[Game Review] Pokemon Sun/Moon

If there is one word to describe Pokemon Sun/Moon, the seventh Generation Pokemon games, it would be relaxed.  Pokemon games over the years have trended towards slow and overabundant stories, gratuitous hand-holding through all of except their most complex features, and a structure so well worn the games have paced their way through the ground floor the original generation laid down and about 6 feet beneath dirt.  This isn't to say the previous generations are bad, by any means.  Gen III (Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald and Gen I remakes) and Gen V (Black/White/B2/W2 and Gen II remakes) are two of my favorite Pokemon generations, but even both of those suffer from sticking to the Pokemon formula.  Gen III may have introduced complex stats like EVs, IVs, natures, and abilities, but it was also the beginning of some uninspired Pokemon designs and some truly obtuse puzzles (remember having to decode braille in order to find legendaries?), and Gen V, while having a pretty good story for a Pokemon game (whose stories are, let's face it, generally bad or pandering -- although it is for kids), still overruns you with text boxes and halts to the gameplay, and did little to nothing to change up the formula that at this point had been going on for a decade.  Now that we are in our second decade of Pokemon games, it would make sense that maybe we could change things up a bit.  Sun/Moon don't do this.  Rather, they lighten up the mood, loosen up the narrative beats, and keep the focus on a simple, fun story about a ten year old going on a Pokemon adventure with his friends.

The beginning of the game is as traditional as the rest of them: you're a kid starting his Pokemon journey, you meet a couple friends soon after picking your starter, you're taught how to catch Pokemon, how to use your menus, and given the task to complete all the challenges in the region (no longer Gym battles, but now Island trials, which we will get into later).  After that, you set off with your friends Lillie and Hau across the four islands of Alola.  Pokemon has tried to work in-game friends in the past to middling results, often making shallow and congratulatory characters that halt the action and replace the iconic rival characters with dull, forgettable friendly competitors who are notable solely for having taken one of the other starters at the beginning of the game.  Sun/Moon is the greatest success on this front.  Lillie is somewhat cliche, and rather dull for much of the game, but seeing her transform as a character as the story progresses is one of the better story moments in a Pokemon game, even if that isn't saying all that much.  Hau, however, is an effective comic relief, and undeniably likable.  Hau is the jolliest character I've seen in a game in a long time, and while that could be annoying if executed wrong, Hau works by making his optimism acknowledged by the rest of the cast of characters, sometimes to their annoyance or reluctant acceptance.  There feels like a realistic context for him in this world, even if nothing about this world is particularly realistic.  He's happy and game for everything, and every time he appeared on screen I found myself seriously enjoying his company.  I can't say I consider either of these characters well developed, but it was easy to feel a friendly rapport when they were around, and that's an accomplishment in its own right, and one that contributes to the feeling of a youthful adventure.  The story, inevitably, gets more complicated as the game goes on, and while its payoff isn't great in and of itself, the journey there is rather funny.  This time, the evil organization is really a small town gang that no one seems to find threatening in the least.  The gang's contrast with the unaffected populace of Alola is really funny, and while their ineptitude does eventually lead to a more cliche Pokemon-type story, it's sidelined enough to not be too distracting.

The game makes two major changes to the general game play of Pokemon: the Z-attacks and the island trials.  Z-attacks are this game's version of the mega evolutions from X/Y, allowing for a once-per-battle special attack.  I generally avoided them since they seemed a "get out of a pinch" cheat, but its inclusion doesn't ruin the game.  The Z-attacks do allow for one interesting mechanic, where the Z-attack able to be used is determined by a Z-crystal, and the Z-crystals act as your gym badges this time around, giving the gym badges a little more function.  Instead of eight gym badges, you have something like eleven trials and grand trials to complete.  Trials will generally have you doing some task three times before fighting a super Pokemon of that trial's typing with heightened defense.  The tasks can vary from fighting three Pokemon, to finding ingredients for a stew.  On one occasion, you had to answer three security questions to turn the power back on after the trial captain accidentally blew a fuse, a funny and memorable sequence that also giving you a sense of character for the trial captain, where a gym leader would have been decidedly one-note.  Each trial captain is generally met way before and many times after their trial is complete, and there is a significant small town feel to the region, where everyone knows everyone else, giving you a strong sense community I don't recall from any other game in the series.  Trials also reinforce learning typing weaknesses by challenging you with a high-defense Pokemon at the end of a trial.  Super Effective attacks won't one-hit-KO the beast, or even two-hit most of the time, requiring you to use Super Effective moves against it to get rid of it before it calls in extra Pokemon into the battle.  Grand trials, on the other hand, happen at the end of each island and are pretty much the basic gym battle.  Fight a grand trial captain and beat their Pokemon.

Pokemon Sun/Moon feel a lot more different than they actually are.  Trials and a softened focus on plot certainly give it more of a free wheeling adventurous tone, but underneath it all you are traveling the region's islands to catch and train Pokemon to eventually challenge the Elite Four, same as every other game.  The tone is certainly what makes this game so enjoyable, something a little closer to the originals where it felt like you adventuring around was the focus, and saving the world was a happenstance along the way.  Sun/Moon have some contradictions to this tone, such as waypoints on your map telling you explicitly where to go, slow camera shots that can drag on too long in cutscenes, and the fact that everyone gets a handful of expressions to help flesh them out, but your choice character gets one blank, and honestly terrifying expression.  None of this detracts from the game being fun, just from it being better.  There are also very few new Pokemon this time around, the region deciding on a collection of random Pokemon from all of the generations and mixing them here.  It comes off as a sort of second- or third-volume greatest hits collection, where we don't have many of the heavy hitting songs, but we have an even mix of eras to give a nice, career-spanning texture to it all.  It doesn't feel nostalgic, but rather a new starting place.  If you've never played a Pokemon game before, Sun/Moon allow for easy accessibility and are unobtrusive when it comes to what the series does best.  It feels generation-less, neutral yet fun, and in the great-if-tired series of Pokemon, that feels like a nice compliment.  Crazy stat training is still here, little side games pop up now and again, and customizing your character or collecting Zygarde cells to change his form all have a fun, distracting element to them that you're bound to like if you feel so inclined to do it.  But through it all Sun/Moon doesn't lose sight of its most attractive element: a relaxed adventure through the Pokemon world, new and old.



7.5

[Film Review] Pokemon Detective Pikachu

With the MCU ending its Avengers saga (although, with a whole new phase to continue on infinitum) and Star Wars scheduled to end its less than stellar sequel trilogy, the world of cinematic universes is starting to feel ambiguous.  Certainly not dead, God no, but definitely heading for a slump.  Pokemon as a franchise has always been compelling to those who played the games as a kid, partially because of nostalgia and partially because the idea of personalizing your friends for competition, and having those friends as lovable and bizarre monsters with unique traits and character, is such a fun idea to really sink into.  I, like many other kids in the 90s, desperately wanted a live action version of the Pokemon world, to realize the adventures in my head as something seemingly more tangible, but one quick look at the games with a more adult eye and you realize the difficulty of making this dream a reality.  We could get into how the stories are minimal -- or outright bad sometimes, lets face it -- or how the characters were mostly one-note, or how the game was obviously built as a game and in no way makes much sense as a tangible world, but the two biggest factors in the series' difficulty in live action would be making its monsters -- often stylized in that anime fashion, or otherwise just bizarre (see: Mr. Mime or Jynx) -- look real, and confronting the fact that through the haze of touting friendship themes and teamwork, Pokemon is literally dog fighting.  It's the reason most of the games take place in near utopian conditions, with the only conflict being your own ambition and a collection of egotistical nutjobs.   If the games ever did confront this fact, they would be fighting an uphill battle to try and justify it all (credit where credit is due: Black/White did a pretty damn good job addressing this a little, but even that skirts by it some).  Detective Pikachu, excels at the former, and does an apt job avoiding the latter, which I would consider, as far as the viability of this series in the live action movie world of things, a complete success.  If there is one thing I can praise this film on, it is in how it convinced me that Pokemon can be a cinematic universe I could get lost in.  All of that said, it isn't really a very good movie.

Detective Pikachu pulls off its realistic monsters by letting them play in an interesting stylistic zone, occupying cuteness and a weird unreality.  They paradoxically feel both cartoony and real.  Their cartoony style comes mostly from how intelligent they all seem to be, the kind of thing movies can get away with whenever a trained monkey is a side character or something.  We can identify with the facial expressions and movements of a monkey to consider it largely human-like, but not quite human, and it gives creators leeway to exaggerate their realistic or humanistic natures.  All of the Pokemon here do the same: they showcase complex facial expressions, are able to function in human society just fine, and seem largely tamed or docile.  They don't exhibit the threat of a wild animal, while retaining the threat of a human with super powers like, say, being able to electrify you with their cheeks if so annoyed, and are able to understand their human counterparts perfectly, even being able to mostly communicate back.  Their realism comes more so in their textures and color pallet, which de-saturates the colorful video game monsters into something closer to a natural tone.  The textures, to be perfectly honest, are just plain weird.  Pikachu looks fine as a cuddly, furry thing, but Lickatung looks oddly sticky and the scales on Charizard or Charmander look a bit contrasting with their more cartoony, expressive eyes.  Not all of the Pokemon are winners from a design standpoint, but enough of them are (such as Cubone or the alien looking Mewtwo -- although he looks better with his eyes white than normal) that the general impression is that this is all more than believable enough.  In a lot of ways, the weird textures themselves give a surreal quality to the whole thing that allows for you to suspend a lot more disbelief than you would in a normal film.  There is a tone to the world that was incredibly well captured, a complete embrace of just how weird all of this is, but also how fun.

The world they have created is also partially how we skirt around the whole "dog fighting" issue.  Ryme City, in which this film mostly takes place, bans Pokeballs and battling, which means Pokemon and people must coexist completely.  Some Pokemon run around wild in the streets, others tag along at their partner's heals and help out with either their jobs or simply act as a friend like the lovably bizarre Psyduck (maybe my favorite Pokemon in the film).  This skirts around another issue in the games: the collector mentality.  For a game that tried to emphasize that you and your Pokemon are friends, it never quite rationalized how that could be when your goal was essentially to collect all 151 Pokemon in the first game (now nearing the 900 range).  It always felt like a paradox to me, that these creatures were your friends yet these impersonal tokens for the avid collector.  Don't get me wrong, I am incredibly attached to my well-stat-ed Espion I bred for in my current playthrough of Pokemon Moon, but my Pokemon PC box full of 60+ other Pokemon speak to a contradictory theme.  Detective Pikachu is able to avoid this by implying that everyone has (or should have, by social pressure) a Pokemon buddy.  It is implied that people have one, and that one is all they need.  The film is getting away with this largely by telling a relatively small scale story (and I do mean "relatively" -- more on that later) and never fully committing to exactly how many Pokemon any given person has.  Honestly, this is pretty true of the game, where most people only ever have 1-3 Pokemon on them or around the house, and only the most dedicated trainers fill up their party to the max 6 you can carry (plus PC boxes full of them).  But what of those other trainers?  They exist in this world, as they are mentioned and posters for competitions can be seen in the scenery, but the film doesn't confront the issue, and thus also largely doesn't confront the "dog fighting" issue.  I say largely, because there is an underground battling circuit, but it doesn't take much of the film, and, again, skirts by mostly (it also serves as one of the most exciting parts of the film, as brief as it is -- I can't believe I saw a realistic Gengar fight Blastoise in a movie!).  But honestly, all of this is okay.  While this makes me wary somewhat of how well subsequent films will fair (and I'm definitely excited for more), it isn't a detraction in this film.  By making their world feel so fun and believable in that surreal way, I'm more than willing as an audience participant to overlook some of these ethical issues because it requires a certain light on this world that doesn't fit its style of unreality.  It works, mostly, it just feels precarious.

I've spent a lot of time thus far talking about the transition these games took to become a livable world for live action film, and that's because it is by far and away the most successful aspect.  The story, to put it quite simply, is bonkers, and not in a good way.

SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT

The plot follows Tim Goodman, a young man working as an insurance salesman who once aspired to be a Pokemon trainer but gave that up after his dad, a Pokemon detective, abandoned him when his mother died, dedicating his life to his job.  After his father is declared dead, Tim teams up with his father's Pikachu who believes his death to be staged.  The plot does a few things here, following the mysterious gas R that makes Pokemon violent, and a conspiracy told to them by Ryme City creator Howard Clifford, having to do with a genetically engineered monstrosity named Mewtwo.  Clifford shows them that it was Mewtwo that caused the crash that killed Tim's father, because he was getting too close to the truth (he shows them this through a hologram technology that is able to recreate the scene of the crime somehow, an insanely illogical device that annoys me).  They follow Clifford's lead to an abandoned research facility that unethically experiments on Pokemon and their evolutions, where Pikachu is lethally hurt.  Tim follows some Bulbasaur to find a healer, which turns out to be Mewtwo, who heals Pikachu and tells them that Pikachu had set him free from the facility they where just investigating, where he was being experimented on.  To sum the rest of this up really quickly (since all of the twists and turns add to bunk all anyway), Clifford is a liar and just wanted them to lead him to Mewtwo, who was apparently the source of R creation (by using his blood...? Something magic-sciency).  Apparently Mewtwo had told Pikachu to meet him when Tim's dad's car crashed, but how any of this was in Clifford's plan is anyone's guess.  Pikachu, however, realizes it wasn't Mewtwo who caused the crash, but rather he was trying to save Pikachu and Tim's father, and Clifford wants to use some cerebral device to take over Mewtwo's body and use his psychic powers to combine people and Pokemon, one person to one Pokemon, because apparently Mewtwo can do that if the Pokemon are rabidly crazy (such as they are when exposed to R).  And remarkably, he succeeds by going Batman-style and filling parade balloons with R, blowing them up, and using his mind-controlled Mewtwo to combine people and Pokemon together (so you can visualize this: people turn into white orbs and get sucked into their Pokemon -- apparently taking over their Pokemon's minds as well).  Luckily, Pikachu distracts Clifford-Mewtwo long enough for Tim to take the cerebral device off of Clifford, and Mewtwo is able to return everyone to normal.  And, as a twist, turns out Tim's dad was going to die in that car wreck, but Mewtwo saved him by having him absorbed into Pikachu (hence why Tim could hear him -- it was his father the whole time!), and somehow having Tim nearby allows for his father's body to return unharmed from Pikachu.  Like, just what in the fuck is this story.

Okay, so let's just parse this a bit.  I don't want to dig into how ridiculous this all is, because we would be here all night.  Firstly: in a dramatic sense, this movie really doesn't work.  The villains are virtually telegraphed from the very beginning, none of the twists are interesting because they are plainly absurd and illogical even within the film's own internal logic, and the motivations for everyone involved feels muddied at best, nonexistent at worst.  Secondly: there are numerous flashbacks showing Tim's dad, always with conveniently obscured face and white skin, making it plainly obvious this had to be someone we knew, i.e. Ryan Reynolds.  Thirdly: just what in the fuck is this whole combining people and Pokemon malarkey?  For a little bit of backstory here, Clifford suffers from a genetic disorder that has left him in a wheelchair, and he has been studying Pokemon's evolution mechanic in order to somehow cure himself.  This somehow becomes him taking over the most powerful Pokemon ever and deciding the whole city should be as he is.  There is just too much here to really unpack.  It's illogical, and the villains are flat as a broken trumpet.  There is some precedent in the games that people and Pokemon can combine like this when Bill from the very first game accidentally makes himself into a Pokemon, but that hardly excuses anything (especially, as I said before, the games themselves can't make a 1:1 transition into live action film -- this right here is a good reason).  There is a smaller, more confusing issue that the film is implied to share a universe with the anime when they directly reference Pokemon: The First Movie when discussing Mewtwo, but I'm more willing to accept this seeing as Mewtwo's origin story was generally a good one, and we could see a live action rendition of it someday.  Largely, I believe any subsequent movies in this world should mostly ignore the events of this one -- including any potential sequels, which already have the unenviable task of trying to make Detective Pikachu interesting when it can no longer talk now that Ryan Reynolds has been exercised from it.  

This film is by and large a mess.  If it wasn't for the achievement of its stylistic execution -- which is an incredible feat -- this film would be another for the trash heap that is video game adaptations in film.  However, the novelty of the thing and the fact that the film is fun (although not nearly as funny as you'd expect), I can't help but give it the slightest of passes.  It was too weird an experience to disregard, even if the whole movie aspect was a fiery, vertical plane ride in its third act.



6.0