To start things off, I love Pokemon. When the adorable game came to America in the form of Red, Blue, and Yellow for the Gameboy, it immediately exploded with popularity. All my friends and I were hooked. To break down the story, you start as young boy in a small town who is given a small Pokemon from a certain professor. The professor tells you to take the animal resembling Pokemon to train it and use it to catch every single other Pokemon. In order to do this, the player must progress through the story line by defeating gym leaders strewn throughout the land and complete special tasks set out for him such as rescuing a skyscraper from a terrorist organization. But along this quest are the many battles that you as a trainer must face. These battles are the focus of my comic.
During these battles, you subject your Pokemon to fight the other trainer's Pokemon until one of the Pokemon "faints" or loses all their life until they are healed again. The battle continues until one trainer has run out of Pokemon to fight with. The winner then receives a certain sum of money for the victory. This practice can be seen as very similar to another more illegal practice of dog fighting (and we're not talking about planes either). Dog fighting is a betting activity where people bring their specially-trained dogs to fight against other dogs. It is spectated and bet upon by a crowd and the winner's owner receives money along those who bet for him.
Click comic to download
I do not think I have to tell you the scale of how bad something such as dog fighting is. Just take Michael Vick's situation into account. He received several years in jail, paid huge fines, lost advertisement deals with sport's largest companies, is hated and made fun of by most of America, and it almost ended his entire career as a football player. He was given those punishments just because he had his hand in a dog fighting ring. When such an event is looked down in such a way, why are two things with such similarities seen in such a different light.
They are several different opinions to be had on these similarities. You can decide that Pokemon is just a lighthearted game for kids and that there is no trouble in it. You can decide that Pokemon should have a higher ESRB rating for its obvious link to such an illegal act. Or you can decide that maybe punishments for dog fighting are a little bit too harsh for such a not-so-serious crime. I myself would state my opinion as such. Pokemon is a light-hearted game where a kid can train to "be the very best, like no one ever was" (brownie points if you read that with the song playing in your head). I also think that the punishments for dog fighting may be a tad too high. I'm not saying that they shouldn't be fined heavily or thrown in jail but people are people and people love violence and money. So what can we do except say it's bad and try to stop it?
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