August 20, 2019 • 51 mins
Turn your hat backwards and get ready to battle! This week Dani and Ify are joined by Host and Producer Matt Acevedo to discuss Pokémon! The gang touches on many iterations of the franchise from their first experiences with the Red and Blue editions to Detective Pikachu! Whether your Pokédex is full or you just stepped out of Pallet town there's a little bit of everything on this week's episode of Nerdificent!
FOOTNOTES:
Matt on Twitter
List of Pokémon (Sprite Gallery)
The 10 Best Episodes of the Original Pokémon Anime
Detective Pikachu: An Absurdly Silly, Wonderful Ride
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Nerdificent. I am
one half of your host, Danny Fernandez, and sitting across
from me. How's it going? And you can't see, but
he's in magino. These are some shorts I picked up
while I was in New York um at the Billionaire
Boys Club. It's the ice cream shorts, and I was like, oh, yeah,
(00:31):
I want to it. Yeah, and today we're joined by
one of our dear friends. We've known him because if
you and I were hosts at hyper OPG where we
met Matt um who's also a host there. He's a
host in producer. It's Matt Asservato. Hey, yeah, thanks for
having me. And I gotta say I love the main boo.
It looks real good, looks really good. If he yeah,
(00:52):
I don't even know what you would call this, but
I am color coordinated and in magenta nice and yeah,
and I'm in a common huh, a unique low Pokemon shirt.
So yeah. So we normally start a podcast with what
we're seeking out about, but since we're covering Pokemon and
it's such a huge topic, I thought we would dive
right into it. But I do know that when we
(01:14):
asked for Pokemon people, like, so many people tagged you
and it made sense. I think you were supposed to
come on our Nintendo episode, but you couldn't because you're
also a big Nintendo head. Yeah. Nintendo. It is like
my is my forte. It's what. It's literally the thing
I'm most passionate about of anything. I don't know if
I'd ever want to work for Nintendo because I love
it so much. That's hilarious. We've done hosting for them.
(01:35):
I've like hosted for them, like that's like about the
extent of oh yeah you have Yeah, yeah, that was
really fun. But I just they're just I know, I
feel I love about this is that company is that
they just focus. It's just so positive. I feel like
like all their content and all their their game is
all about bringing people together and I just really latch
onto that. Yeah, so is that something? I mean, I
assume that's how you got introduced to Pokemon was from
(01:56):
the games? Yeah, it was the games and I was
really young man, I was I was in uh I
think first grade when the game came out, Pokemon Red,
and I got it for Christmas along with the game
Boy Color, and I just I know was before the
show I think. I think the show came came after,
but the game was what got me hooked on it.
And I just remember like that, that's the feeling of
(02:16):
opening up on Christmas morning and you know, putting it
in here, that the ding, you know, and and just
the dune, like the dunt, the dunt dunt, and just
the sense of adventure that's happening. And from the moment
Professor Oh asked me like what my name was, I
was like, that was the name part of what are
you a boy or girls? Oh customization. I think our
(02:38):
friend Kylie Bear is the voice of Professor Oak. No, Oh,
you would know, because he's a voice of adult go on.
That's right. Yeah, he stoke too. Yeah, well he's got
a great voice he does. Yeah, it's done so many
world the Pokemon Oh, that's totally him. It was wild
because Pokemon was like kind of, at least for our generation,
(03:01):
this like smash hit and it was like everyone was
poking crazy. You know. We ended up leading up to
having a movie and it just kind of took over everywhere,
and it was a thing that we thought would eventually
grow away with the nineties, and it stood. The anime
kept running. They kept coming out with new versions after
and it seems like there's a whole new generation of
(03:22):
poke It fans. Yeah, and I feel like what they've
been doing, it's been so great because you know, they
had the games, you have the expement from the games,
and the show comes out and it's like, oh, like,
are we done with the game? Oh, here's a new
game like that. I feel like they're pacing with releasing content.
It's just so dang good. Well, you know, Digimon kind
of came out around like a little bit after, but
kind of around the same time, and it just hasn't
definitely still has its fans and it still has you know,
(03:45):
things that are coming out, Um, I know Digimon Adventure.
Uh uh huh. Yeah, Well it hasn't latched on the
same way or has it been blown up the same
way that Pokemon has. Yeah, I think, uh, I love Digimon.
I think what happened was to uh, you know, American
audiences at least because it came out around the same
time Pokemon came out, and it has a similar name.
(04:05):
It kind of like became oh it's just a copycat
of this, but did you want it's like a completely
different thing. Which is like, you know, it's and I
don't think it latchunks. I don't think the games are
nearly as good as Pokemon. You know, yeah, they're more
traditional JRPG style kind of games. Yeah yeah, well Pokemon
is a little more user friendly, I think. Yeah, oh yeah. Well. Also,
you know, I feel like I've said this before, the
(04:27):
Digimon anime is way more solid than the Pokemon anime.
Like the Pokemon anime, you know, there are some stands
for it, but I feel like, you know, Digimon had
to beat every time. The design was cooler. But thus
a last Pokemon is the one that I mean, it's
got one of the best dub theme songs ever made. Yeah,
(04:49):
that's true. I can't I will say that because you know,
it was just Digimon Digital Monsters, Digimon the Champions did
Ultimate Digital Monsters, and then we have Pocket Monsters. So
let's just hop into the history of Pokemon. So it
was created by Satashi Tajii, and he actually when he
was growing up, he had a fondness of catching insects
(05:11):
and tadpoles uh near his home in suburban Tokyo, So
he essentially wanted to make a game. He actually had
a magazine. I don't know if you know. He actually
had a magazine that he made. It was a gaming
one called game Freak that he did with the help
of Ken Sugumori. So they did that, and then when
Tajii discovered the game Boy, then he had this idea
(05:33):
to to move. Essentially, he actually was inspired by ultraman
an Ultra seven, which is a fantasy television show in
which the protagonists used giant monsters contained with small capsules.
That sounds familiar, and so when he made this new game.
When they made the new game, they called it Capsule Monsters,
but then due to trademarking issues, they ended up changing
it to Pocket Monsters or as we know now, Pokemon,
(05:56):
which is so awesome. I love that even represented in
the game to see like not only is you know,
the element of catching, but also like you know, he
liked to catch bugs, and in all of the Pokemon
games are the trainers like I'm book catcher, you know,
I'm fisherman. I'm definitely shouting out those bug catchers throughout
the whole thing. Yeah, don't sleep on the bug catchers, man,
I know they keep popping off, but yeah, we're talking
(06:18):
about you popping in the first one. And as you know,
the franchise began as Pokemon Red and Green, which was
in Japan, but we knew it and Pokemon Red and Blue,
and it was a pair of video games for the
original game Boy that we're developed by game Freak and
published a Nintendo in February, which was my birthday, which
is probably why I was able to get it in
(06:38):
nineteen ninety six, making that um eight years after me
and Danny. Oh my gosh. Well well, well yeah, the
game came out in Japan and then was so popular
they were able to have it come out in right.
I was so interesting too because it was two separate
games but the same game, which I mean now Fire
(07:01):
Emblem is kind of doing that with the houses, but
they had Fates and birthright the one before that, and
and that is like a different energy to kind of
capitalize on a craze because not only do you customize
your character in the game the names of your Pokemon,
but also you can have a choice of which version
you want to have and the Pokemon you're able to
(07:22):
catch changes between that and there are you know, as
you said, there were there are exclusive to each game,
and back then it was like a way bigger deal
because you want to catch them all. You either needed
the link cable, which I feel like no one happened,
or you needed to just get both copies of the game.
You needed a friend with rich parents who bought them
every accessory for the thing. But like even that weird
reading light that would plug I had the reading light. Man, Okay,
(07:44):
so you're the rich I guess so heard it here first. Yeah, man, Like,
I don't know. It was just like and now it's
it's just easier with with online, everything is just so much.
You don't I don't feel like you need to get
the other ones. I think if you were talking about
fire mb them, like at least with each house it's
like different stories a little bit like you're getting different
sides of it. But at least like nowadays, if we
(08:05):
do Pokemon, you can just trade, Like I can just
trade with Iffy's Like, oh, like if you have an exclusive,
but mankey on your I need to make you so
I'll go to you and we'll trade. So yeah, yeah,
can you walk people through what those first games were like? Oh? Man,
so the first games, well, it's what it was like.
The just the overall experience, yeah, or like you know,
playing them on the game Boy essentially was your goal
(08:28):
and the characters that you ran into. I'm gonna transform myself.
I'm gonna go back into the shoes of seven year
old Matt and my experiencing it. It was the first
time for me that I was the one. It was
like my journey. It was like Matt is in this game.
I named him Matt, and you know, I was going
on this journey and I got to go and you know,
make new friends and allies and rivals, and it was
(08:49):
just this discovery and growing not only with myself, with
my Pokemon who became my friends, who had name after
my friends back in you know, first grade. I would
name him like, oh, this one's Patrick and this one's
like just even or whatever. But it was like my
party of friends that we like we grew together. Um.
But at the same we're not just only not only
are we like just trying to be the best, we're
also like uncovering like a mafia plot going on and
(09:11):
like thwarting like bad guys at the same time. Um,
because you know, in the first game, there's Team Rocket
and Team Rocket is doing this whole thing where they're
trying to you know, replicate you, which is the first
ancient Pokemon, and so they created me two and they
did a bunch of shady stuff and like you're just
this ten year old kid going around busting their chops. Uh.
And that was like real, real cool. So I don't know, man,
(09:34):
it's just I just get so happy thinking about it.
I know. It's what's cool too, is you know it's
a solid formula because it's kind of repeated in every game,
and there's minor tweaks here and there, but you know,
you have your hero character, which is you. You have
the Professor, You always have a um what is whether
they called at the Pokemon Center, is it nurse Nurse
(09:55):
Joyce and Officer Jenny's. Yeah, Nurse Joy's, Officer Jenny's you
haven't him. Leaders and you have the eleait for and
you have your team Rocket or it's changed over the years,
but you're your antagonist Gang and then of course your rival.
And now they've kind of added a buddy to take
that like last Pokemon. Yeah, I Do'm not you know,
the buddy. He's cute. The buddy's usually cute. Well, I'm like,
(10:17):
all right, get out of here kids, let me get
my rival there, let me be him. Yeah, show Who's boss. Yeah.
But you know, even though in the first game, because
like I wasn't aware, like I think the main weakness
has made sense, like fire beats you know, grass, grass
uh beats uh you know, water, water beats fire. But
like outside of that, it was a lot of discovering
(10:38):
of like, oh my gosh, like what defeats rock and
what defeat the psychic you know, and it was just
this like water biting. Yeah, So like that, especially that
first time through, it was just like really just figuring
it out, you know. I know, it is funny the
the types and the weaknesses because it all starts. I
feel like it was pretty like I can see why
water would beat rock, I can see why fighting might
(10:59):
defeats kick. But now we've got we got very right.
Very is good against dragons because dragons were repie for
a long time. They were very They were only week
to drag. Yeah, I mean, and Lance was the guy.
You know, Lance was super cool man. I loved Lance.
He was the dragon elite. But it was like, it's
(11:20):
so cool and I wanted to punch his face and
I was like, I have you keep beating me and
I'm going to end you. Yeah, you know, and like
talking going back and talking about like our first time through,
I'm remembering like every like now it's just kind of
the subconscious that I know all these Pokemon they could
they bring him back, you know, but the first time
I every single time you see a new Pokemon, you'd
be like, oh my gosh, what is this thing? You
(11:42):
know I used I used to masterball the first time
on a Ditto because in the show that was like,
oh wow, Dido can transform into anything. And I was like,
I have to catch that Ditto, and I was just
so excited the first time I saw I was like,
oh my gosh, this is so rare, Like I've never
seen ditto again. So I just I didn't even tried
a weekend. I just threw my mask ball. I got
silf Coo and on this ditto and I had when
(12:03):
I got to mewtwo, I was just using like ultra balls.
I did it backwards, man. Yeah, but you still caught
me too, so there you go. Yeah. So this year
the games came out also saw the release of the
trading card game, which was huge. By the way, it
had a hundred and two cards and was super popular.
(12:24):
I was like the person that had all of my
cards in the little card holder and then I would
just like take them to school and I just like looking.
I just thought they were so pretty. I did that
with like all of my anime trading cards. I just
thought I just didn't want to give them up. I totally.
I'm totally with you on that though. I don't want
anything to happen to them. Same and for me, you know,
it's weird. Me and my cousins we didn't play the
(12:44):
card game until later. We just collected the cards. It
was just weird, should not be doing that. I was thinking,
I had a set of Pikachu and um, it was
this Pikachu toy. I think it was like the Here
No Evil c No Evil or something. I don't know,
it was something like that, and I literally did not
take it out of the box. I did not. I
was that kid, and I just left. I thought my
(13:05):
Pikachu was so pretty and I didn't want anything to
happen to it, and I just left it. So in
the starter set where you can where it has the
window so you can see the card in there. Yeah, see,
I never had that. My parents would never invest that
much money into a thing I liked, so I always
bought boosters, And if you aren't aware, boosters don't come
with energy cards, they just have other Pokemon card. Uh.
(13:28):
So what that means is I had a whole bunch
of Pokemon but no way to play him, so I
never was able to play the game. Meanwhile, my best
friend Welton, his parents were taking them to Walden's Book
to compete in the Pokemonage because they had the local
Pokemon leagues where you would play against people and then
when you would win, you'd get a badge, a physical.
(13:48):
If you actually got badges, that's like a drink of
true man missed out on it. They still have them
that you could go to. I mean they're the league
is still going strong. They go live on Twitch quite
often for the championships. But that you know, we'll get
to this later. But even like watching like pro Pokemon fight,
like it really seems like the stratus to one shot
(14:11):
every Poke, so like it's never that exciting to watch
because it's like, all right, this guy has the thing
to one shot. Yeah. I never got into the competitive
aspect of the of the game like that because of
that I'm like, well, we're just gonna keep you know,
trading in like you know, returning Pokemon and sending out
the ones that's gonna match that type, you know. But
it's kind of like a gamble. It's like, oh, I
(14:32):
hope he throws out this. But there are crazy combos
that you can't do. Like there's there's moves that like
can you can like I forgot the name of this move,
but it was like returned to other person's Pokemon to
the pokemall and they have to put through in the
next one other party, and there's like, you know, there's
combos you can do and stuff. But I never got
that deep into that because it was it was mostly
just for me, you know. Yeah, same same here. Yeah.
(14:52):
Was a huge year because after so they have the
game release, they have the trading card release, then they
have the manga release, you know, then and then finally
this is when I really got into it. Finally the
following year, April is when the anime series premiered. We
had Pokemon Trader Satashi, who was later dubbed as we
(15:14):
know Um as ash Catchum, who was named after Satashi,
the creator Um based on Red and another character introduced
in the first episode was his rival, who was later
Gary Oak based on Blue Gary Guy. So yeah, the
the anime is I mean, I will be the best
(15:36):
no one ever was catch them. So yeah, that's so iconic.
Gotta catch up. You teach me. We might not have
(15:57):
gotten to that park, Danny. We don't know how much
we can easily played because it could have been. It's
back to us the first ten seconds. Okay, so talk
us through some of the main characters here. Team Rockets,
so you touched on them, but we didn't really talk
(16:18):
about you know who they are. Yeah. So Team Rocket is, uh,
this corporation that basically they're trying to take capture strong
Pokemon for their own purposes. And the ones that we
see primarily it's it's ran by the eighth gym leader spoiler,
which is Giovanni UM and he uses normal type Pokemon
to fight. But Giovann is like a mob guy and
like and the people that we see all the time,
(16:40):
or two people, one named Jesse and one named James
in the American version, um because they're thieves and you know,
like Jesse James, uh, and they have their me that
talks that's talking to me outright, that's right, um, and
they're just trying they see the speaking tune and Ashes
speaking to is pretty special. It's kind of I like
to think of it as like a shiny Pikachu because
is is very powerful. And they're always trying to capture
(17:02):
this Pikachu for the boss because they're Jesse and James
were there like meant to be like someone like, you know,
one of the top grunts, but like they kept getting
thwarted by like Ash. Now they're kind of like fools
because of it. And I think there's like a vendetta
because of that. That's why they want to catch the
Pikachu to like get there, get it. Yeah, that's always
been funny because like Pikachu is such a whatever pokemon. Yeah,
(17:23):
but you know, it's cute, it's yellow, it's a mascot. Yeah.
But yeah. One of the mottoes of Team Rocket that
you can see on the walls of one of their
facility in the game is steal Pokemon for profit, Exploit
Pokemon for profit. All Pokemon exists for the glory of
Team Rocket. Yeah. Yeah, it's not funny that they would
(17:44):
just put that weird bad boy in case you were
wondering who stole it? We did? It was me Team
Rocket Yeah, um, yes, so, I mean it feels weird
like being like playing Pikachu, who's like the you know,
the most famous ever. But let's dive into some of
(18:05):
the Pokemon. So Pikachu arguably one of the most famous
the mascot iconic Pokemon we had. I can say that
officially because we have Detective Pikachu. So yeah, he's his
name was on it, so he is the goat. I
mean they created a whole version for Pikachu because there
was red, blue, and then we had yellow, which copied
(18:26):
the uh anime, and you were able to walk around
with Pikachu at your side, and there was a big
surf mini game that I was never able to reach.
Everyone talked about it. I could not find the surf
mini game. Where was that? That's a rule that was
I don't remember. That was I don't know, Matt, remember
how I said, I didn't. You're like, oh man, that
(18:50):
wasn't It was a little fun. That was such a
fun mini game. Whoa well do you remember playing it?
Like nine hours? He didn't get there? Yeah, no, I
did not. Can you describe like starter Pokemon and then
how they level up. So every game has there's three
starter Pokemon. The standard is fire, grass and water um
(19:11):
and so and there's and for every generation of Pokemon,
there are different types. You know. There's literally a new
generation of Pokemon and the original we have Charmander, Squirrel
and bobble Star um and those evolved. You know, as
as you train them, you get to a certain level
UM and they gain XP and you can kind of
like focus that XP if you want to like gain
(19:32):
you know, maybe you want this one to be like
have higher speed. Like it's told evy training, which we've
always skip that because that's very deep. Yeah, that's super deep,
but we we can essentially, uh, just if you're curious.
Ev training is basically essentially hunting for specific Pokemon with
like these hidden stats and you have to uh and
(19:53):
there's like certain like qualifiers you have to do to
train each of those stats. It's very very deep in
the game. And yeah, I remember it was explained to me,
and it was explained how to do it, and I
was like, yeah, I ain't doing all that. Yeah. So
with with your starter, you choose one uh and you
get to name it, you know, name you your best friend,
or just leave it as you know, or you can
name it something funny, so it's every time you're throwing
(20:14):
it out and says something funny. Uh. But you as
you go on your journey, you battle a wild Pokemon
that you encounter UM, and you battle trainers and they
gain experience, and when they get at a certain amount
of experience, they level up UM and when they get
to certain levels, they then they evolve into their next forum.
Traditionally there are three forms that they are two other
forms that they evolved to UM. So usually it's like
(20:35):
level starters. Usually I think it's eighteen they evolve into
the next form, so like char Mander will Ulttermelion and
they believe it's thirty two they evolved to chars ard Um.
But you can hold off on that if you want,
if you hold the B button when they're dropout to evolve,
because if they actually learned moves a little faster and
game with more XP if they stay in like that
form longer, So like it might be a strategy to
(20:56):
hold the B button and and like level up and
learn some more moves before you evolved. But let us
not forget in Pokemon Yellow, if you evolved, your Pikachu
it can no longer follow you. And I had so
many friends. I was like, well, you're shout Pikachi walking around.
I'm on Bolba PDA, which is Pikachi Pikachi, which is
(21:18):
Pokemon's Wikipedia, And yeah it is, and it says Pikachu
is a short, chubby rodent Pokemon. It has a small mouth.
I love how the descriptive they are with this. Uh yeah,
one thing to know is that um ashes Pikachu stays
outside of his poke bon. Yeah, it's probably why it's
(21:38):
so fit, because all normal Pikachus are really really cute
and like a chubby, you know, so cute. I'm just
looking at it, and my little girl's self is like,
knows why I didn't take it out of its box. Yeah,
we have to take a really quick break and then
we're gonna hop back into Pokemon right after this and
(22:02):
we're back. Matt, who are what are some of your
favorite Pokemon? Oh man, okay, uh this is a great question.
I think this is a lot about people's personalities. Um,
you know, but for me, my favorite pokem I have
a few. I have a lot, actually, but my all
time favorite I'll start there. My altime favorite is this
giant sleeping Pokemon named Snorlax. Yeah, yeah, and and and
(22:23):
when you encounter it in the game, it's literally a
roadblock in the game where you need to wake it
up with an item you collect from the Lavender Town
cemetery like tower cemetery tower called a pokey fluid, and
then you need to play the poke flu to wake
it up. And it's it's cute, just like I don't
really know how to like a bear, like like a
half panda looking giant like green and white bear. It
(22:47):
looks like, yeah, completely green, and its stomach is white.
I love it because he just wants to sleep and like,
just let him sleep, you know. And I totally get it.
I feel like I relate to him so much. Yeah,
and he regains health while he sleeps, so that is
real cool. And he has the psychology effect where he
yawns and makes other people sleepy. You want to know
one of my favorites, I would love to. Yes, now
(23:15):
you gotta chime in Iffy with yours. Oh man, all
time favorite. It's always gonna be toxic. Baby Nice is
top to your Pokemon. Poisonous has blades on his hand
looks brawlic you know, definitely looking. But you know who's
that like Buff Cloud dude, It's he's like a legendary
now right, I'm talking about Thunderous Oh gotcha? Yeah, you
(23:42):
know if he this brought up some bad um freaking
DVI and art for me. This is uh he said,
buff I've typed in buff Pokemon who and it's like
a thick Pikachu and a SWEETO who is he with?
Oh that was great. I'm so glad I had you
(24:03):
searched that just for that reason. Oh my god, this
is rough, baby, that's amazing. That that's gotta be That's
that's one of the best. There's like a twelve pack.
Oh man, it was Yeah. I wish you could just
have seen what Danny was forced to see. It was like,
it's not going to be in the footnotes. So I'll
(24:23):
let you know that I've stumbled on something. Back. You're
you're that you're walking a path when you look up
those problems walking a path? Okay, anyways, but yeah, I
don't feel good. Sorry, I can't look away. Yeah, I
have seen the magic harp that one I saw the
(24:46):
dude where like they just wear the little fish head
and it's like they're super buff. I've seen that cause play. Yeah, yeah,
that's a character in the game. It's like, isn't like
a Magic Harp fan. It's a fan and you can
find him and he's just so weird. He literally wears
like a carp like mask thing with big old eyes
and shirtless above and you item and that was one
(25:06):
of the most fun. That's also, like we talked about
being excited about seeing the different Pokemon, but the different
trainers you encounter are super fun too. Yeah. Yeah. And
then in the different gyms, you know, well, I love
about the gym's that there. For those who don't know,
we didn't don't think we mentioned this. But you're on
this journey, you're trying to collect you're trying to be
the Pokemon Champion in this region. So in every every
(25:29):
game there's different regions. Why they're different Pokemon, right exactly.
Um so the first game during the Kanto region, uh
and in this region, you're you know, in all of
them are trying to get to the Pokemon League and
in order to which is this top four elite, this
Elite four, if you will, literally called the Elite four
of trainers in this region and you have to battle
(25:49):
in order to become the Pokemon Champion UM. To get there,
you need to go through different towns and fight going
to gyms that our specific type of gyms like a
rock jam or a water gym, etcetera. And you have
to fight the gym leader there and if you beat them,
they give you a badge. Um. You know that depicts
that you that's shown that you have defeated that gym
leader and you're worthy to move on to the next gym. Yeah.
(26:10):
And also every gym has a singular Pokemon type, which
is very important and interesting because you can scuff your
run if you pick uh Pokemon as your starter who
is weak to the first gym. For example, I think
the first gym UH was Brock, which is rock uh
(26:31):
and it's weak against leaf. So if you picked Bulbastor,
you're you're gonna serve that person up. But it's uh.
It's strong and water, so Squirrel, you're good, but it's
strong against fire, so you're gonna have a tougher time
when you rock with the charm nder. Yeah, exactly, man, exactly.
So it's especially in the early game, it's like what
do I do? What do I do? What have you
(26:52):
done to maple him all? But there's some really great
trainers out there man. Yea. The gym leaders too are
so cool. Like Lance, he's so cool man, you come
back to land, He's got you know, he's great. A.
Lance was like one of the cooler designs. I'm excited
about all the new new designs too. And then I
mean in the new Pokemon h the region is called
the Gallery Region and there it's essentially the UK. It's
(27:16):
like the regions similar. It represents like the UK basically,
so it's all like it's like like stone and like
are not stone like a brick and their giant windmills
and it's like it's like the countryside of the UK.
It's really cute. But the leaders in this this and
this new game Sword and Shield, which is the new
Pokemon game coming out the in the November for the switch,
(27:37):
like the gyms are giant, like football size stadiums yea,
and they're it's like an event. It's like it's the
first time I feel like it's actually like a big,
big deal, And I feel like that's kind of just
finally taking the note from the anime because I feel
like in the anime, the gyms were such a big
ordeal in the games, Like it was cool, like you
(28:00):
usually every gym starts off with a puzzle you have
to figure out before you get to the gym leader.
So if you solve the puzzle, most times you fight
less trainers. But me, I was like, no, I'm gonna
just fight all of y'all, so mature. I'm like, high
enough level. You get more XPT for fighting trainers than
wild Pokemon, y'all. Yeah, you gotta beat them up. Yeah.
But and I just love in the and this new one,
(28:20):
like you were seeing some really cool guys, Like there's
this guy who looks like Mario basically or like r
G like, but he's like he's they're saying, he looks
like he has like a Canadian like yeah, ranger hats
and stuff, and uh, he looks really cool. Yeah we
can talk. Oh and this will kind of help us
speed along the games. But really for the so that
(28:42):
the one other thing we're missing from Pokemon that is
across the game is there's usually a legendary and the
first Red and Blue and Yellow it was the Three
Birds zap does Maltris and Articuno and no matter which
game you had, you were able to get all three
as if I remember correctly, uh and then with uh
(29:04):
and then after blue and you had yellow, which was
just red and blue, but you had Pikachu on your side. Um,
I'm trying to see what the next run was, Silver
and gold, Silver and gold, And that was the first
time they split because if you had silver, you can
catch Lugia. You had gold, you can catch ho Ho.
(29:24):
And that was a big deal because now it's like
you when you choose a game, you're choosing like I
know for a fact, I'm going with sword because I
want a dog with a sword in his mouth. That's
literally dog his huge sword in his mouth. Yeah, just
huge ocamy vibes, you know. So so like that's that's
kind of been the real deciding factor going forward after
(29:48):
Red and Blue to which game you go with. Yeah,
I like hoh a lot um. If you If you
guys have ever seen the first episode of the show,
ho is the is the mysterious golden bird like Pokemon
on the ash seeds of Pikachu after he says Pikachu
from a swarm of like be drills and he sees
it fly over a man it's like this the first
(30:08):
sign that you know, like it's such a rare sight
and that you could catch up Pokemon in the second game.
That's a legendary gold uh man. Great. Yeah, So one
big thing that Little Danny remembers was Pokemon, the first movie.
So it's had many movies, but I remember the first
movie which came out in It actually was released in
(30:29):
Japan lightteenth and then I think we got it in nineteen.
Oh yeah, I was really stressed, actually November tenth nine.
It was really interesting. So in Japan it was me
too new, too read that too quickly. YouTube strikes back,
which was positive in Japan, but for some reason for US,
(30:52):
it says that got largely negative reviews, which Little Danny
does not remember at all. These are these are adults
writing this who don't enjoy fun, but it was apparently.
Film critics had a lot of criticism pointed at the
anti violence message in the film about Pokemon. That's hilarious
that Americans would be like, it talks too much about
(31:12):
anti violence. We don't like that. We love violence. And
it ended up grossing a hundred and seven two million
worldwide at the box office and sold ten million home
video units in the United States, it's not actually very
much at all. That's probably because kids were streaming. Uh
now what I'm trying to think of what I was
(31:33):
using at that time, Lime Wire, Lime Wire, another one
before that, can't remember listen. I checked it out from Blockbuster. Um.
But yeah, so we had Pokemon the first movie. Did
you watch all of the anime? I watched most of it. Actually,
I watched all the way up through. I want to
say when May came into that would be it's not Uh,
(31:55):
it was Joe too, so like through Joto, I watched
like a lot of it. Man, um, And well, I love,
I love. I watched those movies too. And those movies
were so cool because, uh, look, ash Ketch him might
be the goat because you might say he's a bad trainer,
but this guy, this guy, I think it's an amazing trainer.
And he stops like world ending like a populist ending stuff.
(32:15):
You know, he's a savior. Uh. And do you remember
in the first movie, all these movies, you would get
a card exclude a Pokemon card, and I would I
remember that first was it the first word? Second one
that had the ancient MW card. But one of them.
You got the ancient MW card and it was so cool.
I was so excited to get that ancient view card
and it looked like all like hieroglyphic and stuff like that,
(32:36):
and it was awesome. Well, what's I mean, Ash? People
might say it's a bad Ash is us. You just
need to accept it, Like this is how we would
be if we were put into a world where there's
literal monsters that you can capture. Yeah, exactly, Like you're
always going to know what to do and you'll probably
make best friends with with one that you're supposed to
be using, but instead you have him out like a
(32:57):
pet dog all the time. And I think a kind
of I love about ashcatch him. First off, he's ten
years old, y'all, so I don't know how time works
in this universe, but he's ten years old, and he's
gone through multiple Pokemon leagues and one he's won the
Loland Not it's not a Pokemon league, but it's like
their tournament in a Lola, which is uh, the Sun
and Moon series, and he's like made to the finals
(33:17):
multiple times. So he's a very good trainer. Um. But
what I love about Ashes that he teaches us that
you know there's more to Pokemon and just fighting, and
that you know it's about the bond, and and he
teaches us how to how like he sees his friend, God,
I love this show. He sees his friends who and
he sees that he that that friend needs to go
in order to grow. And he's okay, being like it's okay,
(33:38):
you go, you grow, you do what you have to do,
and like the Pokemon remember that even come back, you
know what I mean, Like he looks butter free to
get let go, and you know you're talking about in
a way opposite of most people I know. Everyone was
like he's an idiot. Yeah, yeah, that's true. People did
say that they give a lot of flak for that.
(33:59):
But even his charges are like his charges ared was
like out really cocky. His charge's ard. That the charge's
ard was fun because it it really was the show
implementing a game mechanic, and it is. And it's a
good opportunity to talk about something that we missed because
as you notice the link cable, we talked about it.
You can trade Pokemon, so you might be asking why
don't you got a friend who can just trade you?
(34:20):
All the best Pokemon, and it's because you Your pokemon
also for some reason respects the authority of the gyms,
and so your Pokemon will only pay attention to you
up to a certain level based on the badges you have.
And there is an added thing because you might be like, okay,
well maybe a few levels higher, traded Pokemon level up
(34:41):
way faster than uh normally caught Pokemon, so you are
also racing against the caught Pokemon speed. So anyway, in
the anime, Charles are wasn't listening to Ash because he
wasn't a high enough badge level exactly, and he lets
charge Are go. He let Charge go and then dumb
move number two. But it wasn't because Charger got to
grow and then charge That was his last evolution. Matt, Well,
(35:05):
he got to experience, He got to like find his
own journey. He got he didn't have to be encapsulated
like in a zoo. You know. Um maybe it was
a social commentary. Yeah, well I'm still catching them all
in this world. We gotta catch But Charger comes back.
In the show, Charger goes back to Ash and they
kicked butt together. Yeah they rock. Yeah, they came back
(35:26):
during the Elite four, right, if I remember. No, I
was laughing because sorry, I was laughing because I while
we're talking about Pikachu, I just wanted to sum up
some of his things that he's accomplished. But one of
them he was no. I mean he was listed. I
saw that he was listed number eight on i GN
top twenty five Anime characters of all time. I'm like,
(35:47):
number eight, who's number one? Who in the heck do
you think is number one? If he it better be go. Yeah,
you're out here, You're on here talking about how Ash
is dumb and they listed one of the most naive
characters of all time, who we love because he has
a big heart, like Ash, catchup. It's one thing to
(36:09):
be dumb and strong. Be dumb and you're can't throwing
a white Pokemon. But Goku at least like he's like.
Well about Goku is that he never you know, he
doesn't change who he is. You know, he's an immigrant
and he doesn't change to adapt. He's like who he is,
like this is me, deal with it. I love that,
you know, I know. Yeah, but also that, uh, if
I was Goku, I'd only let my Nigerian friends call
(36:31):
me if he shud everyone else. Um yeah, just touching
on some more things from from Pikachu. He's appeared in
The Simpsons many times. He's also amazing Thanksgiving Day parade
balloon since two thousand and one. Also in Topeka, Kansas,
the mayor renamed the town to Pikachu for a day.
(36:51):
Uh that's adorable. Um. He is known as Japan's answer
to Mickey Mouse. A year and then in two thousand three,
Forbes ranked Pikachu as the eighth top earning fictional character
of the year. He was also named by Time magazine
(37:12):
the second best person of the year. Yeah. Yeah, and
now he's in a movie. And now he has a movie.
I don't know if we want to hop in Do
we want to hop into that? Um? We can hop
into that, I guess. Right after these messages, we're back.
(37:34):
We're back. We're talking about Pokemon before we happened in
the movie though, because this kind of led up to
the movie, we have to talk about the phenomenon that
was Pokemon Go. It was kind of cool because it's
like so many people, even even people that don't normally
play games, got into it, and I think that's really cool.
It came out the week of my birthday, and I
remember I was working at the post House as a
(37:55):
p A. My friend was an editor there and and
like that day was kind of rough for us. And
then after, you know, towards the end of the night,
he was like, you want to play Pokemon Go at
the Santa Monica Pire, and like yes, and we went.
It was like the first week we went to Santa
Monica Pire, we had ever put phones out and the
pier was nuts, but it was just nuts. It was nuts.
Was everyone on their phones playing Pokemon Go. And I'll
(38:17):
never forget a war Turtle showed up and uh and
everyone was like war Turtle and everyone ran over like
to the end of the roller coaster where the war
Turtle was and it was like it was like world
peace for something. Like it was so yeah, no, it
was so I remember it came out like right before
Comic Conto. Remember playing on it at Comic Con um yeah, July,
(38:37):
and so like there were things that were popping up
at Comic Con that we're so cool, But I just
one it was funny that it tricks people into exercising
and if I found out hilarious, like I walked, I
walked nine miles today. Wow. Um. But also just yeah,
it was such a community. It was so cute to
see like moms and and teens and people like running
(38:58):
around together and like going in groups and stuff. And
uh it also spurred I'm in a Pokemon Go Facebook group.
It would be like people would be like, oh, there's
one here, and people would you know, for safety and whatever,
would like walk together at night all night trying to
find them. I think it's a really good job of
their community building because even to this day, the Pokemon
(39:20):
Go communities, it might be like it's quite down a
bit on like the macro, but if you look at
the you know, if you look at it on the inside,
it's it's still really well. It's funny because one thing
that was uh wild about Pokemon Go is, you know,
as much as people want to be like you people,
when are people going to sit back and enjoy the moment?
You know? It was creating these moments for people to interact,
(39:43):
would never interact. I remember when it first came out,
I was at this gym and like I was standing
in this place fighting and then like some some kids
walked up, and then somebody and then like we didn't
say anything for a bit, and then eventually we were like,
y'all playing Pokemon ago and then we just had this
conversation and it really were these kids who I probably
(40:04):
never in my life would have interacted with. We had
this nice experience and went about our day. I had
this like so many similar experiences, like it literally brought
us together, you know. Uh, and it was cool. It's
like Pokemon in the real world, you know. It was like, oh,
you can pturn on the a R stuff, And a
R is an augmented reality. And that means like when
I'm looking at my phone, it'll use the real world
(40:25):
picture and then lord be a Pokemon on my phone
like in the world. Yeah. Yeah. The the the argument
of VR versus a R. VR is a immersive experience
that kind of closes you off and puts you in
a specific zone. A R uses the world around you
to implement things. Uh you know, uh, we could do
a whole episode. I have lots of thoughts on one
(40:45):
versus the other, but I think they both can exist.
I think one's going to be used more as a
tool and the other one will kind of just be entertainment.
I'll let you guess which one In which but you
can also check out our VR episode. Oh yeah, we
did do a VR weird it was stremely education. We're
gonna do for episode. I think we should do a
(41:07):
Tree of Life live. Yeah. Um Detective Pikachu. Yeah. Do
you remember when Ryan Reynolds was announced as the voice
of Pikachu. I did, and I was one of like
the only people that actually played the video game, and
I was like, that's interesting by really but like but
it was a great move though, because it got a
(41:27):
lot of people's attention. It got like a lot of
the people who don't know this game to pay attention
to someone who didn't play. What was the video game about?
Similar premise to the movie? Um? Yeah, the video game
is about it's more of a visual novel, kind of
like a very miniscule puzzle. So it's not as you know,
strategic as Professor Leyden, but it's like got that same
(41:50):
kind of vibe where you're you're going around and interviewing people,
but you're this character named Tim Goodman, um, whose father
goes missing, uh named Henry Goodman and him Um, all
all that Timmer knows is that, you know, he sees
his Pikachu and the Pekachu can talk to him and
he can only talk to Tim Um. They don't know
why um so, and they decided to work together to
(42:11):
try and discover like what happened to his father. By
doing so, they meet a couple of friends in the
game that have worked at this luh at g n N,
which is the news network. Um and like they kind
of work together to uncover not only the mystery of
of his father, but like also of this uh this
drug called R that is making uh you find out
that you know makes Pokemon go crazy. It's like a
(42:33):
it's like a very jokery like, Oh, we're gonna put
it in the balloons and it's gonna make the Pokemon
go crazy. Uh. So you're working together to uncover the mysteries.
But in the game there's a bunch of micro mysteries
in it, so like each chapter is a different like oh,
like like, uh, you know who stole this? And like
who are you know? Where did the missing where's the
missing cliff Fairy or whatever? Um And I really enjoyed
(42:54):
that aspect of it. So is it similar to the
movie in the sense that one, I mean, the movie
has been out long enough for spoilers, but yeah, the
spoiler has already been said, so you just I was
gonna say spoiler, but we already said it. Here's what
we're gonna do. We're gonna bleet the spoiler out, and
(43:17):
then this isn't going to be a spoiler, but it's
it's it's it's implied but not confirmed in the game. Correct,
But there is that the creature if you guys see
it does show up and the game gives Pikachu an
option to do something you don't know what it was,
and he stays a Pikachu. Whatever that means, I guess
it's still a spoiler. Ryan Reynolds in Justice Smith, who
(43:41):
you would know from the get down and dress a world.
It's it's funny because that's the second time that's happened
that I'm loving movies using that. But I wonder when
it's finally not gonna work. But it's the the mixed
family fake out where they present to you a white
person and the child is black, and so you're not
(44:04):
You're they're being related is not on your mind, and
then they you find out they are, and then you're like,
oh yeah, like in Homecoming, like that's the whole Like
the only like Vulture for a second wasn't even on
my mind being related to MJ at all, not at all,
(44:26):
And then you see it and you're like, oh, hey,
so that's a that's a fun, fun feature. Who are
some of the Pokemon that you like seeing in the movie. See,
there's so many. And what I love about this movie
in particular is that people can leave that movie being
like that was my favorite Pokemon, like this poem, like
(44:47):
each Pokemon has its own distinct personality and was like that.
I feel like that was the obviously the push of it,
but every single Pokemon like was so unique to an
audience that may never see him before. Um, and I
thought was awesome. So for me, uh in the movie,
my favorite Pokemon the movie is gotta be the bulble
Sores because they're just so precious and they I've never
(45:08):
you know, you see them just like you hear the
little you know, you know, like the little like grunts
and they help, they help, they help peek at you
and you know, and Tim and I just I think
they did like they're just so cute. They're so cute
in that movie. My favorite thing about listening you talk
about Pokemon is that you talk about them as if
they're your children. They're adorable, You're just ceilings, just like
(45:30):
I'm just so proud of them. They're getting so big
and strong to grow up and they're just gonna forget me,
They're gonna leave me. What do you think the future
of Pokemon is? I mean you talked about the next
game that's coming up. Yeah, do you see that? I
mean this this movie did, uh was four thirty one
million worldwide, the tenth highest grossing film of twenty nineteen,
(45:52):
second highest grossing video game film adaptation of all time. Yeah. Um,
that's a great question. And because like I feel like
pol once. I mean, it's always kind of it's always
been so strong, and I think the future of it
the movie was a huge It's a huge bookmark in
Pokemon history because that I think what's gonna happen is
that is like the taste of here's the world, and
(46:13):
they put it in this in the city. The setting
is Rhyme City, which is the city where Pokemon out
of their poke balls and they don't they don't battle.
Battling is illegal and Rhyme City. I think that was
a nice way to introduce to everyone what exactly Pokemon
are and what does that mean in this world? Um,
and and then out of this will actually get a
more traditional Pokemon movie. I think I need to tell
(46:35):
you all something that I just found. Little Danny was
not wrong. Little Danny was not wrong for putting all
of her cards in her little collecting um sleeves. Because
Mint Conditions set of Pokemon cards sells for over a
hundred thousand dollars. WHOA, maybe my mom, Yeah, maybe, I
(46:56):
don't know. That's a lot. I can go there and through.
I mean I have to go. My mom has like
a storage unit where I'd have to essentially like go
through relive the trauma of my parents divorced to like
but you know, is it where the hundred grand? Maybe
maybe I'll just go back in there. Um, I don't
know if I have them. To be honest, I feel
(47:16):
like it was something that I would have given, like
sold when I was needing money in high school or something.
Holy cow, I hope you find them. Hopefully those pop
up when you need it most, you know, well, yeah,
and a good friend of when I need him in
an hang on, it's going to write the next the
(47:37):
cards all run out No, there's so many Pokemon to
touch on, and we didn't. Oh, when I was in nanny,
I bought one of the kids that I nannied for.
I bought him. This was back in let's see, like
it would have been two thousand and five, so there's
even newer Pokemon since then. But I got him one
of those like posters that's like all of the Pokemon. Nice. Yeah,
(48:02):
it was massive and you just like framed it in
his room. Um, there's too many, I think, especially with
the new game. I think last before the new game
was like seven three Pokemon, and now the new game
will be even more so than hundreds. You know, maybe
I just gave them the starter one, so probably that
was let us know what your favorite Pokemon is. We
(48:25):
clearly can't touch on all nine hundred of them. Yeah,
there are too many Pokemon to touch on, so let
us know your favorites and will judge you based on that. Yeah,
I do have to say my favorite is always the
video of the Pikachus in their costume dancing. They're so great,
They're so funny. I love it. And oh my mom
(48:46):
was really excited because she got a picture with with
Pikachu at STCC I brought him for the first time.
Well it's not our first time Summer Pikachun. Yeah no,
that wasn't it. But that is wild. Yeah, it's funny.
You wait, you meet Wait what are you talking about? Pure? Okay? Um, Matt,
(49:06):
where can everyone find you? Guys? You can find me
at the amount ossiveto on everything that's that's it now
and uh can I can I plug a sweet? Um?
We have a show where we talk about like all
characters including Pegasu and ash on the Ultimate Fictional Character Podcast,
where we you know, pull four characters from a bucket
(49:26):
of from everything manga, commercials, TV movies and we it's
not a strength battle. It's more of like a discussion
on who that's awesome, on who is the who do
we think is the best character? What makes them great?
It's more of a celebration of them and we like
it's like bracket style, elimination style, and we already have
a winner for season one. So check out Ultimate Fictional
Character Podcast. It's fun, all right. And you know me
(49:49):
if you way on Twitter and Instagram, I f y
n W A d I w E. If he's on Twitch,
come through, come through and has this been a busy
Uh do you I could feel it. The subs dropped.
Some of y'all forgot that I'd be streaming. Come in there,
bring those Prime subs. Look, if you've got an Amazon
Prime account, you already have a Twitch Prime account, joint
(50:10):
Twitch connect your Amazon account coming to my page. Smashed
that that sub button and you have to come back
every month. Don't forget. I'll keep reminding you. You know
I love you. I'm at miss Danny Fernandez, M S
d A and I f R n A and d
e Z. Thanks to everyone again that's been buying merch
and and giving it to your loved ones. We love
(50:31):
seeing you in it. Shout out to Aiden getting Ziggy
five for getting a tattoo of Nerdificent. Got a Nerdificent tattoo.
It is wild. We appreciate it so much and I
shared it on my page. I couldn't find you though
on Instagram, so Aidan, if you want me to share
it again, let me know what your Instagram handle is.
(50:51):
And as always, as we say, stay nerdy, stay net,
stay nerdy,
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Nerdificent. I am
one half of your host, Danny Fernandez, and sitting across
from me. How's it going? And you can't see, but
he's in magino. These are some shorts I picked up
while I was in New York um at the Billionaire
Boys Club. It's the ice cream shorts, and I was like, oh, yeah,
(00:31):
I want to it. Yeah, and today we're joined by
one of our dear friends. We've known him because if
you and I were hosts at hyper OPG where we
met Matt um who's also a host there. He's a
host in producer. It's Matt Asservato. Hey, yeah, thanks for
having me. And I gotta say I love the main boo.
It looks real good, looks really good. If he yeah,
(00:52):
I don't even know what you would call this, but
I am color coordinated and in magenta nice and yeah,
and I'm in a common huh, a unique low Pokemon shirt.
So yeah. So we normally start a podcast with what
we're seeking out about, but since we're covering Pokemon and
it's such a huge topic, I thought we would dive
right into it. But I do know that when we
(01:14):
asked for Pokemon people, like, so many people tagged you
and it made sense. I think you were supposed to
come on our Nintendo episode, but you couldn't because you're
also a big Nintendo head. Yeah. Nintendo. It is like
my is my forte. It's what. It's literally the thing
I'm most passionate about of anything. I don't know if
I'd ever want to work for Nintendo because I love
it so much. That's hilarious. We've done hosting for them.
(01:35):
I've like hosted for them, like that's like about the
extent of oh yeah you have Yeah, yeah, that was
really fun. But I just they're just I know, I
feel I love about this is that company is that
they just focus. It's just so positive. I feel like
like all their content and all their their game is
all about bringing people together and I just really latch
onto that. Yeah, so is that something? I mean, I
assume that's how you got introduced to Pokemon was from
(01:56):
the games? Yeah, it was the games and I was
really young man, I was I was in uh I
think first grade when the game came out, Pokemon Red,
and I got it for Christmas along with the game
Boy Color, and I just I know was before the
show I think. I think the show came came after,
but the game was what got me hooked on it.
And I just remember like that, that's the feeling of
(02:16):
opening up on Christmas morning and you know, putting it
in here, that the ding, you know, and and just
the dune, like the dunt, the dunt dunt, and just
the sense of adventure that's happening. And from the moment
Professor Oh asked me like what my name was, I
was like, that was the name part of what are
you a boy or girls? Oh customization. I think our
(02:38):
friend Kylie Bear is the voice of Professor Oak. No, Oh,
you would know, because he's a voice of adult go on.
That's right. Yeah, he stoke too. Yeah, well he's got
a great voice he does. Yeah, it's done so many
world the Pokemon Oh, that's totally him. It was wild
because Pokemon was like kind of, at least for our generation,
(03:01):
this like smash hit and it was like everyone was
poking crazy. You know. We ended up leading up to
having a movie and it just kind of took over everywhere,
and it was a thing that we thought would eventually
grow away with the nineties, and it stood. The anime
kept running. They kept coming out with new versions after
and it seems like there's a whole new generation of
(03:22):
poke It fans. Yeah, and I feel like what they've
been doing, it's been so great because you know, they
had the games, you have the expement from the games,
and the show comes out and it's like, oh, like,
are we done with the game? Oh, here's a new
game like that. I feel like they're pacing with releasing content.
It's just so dang good. Well, you know, Digimon kind
of came out around like a little bit after, but
kind of around the same time, and it just hasn't
definitely still has its fans and it still has you know,
(03:45):
things that are coming out, Um, I know Digimon Adventure.
Uh uh huh. Yeah, Well it hasn't latched on the
same way or has it been blown up the same
way that Pokemon has. Yeah, I think, uh, I love Digimon.
I think what happened was to uh, you know, American
audiences at least because it came out around the same
time Pokemon came out, and it has a similar name.
(04:05):
It kind of like became oh it's just a copycat
of this, but did you want it's like a completely
different thing. Which is like, you know, it's and I
don't think it latchunks. I don't think the games are
nearly as good as Pokemon. You know, yeah, they're more
traditional JRPG style kind of games. Yeah yeah, well Pokemon
is a little more user friendly, I think. Yeah, oh yeah. Well. Also,
you know, I feel like I've said this before, the
(04:27):
Digimon anime is way more solid than the Pokemon anime.
Like the Pokemon anime, you know, there are some stands
for it, but I feel like, you know, Digimon had
to beat every time. The design was cooler. But thus
a last Pokemon is the one that I mean, it's
got one of the best dub theme songs ever made. Yeah,
(04:49):
that's true. I can't I will say that because you know,
it was just Digimon Digital Monsters, Digimon the Champions did
Ultimate Digital Monsters, and then we have Pocket Monsters. So
let's just hop into the history of Pokemon. So it
was created by Satashi Tajii, and he actually when he
was growing up, he had a fondness of catching insects
(05:11):
and tadpoles uh near his home in suburban Tokyo, So
he essentially wanted to make a game. He actually had
a magazine. I don't know if you know. He actually
had a magazine that he made. It was a gaming
one called game Freak that he did with the help
of Ken Sugumori. So they did that, and then when
Tajii discovered the game Boy, then he had this idea
(05:33):
to to move. Essentially, he actually was inspired by ultraman
an Ultra seven, which is a fantasy television show in
which the protagonists used giant monsters contained with small capsules.
That sounds familiar, and so when he made this new game.
When they made the new game, they called it Capsule Monsters,
but then due to trademarking issues, they ended up changing
it to Pocket Monsters or as we know now, Pokemon,
(05:56):
which is so awesome. I love that even represented in
the game to see like not only is you know,
the element of catching, but also like you know, he
liked to catch bugs, and in all of the Pokemon
games are the trainers like I'm book catcher, you know,
I'm fisherman. I'm definitely shouting out those bug catchers throughout
the whole thing. Yeah, don't sleep on the bug catchers, man,
I know they keep popping off, but yeah, we're talking
(06:18):
about you popping in the first one. And as you know,
the franchise began as Pokemon Red and Green, which was
in Japan, but we knew it and Pokemon Red and Blue,
and it was a pair of video games for the
original game Boy that we're developed by game Freak and
published a Nintendo in February, which was my birthday, which
is probably why I was able to get it in
(06:38):
nineteen ninety six, making that um eight years after me
and Danny. Oh my gosh. Well well, well yeah, the
game came out in Japan and then was so popular
they were able to have it come out in right.
I was so interesting too because it was two separate
games but the same game, which I mean now Fire
(07:01):
Emblem is kind of doing that with the houses, but
they had Fates and birthright the one before that, and
and that is like a different energy to kind of
capitalize on a craze because not only do you customize
your character in the game the names of your Pokemon,
but also you can have a choice of which version
you want to have and the Pokemon you're able to
(07:22):
catch changes between that and there are you know, as
you said, there were there are exclusive to each game,
and back then it was like a way bigger deal
because you want to catch them all. You either needed
the link cable, which I feel like no one happened,
or you needed to just get both copies of the game.
You needed a friend with rich parents who bought them
every accessory for the thing. But like even that weird
reading light that would plug I had the reading light. Man, Okay,
(07:44):
so you're the rich I guess so heard it here first. Yeah, man, Like,
I don't know. It was just like and now it's
it's just easier with with online, everything is just so much.
You don't I don't feel like you need to get
the other ones. I think if you were talking about
fire mb them, like at least with each house it's
like different stories a little bit like you're getting different
sides of it. But at least like nowadays, if we
(08:05):
do Pokemon, you can just trade, Like I can just
trade with Iffy's Like, oh, like if you have an exclusive,
but mankey on your I need to make you so
I'll go to you and we'll trade. So yeah, yeah,
can you walk people through what those first games were like? Oh? Man,
so the first games, well, it's what it was like.
The just the overall experience, yeah, or like you know,
playing them on the game Boy essentially was your goal
(08:28):
and the characters that you ran into. I'm gonna transform myself.
I'm gonna go back into the shoes of seven year
old Matt and my experiencing it. It was the first
time for me that I was the one. It was
like my journey. It was like Matt is in this game.
I named him Matt, and you know, I was going
on this journey and I got to go and you know,
make new friends and allies and rivals, and it was
(08:49):
just this discovery and growing not only with myself, with
my Pokemon who became my friends, who had name after
my friends back in you know, first grade. I would
name him like, oh, this one's Patrick and this one's
like just even or whatever. But it was like my
party of friends that we like we grew together. Um.
But at the same we're not just only not only
are we like just trying to be the best, we're
also like uncovering like a mafia plot going on and
(09:11):
like thwarting like bad guys at the same time. Um,
because you know, in the first game, there's Team Rocket
and Team Rocket is doing this whole thing where they're
trying to you know, replicate you, which is the first
ancient Pokemon, and so they created me two and they
did a bunch of shady stuff and like you're just
this ten year old kid going around busting their chops. Uh.
And that was like real, real cool. So I don't know, man,
(09:34):
it's just I just get so happy thinking about it.
I know. It's what's cool too, is you know it's
a solid formula because it's kind of repeated in every game,
and there's minor tweaks here and there, but you know,
you have your hero character, which is you. You have
the Professor, You always have a um what is whether
they called at the Pokemon Center, is it nurse Nurse
(09:55):
Joyce and Officer Jenny's. Yeah, Nurse Joy's, Officer Jenny's you
haven't him. Leaders and you have the eleait for and
you have your team Rocket or it's changed over the years,
but you're your antagonist Gang and then of course your rival.
And now they've kind of added a buddy to take
that like last Pokemon. Yeah, I Do'm not you know,
the buddy. He's cute. The buddy's usually cute. Well, I'm like,
(10:17):
all right, get out of here kids, let me get
my rival there, let me be him. Yeah, show Who's boss. Yeah.
But you know, even though in the first game, because
like I wasn't aware, like I think the main weakness
has made sense, like fire beats you know, grass, grass
uh beats uh you know, water, water beats fire. But
like outside of that, it was a lot of discovering
(10:38):
of like, oh my gosh, like what defeats rock and
what defeat the psychic you know, and it was just
this like water biting. Yeah, So like that, especially that
first time through, it was just like really just figuring
it out, you know. I know, it is funny the
the types and the weaknesses because it all starts. I
feel like it was pretty like I can see why
water would beat rock, I can see why fighting might
(10:59):
defeats kick. But now we've got we got very right.
Very is good against dragons because dragons were repie for
a long time. They were very They were only week
to drag. Yeah, I mean, and Lance was the guy.
You know, Lance was super cool man. I loved Lance.
He was the dragon elite. But it was like, it's
(11:20):
so cool and I wanted to punch his face and
I was like, I have you keep beating me and
I'm going to end you. Yeah, you know, and like
talking going back and talking about like our first time through,
I'm remembering like every like now it's just kind of
the subconscious that I know all these Pokemon they could
they bring him back, you know, but the first time
I every single time you see a new Pokemon, you'd
be like, oh my gosh, what is this thing? You
(11:42):
know I used I used to masterball the first time
on a Ditto because in the show that was like,
oh wow, Dido can transform into anything. And I was like,
I have to catch that Ditto, and I was just
so excited the first time I saw I was like,
oh my gosh, this is so rare, Like I've never
seen ditto again. So I just I didn't even tried
a weekend. I just threw my mask ball. I got
silf Coo and on this ditto and I had when
(12:03):
I got to mewtwo, I was just using like ultra balls.
I did it backwards, man. Yeah, but you still caught
me too, so there you go. Yeah. So this year
the games came out also saw the release of the
trading card game, which was huge. By the way, it
had a hundred and two cards and was super popular.
(12:24):
I was like the person that had all of my
cards in the little card holder and then I would
just like take them to school and I just like looking.
I just thought they were so pretty. I did that
with like all of my anime trading cards. I just
thought I just didn't want to give them up. I totally.
I'm totally with you on that though. I don't want
anything to happen to them. Same and for me, you know,
it's weird. Me and my cousins we didn't play the
(12:44):
card game until later. We just collected the cards. It
was just weird, should not be doing that. I was thinking,
I had a set of Pikachu and um, it was
this Pikachu toy. I think it was like the Here
No Evil c No Evil or something. I don't know,
it was something like that, and I literally did not
take it out of the box. I did not. I
was that kid, and I just left. I thought my
(13:05):
Pikachu was so pretty and I didn't want anything to
happen to it, and I just left it. So in
the starter set where you can where it has the
window so you can see the card in there. Yeah, see,
I never had that. My parents would never invest that
much money into a thing I liked, so I always
bought boosters, And if you aren't aware, boosters don't come
with energy cards, they just have other Pokemon card. Uh.
(13:28):
So what that means is I had a whole bunch
of Pokemon but no way to play him, so I
never was able to play the game. Meanwhile, my best
friend Welton, his parents were taking them to Walden's Book
to compete in the Pokemonage because they had the local
Pokemon leagues where you would play against people and then
when you would win, you'd get a badge, a physical.
(13:48):
If you actually got badges, that's like a drink of
true man missed out on it. They still have them
that you could go to. I mean they're the league
is still going strong. They go live on Twitch quite
often for the championships. But that you know, we'll get
to this later. But even like watching like pro Pokemon fight,
like it really seems like the stratus to one shot
(14:11):
every Poke, so like it's never that exciting to watch
because it's like, all right, this guy has the thing
to one shot. Yeah. I never got into the competitive
aspect of the of the game like that because of
that I'm like, well, we're just gonna keep you know,
trading in like you know, returning Pokemon and sending out
the ones that's gonna match that type, you know. But
it's kind of like a gamble. It's like, oh, I
(14:32):
hope he throws out this. But there are crazy combos
that you can't do. Like there's there's moves that like
can you can like I forgot the name of this move,
but it was like returned to other person's Pokemon to
the pokemall and they have to put through in the
next one other party, and there's like, you know, there's
combos you can do and stuff. But I never got
that deep into that because it was it was mostly
just for me, you know. Yeah, same same here. Yeah.
(14:52):
Was a huge year because after so they have the
game release, they have the trading card release, then they
have the manga release, you know, then and then finally
this is when I really got into it. Finally the
following year, April is when the anime series premiered. We
had Pokemon Trader Satashi, who was later dubbed as we
(15:14):
know Um as ash Catchum, who was named after Satashi,
the creator Um based on Red and another character introduced
in the first episode was his rival, who was later
Gary Oak based on Blue Gary Guy. So yeah, the
the anime is I mean, I will be the best
(15:36):
no one ever was catch them. So yeah, that's so iconic.
Gotta catch up. You teach me. We might not have
(15:57):
gotten to that park, Danny. We don't know how much
we can easily played because it could have been. It's
back to us the first ten seconds. Okay, so talk
us through some of the main characters here. Team Rockets,
so you touched on them, but we didn't really talk
(16:18):
about you know who they are. Yeah. So Team Rocket is, uh,
this corporation that basically they're trying to take capture strong
Pokemon for their own purposes. And the ones that we
see primarily it's it's ran by the eighth gym leader spoiler,
which is Giovanni UM and he uses normal type Pokemon
to fight. But Giovann is like a mob guy and
like and the people that we see all the time,
(16:40):
or two people, one named Jesse and one named James
in the American version, um because they're thieves and you know,
like Jesse James, uh, and they have their me that
talks that's talking to me outright, that's right, um, and
they're just trying they see the speaking tune and Ashes
speaking to is pretty special. It's kind of I like
to think of it as like a shiny Pikachu because
is is very powerful. And they're always trying to capture
(17:02):
this Pikachu for the boss because they're Jesse and James
were there like meant to be like someone like, you know,
one of the top grunts, but like they kept getting
thwarted by like Ash. Now they're kind of like fools
because of it. And I think there's like a vendetta
because of that. That's why they want to catch the
Pikachu to like get there, get it. Yeah, that's always
been funny because like Pikachu is such a whatever pokemon. Yeah,
(17:23):
but you know, it's cute, it's yellow, it's a mascot. Yeah.
But yeah. One of the mottoes of Team Rocket that
you can see on the walls of one of their
facility in the game is steal Pokemon for profit, Exploit
Pokemon for profit. All Pokemon exists for the glory of
Team Rocket. Yeah. Yeah, it's not funny that they would
(17:44):
just put that weird bad boy in case you were
wondering who stole it? We did? It was me Team
Rocket Yeah, um, yes, so, I mean it feels weird
like being like playing Pikachu, who's like the you know,
the most famous ever. But let's dive into some of
(18:05):
the Pokemon. So Pikachu arguably one of the most famous
the mascot iconic Pokemon we had. I can say that
officially because we have Detective Pikachu. So yeah, he's his
name was on it, so he is the goat. I
mean they created a whole version for Pikachu because there
was red, blue, and then we had yellow, which copied
(18:26):
the uh anime, and you were able to walk around
with Pikachu at your side, and there was a big
surf mini game that I was never able to reach.
Everyone talked about it. I could not find the surf
mini game. Where was that? That's a rule that was
I don't remember. That was I don't know, Matt, remember
how I said, I didn't. You're like, oh man, that
(18:50):
wasn't It was a little fun. That was such a
fun mini game. Whoa well do you remember playing it?
Like nine hours? He didn't get there? Yeah, no, I
did not. Can you describe like starter Pokemon and then
how they level up. So every game has there's three
starter Pokemon. The standard is fire, grass and water um
(19:11):
and so and there's and for every generation of Pokemon,
there are different types. You know. There's literally a new
generation of Pokemon and the original we have Charmander, Squirrel
and bobble Star um and those evolved. You know, as
as you train them, you get to a certain level
UM and they gain XP and you can kind of
like focus that XP if you want to like gain
(19:32):
you know, maybe you want this one to be like
have higher speed. Like it's told evy training, which we've
always skip that because that's very deep. Yeah, that's super deep,
but we we can essentially, uh, just if you're curious.
Ev training is basically essentially hunting for specific Pokemon with
like these hidden stats and you have to uh and
(19:53):
there's like certain like qualifiers you have to do to
train each of those stats. It's very very deep in
the game. And yeah, I remember it was explained to me,
and it was explained how to do it, and I
was like, yeah, I ain't doing all that. Yeah. So
with with your starter, you choose one uh and you
get to name it, you know, name you your best friend,
or just leave it as you know, or you can
name it something funny, so it's every time you're throwing
(20:14):
it out and says something funny. Uh. But you as
you go on your journey, you battle a wild Pokemon
that you encounter UM, and you battle trainers and they
gain experience, and when they get at a certain amount
of experience, they level up UM and when they get
to certain levels, they then they evolve into their next forum.
Traditionally there are three forms that they are two other
forms that they evolved to UM. So usually it's like
(20:35):
level starters. Usually I think it's eighteen they evolve into
the next form, so like char Mander will Ulttermelion and
they believe it's thirty two they evolved to chars ard Um.
But you can hold off on that if you want,
if you hold the B button when they're dropout to evolve,
because if they actually learned moves a little faster and
game with more XP if they stay in like that
form longer, So like it might be a strategy to
(20:56):
hold the B button and and like level up and
learn some more moves before you evolved. But let us
not forget in Pokemon Yellow, if you evolved, your Pikachu
it can no longer follow you. And I had so
many friends. I was like, well, you're shout Pikachi walking around.
I'm on Bolba PDA, which is Pikachi Pikachi, which is
(21:18):
Pokemon's Wikipedia, And yeah it is, and it says Pikachu
is a short, chubby rodent Pokemon. It has a small mouth.
I love how the descriptive they are with this. Uh yeah,
one thing to know is that um ashes Pikachu stays
outside of his poke bon. Yeah, it's probably why it's
(21:38):
so fit, because all normal Pikachus are really really cute
and like a chubby, you know, so cute. I'm just
looking at it, and my little girl's self is like,
knows why I didn't take it out of its box. Yeah,
we have to take a really quick break and then
we're gonna hop back into Pokemon right after this and
(22:02):
we're back. Matt, who are what are some of your
favorite Pokemon? Oh man, okay, uh this is a great question.
I think this is a lot about people's personalities. Um,
you know, but for me, my favorite pokem I have
a few. I have a lot, actually, but my all
time favorite I'll start there. My altime favorite is this
giant sleeping Pokemon named Snorlax. Yeah, yeah, and and and
(22:23):
when you encounter it in the game, it's literally a
roadblock in the game where you need to wake it
up with an item you collect from the Lavender Town
cemetery like tower cemetery tower called a pokey fluid, and
then you need to play the poke flu to wake
it up. And it's it's cute, just like I don't
really know how to like a bear, like like a
half panda looking giant like green and white bear. It
(22:47):
looks like, yeah, completely green, and its stomach is white.
I love it because he just wants to sleep and like,
just let him sleep, you know. And I totally get it.
I feel like I relate to him so much. Yeah,
and he regains health while he sleeps, so that is
real cool. And he has the psychology effect where he
yawns and makes other people sleepy. You want to know
one of my favorites, I would love to. Yes, now
(23:15):
you gotta chime in Iffy with yours. Oh man, all
time favorite. It's always gonna be toxic. Baby Nice is
top to your Pokemon. Poisonous has blades on his hand
looks brawlic you know, definitely looking. But you know who's
that like Buff Cloud dude, It's he's like a legendary
now right, I'm talking about Thunderous Oh gotcha? Yeah, you
(23:42):
know if he this brought up some bad um freaking
DVI and art for me. This is uh he said,
buff I've typed in buff Pokemon who and it's like
a thick Pikachu and a SWEETO who is he with?
Oh that was great. I'm so glad I had you
(24:03):
searched that just for that reason. Oh my god, this
is rough, baby, that's amazing. That that's gotta be That's
that's one of the best. There's like a twelve pack.
Oh man, it was Yeah. I wish you could just
have seen what Danny was forced to see. It was like,
it's not going to be in the footnotes. So I'll
(24:23):
let you know that I've stumbled on something. Back. You're
you're that you're walking a path when you look up
those problems walking a path? Okay, anyways, but yeah, I
don't feel good. Sorry, I can't look away. Yeah, I
have seen the magic harp that one I saw the
(24:46):
dude where like they just wear the little fish head
and it's like they're super buff. I've seen that cause play. Yeah, yeah,
that's a character in the game. It's like, isn't like
a Magic Harp fan. It's a fan and you can
find him and he's just so weird. He literally wears
like a carp like mask thing with big old eyes
and shirtless above and you item and that was one
(25:06):
of the most fun. That's also, like we talked about
being excited about seeing the different Pokemon, but the different
trainers you encounter are super fun too. Yeah. Yeah. And
then in the different gyms, you know, well, I love
about the gym's that there. For those who don't know,
we didn't don't think we mentioned this. But you're on
this journey, you're trying to collect you're trying to be
the Pokemon Champion in this region. So in every every
(25:29):
game there's different regions. Why they're different Pokemon, right exactly.
Um so the first game during the Kanto region, uh
and in this region, you're you know, in all of
them are trying to get to the Pokemon League and
in order to which is this top four elite, this
Elite four, if you will, literally called the Elite four
of trainers in this region and you have to battle
(25:49):
in order to become the Pokemon Champion UM. To get there,
you need to go through different towns and fight going
to gyms that our specific type of gyms like a
rock jam or a water gym, etcetera. And you have
to fight the gym leader there and if you beat them,
they give you a badge. Um. You know that depicts
that you that's shown that you have defeated that gym
leader and you're worthy to move on to the next gym. Yeah.
(26:10):
And also every gym has a singular Pokemon type, which
is very important and interesting because you can scuff your
run if you pick uh Pokemon as your starter who
is weak to the first gym. For example, I think
the first gym UH was Brock, which is rock uh
(26:31):
and it's weak against leaf. So if you picked Bulbastor,
you're you're gonna serve that person up. But it's uh.
It's strong and water, so Squirrel, you're good, but it's
strong against fire, so you're gonna have a tougher time
when you rock with the charm nder. Yeah, exactly, man, exactly.
So it's especially in the early game, it's like what
do I do? What do I do? What have you
(26:52):
done to maple him all? But there's some really great
trainers out there man. Yea. The gym leaders too are
so cool. Like Lance, he's so cool man, you come
back to land, He's got you know, he's great. A.
Lance was like one of the cooler designs. I'm excited
about all the new new designs too. And then I
mean in the new Pokemon h the region is called
the Gallery Region and there it's essentially the UK. It's
(27:16):
like the regions similar. It represents like the UK basically,
so it's all like it's like like stone and like
are not stone like a brick and their giant windmills
and it's like it's like the countryside of the UK.
It's really cute. But the leaders in this this and
this new game Sword and Shield, which is the new
Pokemon game coming out the in the November for the switch,
(27:37):
like the gyms are giant, like football size stadiums yea,
and they're it's like an event. It's like it's the
first time I feel like it's actually like a big,
big deal, And I feel like that's kind of just
finally taking the note from the anime because I feel
like in the anime, the gyms were such a big
ordeal in the games, Like it was cool, like you
(28:00):
usually every gym starts off with a puzzle you have
to figure out before you get to the gym leader.
So if you solve the puzzle, most times you fight
less trainers. But me, I was like, no, I'm gonna
just fight all of y'all, so mature. I'm like, high
enough level. You get more XPT for fighting trainers than
wild Pokemon, y'all. Yeah, you gotta beat them up. Yeah.
But and I just love in the and this new one,
(28:20):
like you were seeing some really cool guys, Like there's
this guy who looks like Mario basically or like r
G like, but he's like he's they're saying, he looks
like he has like a Canadian like yeah, ranger hats
and stuff, and uh, he looks really cool. Yeah we
can talk. Oh and this will kind of help us
speed along the games. But really for the so that
(28:42):
the one other thing we're missing from Pokemon that is
across the game is there's usually a legendary and the
first Red and Blue and Yellow it was the Three
Birds zap does Maltris and Articuno and no matter which
game you had, you were able to get all three
as if I remember correctly, uh and then with uh
(29:04):
and then after blue and you had yellow, which was
just red and blue, but you had Pikachu on your side. Um,
I'm trying to see what the next run was, Silver
and gold, Silver and gold, And that was the first
time they split because if you had silver, you can
catch Lugia. You had gold, you can catch ho Ho.
(29:24):
And that was a big deal because now it's like
you when you choose a game, you're choosing like I
know for a fact, I'm going with sword because I
want a dog with a sword in his mouth. That's
literally dog his huge sword in his mouth. Yeah, just
huge ocamy vibes, you know. So so like that's that's
kind of been the real deciding factor going forward after
(29:48):
Red and Blue to which game you go with. Yeah,
I like hoh a lot um. If you If you
guys have ever seen the first episode of the show,
ho is the is the mysterious golden bird like Pokemon
on the ash seeds of Pikachu after he says Pikachu
from a swarm of like be drills and he sees
it fly over a man it's like this the first
(30:08):
sign that you know, like it's such a rare sight
and that you could catch up Pokemon in the second game.
That's a legendary gold uh man. Great. Yeah, So one
big thing that Little Danny remembers was Pokemon, the first movie.
So it's had many movies, but I remember the first
movie which came out in It actually was released in
(30:29):
Japan lightteenth and then I think we got it in nineteen.
Oh yeah, I was really stressed, actually November tenth nine.
It was really interesting. So in Japan it was me
too new, too read that too quickly. YouTube strikes back,
which was positive in Japan, but for some reason for US,
(30:52):
it says that got largely negative reviews, which Little Danny
does not remember at all. These are these are adults
writing this who don't enjoy fun, but it was apparently.
Film critics had a lot of criticism pointed at the
anti violence message in the film about Pokemon. That's hilarious
that Americans would be like, it talks too much about
(31:12):
anti violence. We don't like that. We love violence. And
it ended up grossing a hundred and seven two million
worldwide at the box office and sold ten million home
video units in the United States, it's not actually very
much at all. That's probably because kids were streaming. Uh
now what I'm trying to think of what I was
(31:33):
using at that time, Lime Wire, Lime Wire, another one
before that, can't remember listen. I checked it out from Blockbuster. Um.
But yeah, so we had Pokemon the first movie. Did
you watch all of the anime? I watched most of it. Actually,
I watched all the way up through. I want to
say when May came into that would be it's not Uh,
(31:55):
it was Joe too, so like through Joto, I watched
like a lot of it. Man, um, And well, I love,
I love. I watched those movies too. And those movies
were so cool because, uh, look, ash Ketch him might
be the goat because you might say he's a bad trainer,
but this guy, this guy, I think it's an amazing trainer.
And he stops like world ending like a populist ending stuff.
(32:15):
You know, he's a savior. Uh. And do you remember
in the first movie, all these movies, you would get
a card exclude a Pokemon card, and I would I
remember that first was it the first word? Second one
that had the ancient MW card. But one of them.
You got the ancient MW card and it was so cool.
I was so excited to get that ancient view card
and it looked like all like hieroglyphic and stuff like that,
(32:36):
and it was awesome. Well, what's I mean, Ash? People
might say it's a bad Ash is us. You just
need to accept it, Like this is how we would
be if we were put into a world where there's
literal monsters that you can capture. Yeah, exactly, Like you're
always going to know what to do and you'll probably
make best friends with with one that you're supposed to
be using, but instead you have him out like a
(32:57):
pet dog all the time. And I think a kind
of I love about ashcatch him. First off, he's ten
years old, y'all, so I don't know how time works
in this universe, but he's ten years old, and he's
gone through multiple Pokemon leagues and one he's won the
Loland Not it's not a Pokemon league, but it's like
their tournament in a Lola, which is uh, the Sun
and Moon series, and he's like made to the finals
(33:17):
multiple times. So he's a very good trainer. Um. But
what I love about Ashes that he teaches us that
you know there's more to Pokemon and just fighting, and
that you know it's about the bond, and and he
teaches us how to how like he sees his friend, God,
I love this show. He sees his friends who and
he sees that he that that friend needs to go
in order to grow. And he's okay, being like it's okay,
(33:38):
you go, you grow, you do what you have to do,
and like the Pokemon remember that even come back, you
know what I mean, Like he looks butter free to
get let go, and you know you're talking about in
a way opposite of most people I know. Everyone was
like he's an idiot. Yeah, yeah, that's true. People did
say that they give a lot of flak for that.
(33:59):
But even his charges are like his charges ared was
like out really cocky. His charge's ard. That the charge's
ard was fun because it it really was the show
implementing a game mechanic, and it is. And it's a
good opportunity to talk about something that we missed because
as you notice the link cable, we talked about it.
You can trade Pokemon, so you might be asking why
don't you got a friend who can just trade you?
(34:20):
All the best Pokemon, and it's because you Your pokemon
also for some reason respects the authority of the gyms,
and so your Pokemon will only pay attention to you
up to a certain level based on the badges you have.
And there is an added thing because you might be like, okay,
well maybe a few levels higher, traded Pokemon level up
(34:41):
way faster than uh normally caught Pokemon, so you are
also racing against the caught Pokemon speed. So anyway, in
the anime, Charles are wasn't listening to Ash because he
wasn't a high enough badge level exactly, and he lets
charge Are go. He let Charge go and then dumb
move number two. But it wasn't because Charger got to
grow and then charge That was his last evolution. Matt, Well,
(35:05):
he got to experience, He got to like find his
own journey. He got he didn't have to be encapsulated
like in a zoo. You know. Um maybe it was
a social commentary. Yeah, well I'm still catching them all
in this world. We gotta catch But Charger comes back.
In the show, Charger goes back to Ash and they
kicked butt together. Yeah they rock. Yeah, they came back
(35:26):
during the Elite four, right, if I remember. No, I
was laughing because sorry, I was laughing because I while
we're talking about Pikachu, I just wanted to sum up
some of his things that he's accomplished. But one of
them he was no. I mean he was listed. I
saw that he was listed number eight on i GN
top twenty five Anime characters of all time. I'm like,
(35:47):
number eight, who's number one? Who in the heck do
you think is number one? If he it better be go. Yeah,
you're out here, You're on here talking about how Ash
is dumb and they listed one of the most naive
characters of all time, who we love because he has
a big heart, like Ash, catchup. It's one thing to
(36:09):
be dumb and strong. Be dumb and you're can't throwing
a white Pokemon. But Goku at least like he's like.
Well about Goku is that he never you know, he
doesn't change who he is. You know, he's an immigrant
and he doesn't change to adapt. He's like who he is,
like this is me, deal with it. I love that,
you know, I know. Yeah, but also that, uh, if
I was Goku, I'd only let my Nigerian friends call
(36:31):
me if he shud everyone else. Um yeah, just touching
on some more things from from Pikachu. He's appeared in
The Simpsons many times. He's also amazing Thanksgiving Day parade
balloon since two thousand and one. Also in Topeka, Kansas,
the mayor renamed the town to Pikachu for a day.
(36:51):
Uh that's adorable. Um. He is known as Japan's answer
to Mickey Mouse. A year and then in two thousand three,
Forbes ranked Pikachu as the eighth top earning fictional character
of the year. He was also named by Time magazine
(37:12):
the second best person of the year. Yeah. Yeah, and
now he's in a movie. And now he has a movie.
I don't know if we want to hop in Do
we want to hop into that? Um? We can hop
into that, I guess. Right after these messages, we're back.
(37:34):
We're back. We're talking about Pokemon before we happened in
the movie though, because this kind of led up to
the movie, we have to talk about the phenomenon that
was Pokemon Go. It was kind of cool because it's
like so many people, even even people that don't normally
play games, got into it, and I think that's really cool.
It came out the week of my birthday, and I
remember I was working at the post House as a
(37:55):
p A. My friend was an editor there and and
like that day was kind of rough for us. And
then after, you know, towards the end of the night,
he was like, you want to play Pokemon Go at
the Santa Monica Pire, and like yes, and we went.
It was like the first week we went to Santa
Monica Pire, we had ever put phones out and the
pier was nuts, but it was just nuts. It was nuts.
Was everyone on their phones playing Pokemon Go. And I'll
(38:17):
never forget a war Turtle showed up and uh and
everyone was like war Turtle and everyone ran over like
to the end of the roller coaster where the war
Turtle was and it was like it was like world
peace for something. Like it was so yeah, no, it
was so I remember it came out like right before
Comic Conto. Remember playing on it at Comic Con um yeah, July,
(38:37):
and so like there were things that were popping up
at Comic Con that we're so cool, But I just
one it was funny that it tricks people into exercising
and if I found out hilarious, like I walked, I
walked nine miles today. Wow. Um. But also just yeah,
it was such a community. It was so cute to
see like moms and and teens and people like running
(38:58):
around together and like going in groups and stuff. And
uh it also spurred I'm in a Pokemon Go Facebook group.
It would be like people would be like, oh, there's
one here, and people would you know, for safety and whatever,
would like walk together at night all night trying to
find them. I think it's a really good job of
their community building because even to this day, the Pokemon
(39:20):
Go communities, it might be like it's quite down a
bit on like the macro, but if you look at
the you know, if you look at it on the inside,
it's it's still really well. It's funny because one thing
that was uh wild about Pokemon Go is, you know,
as much as people want to be like you people,
when are people going to sit back and enjoy the moment?
You know? It was creating these moments for people to interact,
(39:43):
would never interact. I remember when it first came out,
I was at this gym and like I was standing
in this place fighting and then like some some kids
walked up, and then somebody and then like we didn't
say anything for a bit, and then eventually we were like,
y'all playing Pokemon ago and then we just had this
conversation and it really were these kids who I probably
(40:04):
never in my life would have interacted with. We had
this nice experience and went about our day. I had
this like so many similar experiences, like it literally brought
us together, you know. Uh, and it was cool. It's
like Pokemon in the real world, you know. It was like, oh,
you can pturn on the a R stuff, And a
R is an augmented reality. And that means like when
I'm looking at my phone, it'll use the real world
(40:25):
picture and then lord be a Pokemon on my phone
like in the world. Yeah. Yeah. The the the argument
of VR versus a R. VR is a immersive experience
that kind of closes you off and puts you in
a specific zone. A R uses the world around you
to implement things. Uh you know, uh, we could do
a whole episode. I have lots of thoughts on one
(40:45):
versus the other, but I think they both can exist.
I think one's going to be used more as a
tool and the other one will kind of just be entertainment.
I'll let you guess which one In which but you
can also check out our VR episode. Oh yeah, we
did do a VR weird it was stremely education. We're
gonna do for episode. I think we should do a
(41:07):
Tree of Life live. Yeah. Um Detective Pikachu. Yeah. Do
you remember when Ryan Reynolds was announced as the voice
of Pikachu. I did, and I was one of like
the only people that actually played the video game, and
I was like, that's interesting by really but like but
it was a great move though, because it got a
(41:27):
lot of people's attention. It got like a lot of
the people who don't know this game to pay attention
to someone who didn't play. What was the video game about?
Similar premise to the movie? Um? Yeah, the video game
is about it's more of a visual novel, kind of
like a very miniscule puzzle. So it's not as you know,
strategic as Professor Leyden, but it's like got that same
(41:50):
kind of vibe where you're you're going around and interviewing people,
but you're this character named Tim Goodman, um, whose father
goes missing, uh named Henry Goodman and him Um, all
all that Timmer knows is that, you know, he sees
his Pikachu and the Pekachu can talk to him and
he can only talk to Tim Um. They don't know
why um so, and they decided to work together to
(42:11):
try and discover like what happened to his father. By
doing so, they meet a couple of friends in the
game that have worked at this luh at g n N,
which is the news network. Um and like they kind
of work together to uncover not only the mystery of
of his father, but like also of this uh this
drug called R that is making uh you find out
that you know makes Pokemon go crazy. It's like a
(42:33):
it's like a very jokery like, Oh, we're gonna put
it in the balloons and it's gonna make the Pokemon
go crazy. Uh. So you're working together to uncover the mysteries.
But in the game there's a bunch of micro mysteries
in it, so like each chapter is a different like oh,
like like, uh, you know who stole this? And like
who are you know? Where did the missing where's the
missing cliff Fairy or whatever? Um And I really enjoyed
(42:54):
that aspect of it. So is it similar to the
movie in the sense that one, I mean, the movie
has been out long enough for spoilers, but yeah, the
spoiler has already been said, so you just I was
gonna say spoiler, but we already said it. Here's what
we're gonna do. We're gonna bleet the spoiler out, and
(43:17):
then this isn't going to be a spoiler, but it's
it's it's it's implied but not confirmed in the game. Correct,
But there is that the creature if you guys see
it does show up and the game gives Pikachu an
option to do something you don't know what it was,
and he stays a Pikachu. Whatever that means, I guess
it's still a spoiler. Ryan Reynolds in Justice Smith, who
(43:41):
you would know from the get down and dress a world.
It's it's funny because that's the second time that's happened
that I'm loving movies using that. But I wonder when
it's finally not gonna work. But it's the the mixed
family fake out where they present to you a white
person and the child is black, and so you're not
(44:04):
You're they're being related is not on your mind, and
then they you find out they are, and then you're like,
oh yeah, like in Homecoming, like that's the whole Like
the only like Vulture for a second wasn't even on
my mind being related to MJ at all, not at all,
(44:26):
And then you see it and you're like, oh, hey,
so that's a that's a fun, fun feature. Who are
some of the Pokemon that you like seeing in the movie. See,
there's so many. And what I love about this movie
in particular is that people can leave that movie being
like that was my favorite Pokemon, like this poem, like
(44:47):
each Pokemon has its own distinct personality and was like that.
I feel like that was the obviously the push of it,
but every single Pokemon like was so unique to an
audience that may never see him before. Um, and I
thought was awesome. So for me, uh in the movie,
my favorite Pokemon the movie is gotta be the bulble
Sores because they're just so precious and they I've never
(45:08):
you know, you see them just like you hear the
little you know, you know, like the little like grunts
and they help, they help, they help peek at you
and you know, and Tim and I just I think
they did like they're just so cute. They're so cute
in that movie. My favorite thing about listening you talk
about Pokemon is that you talk about them as if
they're your children. They're adorable, You're just ceilings, just like
(45:30):
I'm just so proud of them. They're getting so big
and strong to grow up and they're just gonna forget me,
They're gonna leave me. What do you think the future
of Pokemon is? I mean you talked about the next
game that's coming up. Yeah, do you see that? I
mean this this movie did, uh was four thirty one
million worldwide, the tenth highest grossing film of twenty nineteen,
(45:52):
second highest grossing video game film adaptation of all time. Yeah. Um,
that's a great question. And because like I feel like
pol once. I mean, it's always kind of it's always
been so strong, and I think the future of it
the movie was a huge It's a huge bookmark in
Pokemon history because that I think what's gonna happen is
that is like the taste of here's the world, and
(46:13):
they put it in this in the city. The setting
is Rhyme City, which is the city where Pokemon out
of their poke balls and they don't they don't battle.
Battling is illegal and Rhyme City. I think that was
a nice way to introduce to everyone what exactly Pokemon
are and what does that mean in this world? Um,
and and then out of this will actually get a
more traditional Pokemon movie. I think I need to tell
(46:35):
you all something that I just found. Little Danny was
not wrong. Little Danny was not wrong for putting all
of her cards in her little collecting um sleeves. Because
Mint Conditions set of Pokemon cards sells for over a
hundred thousand dollars. WHOA, maybe my mom, Yeah, maybe, I
(46:56):
don't know. That's a lot. I can go there and through.
I mean I have to go. My mom has like
a storage unit where I'd have to essentially like go
through relive the trauma of my parents divorced to like
but you know, is it where the hundred grand? Maybe
maybe I'll just go back in there. Um, I don't
know if I have them. To be honest, I feel
(47:16):
like it was something that I would have given, like
sold when I was needing money in high school or something.
Holy cow, I hope you find them. Hopefully those pop
up when you need it most, you know, well, yeah,
and a good friend of when I need him in
an hang on, it's going to write the next the
(47:37):
cards all run out No, there's so many Pokemon to
touch on, and we didn't. Oh, when I was in nanny,
I bought one of the kids that I nannied for.
I bought him. This was back in let's see, like
it would have been two thousand and five, so there's
even newer Pokemon since then. But I got him one
of those like posters that's like all of the Pokemon. Nice. Yeah,
(48:02):
it was massive and you just like framed it in
his room. Um, there's too many, I think, especially with
the new game. I think last before the new game
was like seven three Pokemon, and now the new game
will be even more so than hundreds. You know, maybe
I just gave them the starter one, so probably that
was let us know what your favorite Pokemon is. We
(48:25):
clearly can't touch on all nine hundred of them. Yeah,
there are too many Pokemon to touch on, so let
us know your favorites and will judge you based on that. Yeah,
I do have to say my favorite is always the
video of the Pikachus in their costume dancing. They're so great,
They're so funny. I love it. And oh my mom
(48:46):
was really excited because she got a picture with with
Pikachu at STCC I brought him for the first time.
Well it's not our first time Summer Pikachun. Yeah no,
that wasn't it. But that is wild. Yeah, it's funny.
You wait, you meet Wait what are you talking about? Pure? Okay? Um, Matt,
(49:06):
where can everyone find you? Guys? You can find me
at the amount ossiveto on everything that's that's it now
and uh can I can I plug a sweet? Um?
We have a show where we talk about like all
characters including Pegasu and ash on the Ultimate Fictional Character Podcast,
where we you know, pull four characters from a bucket
(49:26):
of from everything manga, commercials, TV movies and we it's
not a strength battle. It's more of like a discussion
on who that's awesome, on who is the who do
we think is the best character? What makes them great?
It's more of a celebration of them and we like
it's like bracket style, elimination style, and we already have
a winner for season one. So check out Ultimate Fictional
Character Podcast. It's fun, all right. And you know me
(49:49):
if you way on Twitter and Instagram, I f y
n W A d I w E. If he's on Twitch,
come through, come through and has this been a busy
Uh do you I could feel it. The subs dropped.
Some of y'all forgot that I'd be streaming. Come in there,
bring those Prime subs. Look, if you've got an Amazon
Prime account, you already have a Twitch Prime account, joint
(50:10):
Twitch connect your Amazon account coming to my page. Smashed
that that sub button and you have to come back
every month. Don't forget. I'll keep reminding you. You know
I love you. I'm at miss Danny Fernandez, M S
d A and I f R n A and d
e Z. Thanks to everyone again that's been buying merch
and and giving it to your loved ones. We love
(50:31):
seeing you in it. Shout out to Aiden getting Ziggy
five for getting a tattoo of Nerdificent. Got a Nerdificent tattoo.
It is wild. We appreciate it so much and I
shared it on my page. I couldn't find you though
on Instagram, so Aidan, if you want me to share
it again, let me know what your Instagram handle is.
(50:51):
And as always, as we say, stay nerdy, stay net,
stay nerdy,
Nerdificent News
Hosts And Creators
Dani Fernandez
Ify Nwadiwe
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