to call forth a powerful Pokémon through amplification of a nonsensical machine to help further eradicate humanity. Whereas the cities and events themselves serve only to immerse the player in battle in the game, they serve to play up the ultimate battle of good and evil with the world at stake in the manga.
Through all of this, the difference in art style helps to give a greater sense of aggression and vivacity than the game throughout the manga. The game is limited in what it can do, providing simple backgrounds, out of battle sprite designs, and motionless battle sprite designs, lacking in vivacity even if flamboyant and engaging. Attacks are similarly simple and though it provides the player the truth that he or she is picking different attacks, they are not anywhere near thrilling really. In the manga, the art can display a degree of intensity and variance of action that the game cannot come near replicating. The leader of Team Rocket in the game is shown with a smirk, but not able to look particularly menacing with only one image and a lack of detail. In the manga, he is shown with eyes closed, a half-smile, and smudged with dirt while scoping out his enemies before revealing his true nature with his pupil tiny and intently focused, eyebrow fully slanted upward, action lines to show his head snapping to attention. All of these types of details are used throughout the manga to convey excitement and conflict in a vivid manner that the game cannot approach with its pixelated and limited art (Pokémon Adventures Ch. 23 p. 2-3). Pokémon are cut in half, blown to pieces, trainers are demonstrated throwing Pokémon with ease, and Pokémon are demonstrated throwing trainers with ease as well. All of these are things that are “vivid[ly] and attractive[ly]” drawn, as stated by the author of the manga Hidenori Kusuka in a way the game could not provide to create a sense of excitement in conflict (Pokemon Adventures Volume 2).
The Pokémon game and manga both provide a vision of morality and involve the player in a narrative based around this idea while seeking to provide an exciting tale. The game’s straightforward and bombastic narrative was adapted into a tale of bloodlust obsessed with the idea of good and evil, providing a more fragmented but vivid tale in the process.
If you hate long topics, feel free to post about it here! If you want to bitch about grammar, please feel free to bitch about that! I can insult you over either of those until cookie gets tired of it and deletes all of my posts. This is from two years ago, and it is not the best paper, but I figured some nerds could appreciate it.
Both the first iteration of Pokémon video games, which are Green, Red, Blue, and Yellow, and the first iteration of the Pokémon manga seek to impart the joys of the quest of catching and loving Pokémon. The manga offers a protagonist, Red, who has the same main quest as players of the game have, but several competing missions and visions of Pokéhappiness are offered as well. The reason for this fragmentation is that while the game offers an effervescent and streamlined narrative in order to immerse players in the game and direct how players should be excited, the manga seeks to present a more aggressive vision of Pokémon in order to provide a conflict and vivacity that is unavailable within the limits of video game form and function for both art and narrative.
In the game, the player is immediately introduced to Professor Oak giving an excited speech about the “wonderful world of Pokémon”, culminating in him exclaiming “[y]our very own Pokémon legend is about to unfold! Let’s go!” Despite claiming this, the legend does not fully become the player’s after all. Oak instructs the player to fulfill his "dream" that he could not fulfill by collecting all Pokémon, stating that this is "a great undertaking in Pokémon history," one special to only the player, at least if said player buys into Professor Oak’s mandate. This dream is a task that required far more time than just playing through the game in order to create a more immersive experience. The player can walk into Oak’s lab and be given an especially useful Pokémon by the Professor, be taught how to battle in some easy battles, be given easy access to healing (and thus have many more battles), and then leave Oak’s lab and be taught how to catch Pokémon in short order to indoctrinate the player quickly into the “wonderful world of Pokémon.” Compared to the peaceful but controlling start of the game, the manga has a much more tumultuous start. The protagonist whom the story spends the most time following, Red, begins the manga by losing a battle, being chewed out by his rival for not “know[ing] [his] limitations,” called a “worm” and shoved to the side by members of the “most evil organization in the world,” Team Rocket, and accused by Professor Oak of “breaking into his lab” when he merely came to seek help to become the best trainer he could be (Pokémon Adventures Ch. 1 p. 5, 12; 2 p. 12; 37 p. 4). Red is given a Pokémon after the misunderstanding with Oak is cleared up to put Red on track for the same quest as the game, that of catching all Pokémon. Despite the quests remaining virtually the same up to this point, the game has already provided a decidedly immersive experience, whereas the manga has provided a tale of rapid conflict and energetic desire, providing two wholly different senses of excitement.
The game holds to its decidedly cheery vision of immersion in the secondary quest of the game, defeating the gym leaders and then the elite four to become Pokémon champion of the world, whereas the manga again uses these characters and situations as a way to foment immense conflict and bloodlust. In the game, one must battle through preliminary, weaker opponents in each gym to reach the decidedly stronger leader. The pacing of the game is designed to keep the player’s levels relatively close to the gym leader’s, providing for competitive and hard battles that make the player have to train more to immerse her or him further. The gym leader’s dialogues are short and incredibly cheery. Before battles they are always corny and rife with exclamation marks and odd capitalization to convey excitement, for example with the very first gym leader greeting the player by stating “I'm BROCK! I'm PEWTER's GYM LEADER! I believe in rock hard defense and determination!” and then complimenting the victorious player gratuitously afterward. The gym leaders, as a collective, are the only characters whose sprites are not replicated, providing further incentive to get to and battle each to have a unique experience, which is further complimented by the sprites’ flamboyance. The Elite Four replicates this flamboyance, with the final member being presumably most flamboyant by being the only opponent in the game to use Dragon Pokémon, as well as wearing a gaudy cape, and then having the player defeat his or her “rival” one last time to win the game. Even after winning the game the player can play on, to battle with friends or catch all Pokémon, but the narrative’s straightforward purpose, that is guiding the player through an exciting journey, has served its end.
The gym leaders and elite four in the manga are inserted into the plot in a much more fragmented manner. In the game, the gym leaders are foes the player beats in a straightforward journey to become the best, and it begins this way in the manga too. The protagonists discover by the third leader, however, that some gym leaders are on the “wrong side”, having joined the evil organization Team Rocket, which lays the groundwork for a conflict that the game lacks, since in the game gym leaders are holy and Team Rocket is a goofily inept evil organization. The gym leaders are inserted over and over again in the manga to provide conflict instead of merely appearing once and then being discarded from the narrative like in the game. The gym leaders and elite four both give their own moralizing speeches in the manga instead of short, cheery quips like in the game, such as the third gym leader, Lt. Surge, ranting about how he has gained “real power” by joining Team Rocket and throwing Red’s hapless Poliwhirl off a boat, providing further grounds for an irreconcilable conflict (Pokémon Adventures Ch. 26 p. 9). The Elite Four is far from its role in the game, as Lance is trying to bring about the end of humanity with the exception of a select few elites like himself. Acts like him hyper beaming a crowd of onlookers at a surfing contest give the manga a genuine sense of cruelty and mean-spiritedness that the game never comes closer. For instance, in the game the head of Team Rocket and eighth gym leader, Giovanni, says that he is “impressed” with the player for beating him and that it was an “honor” to battle with the player. All of these changes serve to refocus the quest from enjoying a straightforward, immersive journey, to an immense struggle between good and evil with repeated life or death stakes, and then eventually life or death for the whole world as the story turns into a bizarre, dystopian conflict.
The greatest change between the game and the manga is certainly the strangely science fiction and dystopian plot that emerges midway through the manga’s plot. In the game, the player marches through about twenty battles in the first battle with the leader of Team Rocket in Celadon City, then a decidedly immersive thirteen floor, forty battle quest with puzzles in the second battle shortly afterward. This is the single greatest immersion of battling in the game, and the “evil” is still very cheery and nonthreatening, like having taken an entire building hostage but harming no one. In the manga, the three main protagonists, Red, Blue, and Green unite to defeat three of the four evil gym leaders of Team Rocket who have captured legendary Pokémon of supreme power and are using them for to try to take over the world. In the first conflict, the good gym leaders have recruited an actual army in Celadon to ward them off, and in both conflicts the Team Rocket members try to kill all the protagonists and other gym leaders. The protagonists defeat Team Rocket, but the huge building they were in is toppled and half the city left utterly wrecked. Compared to the game serving up cute towns with decidedly cheery music in the form of modified piano high notes, this becomes a stark change. The situation becomes far more dystopian when the conflict is between the protagonists and Elite Four, as the Elite Four sends out massive amounts of Pokémon to destroy every city. At the same time the badges, used in the game to battle the Elite Four and become the champion of the world, are used here for science fiction to call forth a powerful Pokémon through amplification of a nonsensical machine to help further eradicate humanity. Whereas the cities and events themselves serve only to immerse the player in battle in the game, they serve to play up the ultimate battle of good and evil with the world at stake in the manga.
Through all of this, the difference in art style helps to give a greater sense of aggression and vivacity than the game throughout the manga. The game is limited in what it can do, providing simple backgrounds, out of battle sprite designs, and motionless battle sprite designs, lacking in vivacity even if flamboyant and engaging. Attacks are similarly simple and though it provides the player the truth that he or she is picking different attacks, they are not anywhere near thrilling really. In the manga, the art can display a degree of intensity and variance of action that the game cannot come near replicating. The leader of Team Rocket in the game is shown with a smirk, but not able to look particularly menacing with only one image and a lack of detail. In the manga, he is shown with eyes closed, a half-smile, and smudged with dirt while scoping out his enemies before revealing his true nature with his pupil tiny and intently focused, eyebrow fully slanted upward, action lines to show his head snapping to attention. All of these types of details are used throughout the manga to convey excitement and conflict in a vivid manner that the game cannot approach with its pixelated and limited art (Pokémon Adventures Ch. 23 p. 2-3). Pokémon are cut in half, blown to pieces, trainers are demonstrated throwing Pokémon with ease, and Pokémon are demonstrated throwing trainers with ease as well. All of these are things that are “vivid[ly] and attractive[ly]” drawn, as stated by the author of the manga Hidenori Kusuka in a way the game could not provide to create a sense of excitement in conflict (Pokemon Adventures Volume 2).
The Pokémon game and manga both provide a vision of morality and involve the player in a narrative based around this idea while seeking to provide an exciting tale. The game’s straightforward and bombastic narrative was adapted into a tale of bloodlust obsessed with the idea of good and evil, providing a more fragmented but vivid tale in the process.
If you hate long topics, feel free to post about it here! If you want to bitch about grammar, please feel free to bitch about that! I can insult you over either of those until cookie gets tired of it and deletes all of my posts. This is from two years ago, and it is not the best paper, but I figured some nerds could appreciate it.
