I saw the new Pokémon movie, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, last night. I'm not ashamed to admit that it made me cry - why would I be? As I was growing up, one of my favorite things was Pokemon. I started playing with Pokemon Sapphire and I was completely entrenched in the world of it all. As I've "grown up", I still feel huge amounts of love for the franchise. If genies were to grant me three wishes, I can guarantee that one of my wishes would be going into the world of Pokémon and staying there for the rest of my life. No matter how long it's been since I picked up the game, I still feel consistently drawn into it whenever I turn it on again.
The incredible thing about this experience is that it's not unique to me at all. To thousands of other people across the world, they feel the exact same way. The impact on those of us who adored these games is almost hard to believe - did you know that researchers at Harvard have identified a 'Pokémon region' in the brains of adults that played as kids? It's true. When shown images of Pokémon among other objects, the region of the brain called the occipitotemporal sulcus responded more to the Pokémon than it did to the other images.
My sister and I, who are six years apart, went to see the movie together. We've been going to see new movies together a lot recently, and it's honestly been one of my highlights of this year so far. We've also bonded over these games - traded Pokémon, battled them, and just talked to them. Plus, I'm pretty sure she beat a few gym leaders for me along the way.
I guess the point of this blog post is to flesh out how deep my love for Pokémon goes. It's been a huge part of my childhood and my teenhood and I'm assuming it will be a huge part of my adulthood too. Call it a silly kid's game all you want, but to me, it's one of my favorite things in the world.
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