There's something weird going on in the Pokémon world. Not only in the Kanto region you start the series exploring, but over the entire globe: there are scarcely any adults. Kids are allowed to roam free, getting into all sorts of scrapes and scraps. The player character is almost always missing a parent, and your rival is an orphan. Most adult men are either very elderly, gym leaders, and/or have ties to the military and organised crime. When you beat Lt Surge in the original games he tells you that electric Pokémon saved during the war. What does all of that add up to? At some point, in the history preceding these games, there was a conflict that wiped out a vast majority of the population including your dad and your rival's parents levelling a lot of the land so it looks wild and untamed. Playing the Pokémon games, your character is living in one of the first periods of uninterrupted peace in the world's history. So if you wanna roleplay having survivor's guilt or PTSD or whatever when you Black And White 2 that's...problematic, but perhaps suitable in a way. It also means the reason you're cataloguing the world's Pokémon is that there are more young people than old...and because you're trying to discover how many species avoided extinction during the war.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
