Epilogue of millenial monsters

This model of virtualization—elastic fantasy in contrast to the more closed and contained version promoted by Disney/ification—is poignantly rendered in the third of the Pokémo movies, Pokémon 3 the Movie: Spell of the Unknown (in English). In this story about attachments and home,a young girl is trapped in the huge mansion she once shared with her parents (who have disappeared while researching a new species of pokémon the Unknown).Clinging to the dream of (“natural”) family and (stable) house- hold,Molly deludes herself into believing that a visiting Unknown (Entei) is actually her dad:a powerful spell that prevents her from leaving the mansion even when a wall of deadly crystal encroaches from the outside.

The traveling band of would-be pokémon masters (Ash,Misty,Brock,Team Rocket) eventually save Molly by getting her to see what is “real”—Entei is not her dad,the mansion has become a death trap,and the world outside offers a host of possible new kinship/friendships (ties with other kids and a range of pokémon, referred to here as “like family”). In the end,Molly survives by projecting a different desire—the will to escape rather than remain tied to the mansion and all it represents—onto Entei. With this,the spell is broken;Entei disappears,the crystal erodes,and Molly matures into a girl who can now subsist outside her home.As the credits roll,we see her playing happily outside next to Himeguma,her new pokémon. Self-absorbed, the girl does not even notice the reappearance of her parents,who wait in the distance on the mansion’s veranda until their daughter finally looks up. In Spell of the Unknown, a girl is caught in the fortress of her imagination:the parents she has lost and desires to literally—albeit virtually—replace.

In this tale about misplaced attachments,Molly runs into danger by fetishizing the realness of family and a dreamworld that impersonates the real thing. Clinging to what entraps her—a home petrifying into crystal Molly survives only by letting go of this dream:bonds rigidly affixed to a set and unchanging notion of place/family/domesticity/identity.The message,at once ideological and commercial,is for kids—like Molly—to turn outward in their desires and to reach for other worlds,different intimacies, alternative families.And,as embodied by “good”versus “bad” pokémon (ones that open kids up to the outside rather than enclose them within insular fantasies),the message is about Pokémonization as well:how its brand of virtuality is both pliable and useful in these changing times,providing kids not only with entertainment but also a resource for anchoring their lives with new relations,meanings,and (pre)occupations (of a mobile, techno-intimate sort).With a stock of different pocket monsters (and a vast, and constantly changing,array of media goods with which to access these creatures),children today have an endless supply of different and replace- able play buddies.And like Pikachu,at once Ash’s favorite pokémon but also a species/category that all players can access,collect,and grow (as in building,altering,even evolving its identity),pocket monsters are a flexible medium for intimacy of a virtual variety.

(Talks about tomagachi) was moved to create a traveling “pet”—a portable device that could evoke, both digitally and emotionally,the bond between human and pet.As he believed,people are drawn to cats,dogs,and turtles only initially because of these animals’ cuteness.Soon,however,it is more the attention pets demand that establishes a bond:what Yokoi imprinted as mendo¯ —the tasks of  feeding,tending to,and cleaning up that,in the electronic tamagotchi, come from manipulating icons on the screen…..(edited)

But most relevant to the story of intimate virtuality I am tracing here with Spell of the Unknown is the nature of the tamagotchi: an entity intended to both mimic and transgress “life”as defined by a more grounded notion of biology,geography,or parenthood.In Yokoi’s words,the tamagotchi are a “strange life-form”  (henna ikimono): entities that start off all head and grow legs and berets as an effect of the real care they are given by attentive owners.The resultant pet is not simply a static image on the screen but the result of labor that is expended by the player herself:the interface between player and machine that animates the tamagotchi into a “strange life- form.” As is extended much further in Pokémon (and video games and role- playing/card games like Magic: The Gathering more generally),fantasy characters are built from a combination of image and information.In the case of tamagotchi, pets appear on the screen both as bodies (Kusatchi, Mimitchi,Bill) and as data—the icons that reveal need (a frowny face),care (a ducky indicating cleaned-up poop),and current state of health (a health meter).And,for Tajiri,it is “datafication”that lends Pokémon its life-giving properties.By manipulating data,users build up their pokémon in a process that not only simulates organic life as in the bug world ( pokémon grow bigger,stronger,and into evolved forms) but also produces a language or currency with which users establish exchanges,communication,and relation- ships with others.As noted earlier,Tajiri viewed trade of information as the most important aspect of the Pokémon game for its “gorgeous implications for communication”(Hamamura 1997).It is this—the endless deconstruction,rearrangement,calculation,and proliferation of information—that goes on forever in the Pokémonization model of play and intimate virtuality that promises to open kids up,as its marketers have reiterated so often, to a world outside.

And as the movie Spell of the Unknown would seem to suggest,what is “outside”is interactions as much with virtual entities as with humans—Molly at the end of the film who,once freed from the mansion,plays with her new pokémon friend. The model here of a strange new life-form both borrows from the familiar (family/nature/biology) and goes beyond it.This would seem to be a message of Spell of the Unknown as well,where the fantasy that literalizes the real—an imagined creation that preserves the girl’s past/origins— threatens to wipe out life itself.It is only by breaking out of this narrow imaginary/world that Molly survives,being now—as viewers of the film will immediately understand—in a space where she will have endless opportunities to attach to endless pokémon as (not literal,but virtual) family and friend.

As Professor Oak says about the pokémon in the Poketto Mon- suta¯ Zukan, their nature is difficult to pin down.With pokémon neither a The spread of race per se nor strictly monsters or pets,what they do share is convertibility to data and their utility to humans.So,besides the affective value they carry (as potential pals like Himeguma),they serve as capital,and in a form that can be reformulated “as infinitely flexible data that moves at the speed of  light across a variety of geographic scales”(Hillis 1999:xxx).The demand for “ever more efficient ways to circulate capital with the global economy” is driving the development of not only virtual technologies today,as Hillis has noted,but also global capitalism.For Japan today,still burdened with the effects of a nagging recession as it passes into the new millennium,crafting capital in the form of cute monsters that can travel the world and transform—endlessly and polymorphously—into infinitely flexible data and products,is a boon for the economy. As Japan circulates its fantasy monsters around the world at this millennial moment,it claims a place in the global marketplace as New Age trend setter and play maker.

This globality (figure 47) is embodied in the “Poké- mon,the World”skit on the television show Oha Suta¯, described at the beginning of the chapter.Here,  Pokémon collapses into a monster ball that doubles as a handheld globe,projecting an image of a Japan at the center of  (and in possession of) the world,empowered as it has been by Pokémon (and Japanese cultural and entertainment goods more generally).By contrast,the scene evoked by Molly—clinging desperately to a fantasy of home that threatens to shut off the world outside altogether—could not be more different. Spell of the Unknown could be read as an allegory about Japan as it navigates its place in the world at this millennial moment.A tale about loss,it is also one about new possibilities:about facing the dismantling of old attachments by adopting global capitalism/virtual intimacies—ties that compensate for,but themselves spur,the erosion of a more rooted sense of  home,country,and nation.In this,a monster that can be “family-like” rather than “family”encodes a libidinal economy for millennial Japan (and global fantasy making):virtual entities that serve (as) capital and as intimacy at the same time.

>preserves the girl’s past/origins— threatens to wipe out life itself.It is only by breaking out of this narrow imaginary/world that Molly survives,
Japan was fashy and insular in it’s ideals. Honor being the devotion to the shogun and emperor to achieve racial superiority. Surrendering in WWII was hard
Its new cultural participation and influence on the globe is a sort of capitalist response to the lost fashist dream.
The same can be said for the trade-ability of pokemon. Once an insular gaming experience, pokemon opens kids up to trading with each other in an analogue to a cross cultural pollination exercise.
This climax is a much more positive take away than pokemon being emblematic of problematic millennial capitalism. While pokemon are not real, they are real to the individual. And then capitalism comes and sells you realness… fml

>what they do share is convertibility to data and their utility to humans
This is the two sides of the coin. Nostalgic gestures of pokemon that become real, and are sold to us almost predatorily, and in some ways are predatory inherently (beautiful fighting girl)
The other is utility to humans. The extent to which we need this alternate real. But also in the social justice sense of liberating pokemon, of course. All of this within a very capitalism ingrained game.(edited)
shit just got a whole lot more complicated boiz