Why The Message in The Pokemon Movie is Wrong

Pokemon is one of those products that original fans love the original series but think the newer stuff it total crap. As someone who grew up on the original series and loves it to death...it's always been crap, as a kid i didn't know that, but as an adult, whenever I rewatch the show i realise that it sucks, i will always love it to death, but i'm not going to pretend that it was good. But even when it comes to the loyal fans of the show who will admit that it's dumb, there is one moment that they treasure as being legitimately smart, the climax to the original movie. The first Pokemon movie ends with all of the Pokemon getting into a fight together and the other characters look on in despair and realise how wrong it is, violence is wrong, treating other's badly just cause they're different is wrong, everything is wrong.

It's a good message for kids but that doesn't make it smart or handled well, how you present your message is just as important as the message itself. Firstly there's the blatant hypocrisy of the message, the fact that Pokemon, a show that's entire existence is based around having animals fight each other it telling us that violence is wrong, and as soon as this is over, their memories are erased and they go back to having Pokemon fight each other, bull-shit. You can't expect kids to take a lesson seriously if you yourself aren't going to take it seriously. Then there's the fact that the message is beat into your head, that image above is only one segment of the message, but literally every character has a speech about this message of equality and it goes on forever. Even as a kid, i felt like i was being manipulated a little, and if you ever try to force a kid to do anything or believe something, they're going to fight against it. If it was just Meowth giving this statement then i would think that it would be pretty smart and well done, but beating it into your head ruins the sentiment.

So again, it's a good message to teach kids but this was handled in all the wrong ways to actually make it have any kid of effect, especially when your main characters don't listen to the message, kids are going to think they don't have too either.

-Danny