Pokemon's Eugenics Problem?

[milgrip]

Hey there! Long time lurker, first time poster. I've been an avid pokemon player since pokemon red (my first ever video game) and it's always bothered me that the storyline is so themed around bonding with, and learning to cooperate with your pokemon, only for competitive pokemon to be such a cold, heartless, slog of rejecting boxes and boxes of mons. After years of this I actually made a dumb youtube video about it, let me know what you think. Does this bother you as much as it bothers me? video here

 

[Beth Pavell]

I have to point out that selective breeding and eugenics are not the same thing. Eugenics is about preventing individuals from reproducing in order to remove 'undesirable' traits from the population. Selective breeding is about encouraging 'desirable' traits through encouraging reproducing

 

[WyndonCalling]

This is one of those things that gets messier as the series progresses, because the early Pokémon games could give nary a toss about your team as individual characters - the anime blurs the lines here, but the 90s titles are fairly unapologetic about the titular creatures being animals that you've brought along for the ride. In this context, selective breeding is less of an issue given it's mundane IRL husbandry practice that's absolutely demonstrably effective in scientific terms. It's become less comfortable as time has gone on as more emphasis has been placed on Pokémon as individual personalities in and of themselves, but it's also fair to note that this has been met in tandem by improvements to the IV and EV training process, making it much easier to optimise a given individual for competitive battling.

 

[Battista]

It would seem the company’s recently realizing it too; they’ve been providing things like mints, bottle caps and EV resets so that your traveling buddies can be made competitively viable if you so choose.