Pokemon Legends: Arceus took us back to Hokkaidō and now, with Pokémon Legends: Z-A, we’re heading to France once more.
But Pokémon Legends: Arceus, in particular, was different – and as its successor releases into the wild, this is worth revisiting.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus is set in ‘Hisui’, a reimagining of the northern Japanese island Hokkaido in the late-ish 1800s.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus takes place during the colonisation of Hokkaidō, when the Japanese government was busily bringing the northern island under its thumb.
In Pokémon legends: Arceus, Hisui is portrayed as a vast wilderness.
With its head in the clouds and its feet firmly planted in the real world, Pokémon has always been a series that takes off. We were taken on a fast-paced tour of Japan through the first four generations of Pokémon games. With its congested cities and urban sprawl, Red and Blue was set in a fictionalized version of Greater Tokyo. We were taken to the picturesque temples and verdant towns of Kansai by Gold and Silver. Ruby and Sapphire gazed south toward blue ocean expanses and seaside cities in subtropical Kyūshū. When Diamond and Pearl flew to the cold northern island of Hokkaidō, with its snowfields and rocky peaks, they put on their winter coats.
Pokémon then spread around the world. While X and Y strolled through Paris, Sun and Moon took a vacation in Hawaii, Black and White traveled to New York, and Sword and Shield showed us a mirror-world UK where people prefer Pokémon battles to football. With improved visuals and new features, the Pokemon Legends series even made a comeback to a few of these locales. After traveling back to Hokkaidō in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, we are now returning to France in Pokémon Legends: Z-A. Although each of these regions has a unique name, there is a clear and intentional connection to actual locations.
The designers have a great time riffing on local animals and traditions, and it’s a clever idea. Ghosted teapots and roly-poly spherical sheep are features of the poké-UK. Bouffant poké-poodles can be seen on the streets of Poké-Paris. Herds of sentient trash bags swarm the outskirts of Poké-NYC. However, Pokémon Legends: Arceus stood out, and it’s worth going back to as its successor enters the wild. This is because, as any player who has played the game knows, Legends: Arceus literally transported us through time rather than just space.
The setting of Pokémon Legends: Arceus is ‘Hisui,’ a reimagining of the late-ish nineteenth-century island of Hokkaido in northern Japan. After being inexplicably drawn into a space-time vortex, you find yourself there. Furthermore, this depiction of historical Japan is largely charming. Hisui hand-carves pokéballs and fills them with tiny, fizzing, crackling fireworks. The new “strong” and “agile” attack styles are accompanied by the clap of hyōshigi sticks, the skyboxes resemble woodblock prints, and the battle menus resemble calligraphic brushwork.
Local Pokémon designs also draw inspiration from Japanese customs. Hisuian Decidueye’s eyes, which protrude from beneath his broad-brimmed umbrella hat, give him the appearance of a nomadic Ronin. Samurott wears a striking samurai helmet in red and black. Today, a Shinto temple lion is adorned with Growlithe. Despite occasionally muddy graphics, it’s a labor of love, and it’s clear that a lot of time and effort went into creating the ideal setting.
Time travel’s drawback is that it occasionally reveals unpleasant memories when we dig into the past. These frequently need to be handled carefully.
As the Japanese government was working hard to subjugate the northern island, Pokémon Legends: Arceus takes place during the colonization of Hokkaidō. The game proudly flaunts its historical roots. The main hub area grows as you complete quests and is a thriving frontier town with lots of traders and settlers. A replica of the Hokkaidō Development Office in Sapporo, which served as the administrative center of the colonization efforts starting in 1888, is the structure where you receive your missions. One particularly striking cutscene shows settlers arriving on the beach, eager to begin their new lives on the recently annexed territory. Furthermore, the Diamond and Pearl clans, the game’s main supporting cast, are obviously modeled after the Ainu, the Indigenous people of Hokkaidō.
Anyone who is even remotely familiar with this era of history might raise an eyebrow at this point. Because the annexation of Hokkaidō was, to put it bluntly, a turbulent time marked by slow bureaucratic cruelty and colonial expansionism. The real Ainu, in contrast to the fictional Diamond and Pearl clans, were rarely cooperative in this process. Instead, they were frequently its victims.
As you can see, hunting, gathering, and fishing have historically been major sources of income for the Ainu. The Ainu were heavily reliant on natural foods, even though they also engaged in cultivation in the past. It’s also not a bad living. Long lifespans, varied diets, and manageable workloads are characteristics of hunter-gatherers. Nevertheless, it requires room. It requires pristine rivers and untainted wildlife habitats. It and intensive farming do not get along well.
Hisui is depicted in Pokémon Legends: Arceus as a vast wilderness. Additionally, it is the player’s responsibility to survey and explore as a member of the “Galaxy Expedition Team” survey corps. The Kaitakushi, or “development commission,” was the real-life equivalent of “Team Galaxy.” Their objective was not only to conduct exploration, but also to drive out the Indigenous people of Hokkaidō and turn their ancestral lands into intensive agricultural land. Rather than waxing poetic about Pokémon’s wonders, the real-life Ainu observed the systematic theft of their land.
It gets worse. The island’s new rulers carried out a campaign of cultural assimilation in addition to seizing the Ainu’s ancestral lands and hunting areas. This is a euphemistic way of saying that after making all Ainu citizens Japanese by law, they purposefully and methodically destroyed their language and culture. They banned traditional hunting and fishing methods, as well as traditional clothing and religion. Families were split up, and settlers were occasionally forced into marriage. A lot of people perished. The Ainu continued to experience stigma and discrimination even after annexation, and these issues persist today. This campaign of cultural erasure was so successful that many people have lost touch with their heritage and that today there are only about 300 Ainu speakers.
Naturally, historical chance is not completely ignored in Pokémon Legends. In Legends: Arceus, the Ainu are portrayed as strong stewards of nature, while their recent appearance in Sucker Punch’s action game Ghost of Yōtei, which is set in Hokkaidō, is a rare exception to the rule. The leaders of the Diamond and Pearl clans are all skilled trainers of Pokémon and guardians of Husui’s “noble Pokémon,” which are used in boss battles. Anthropologists like me occasionally complain about the few cliched noble savage clichés, but overall, it presents a positive, empathetic picture of Ainu culture and tradition.
Additionally, the Galaxy Expedition Team isn’t presented as completely good. Team Galaxy comes across as blatantly antagonistic at the beginning of the game, and instead of offering assistance when the Poké-disaster occurs in the last act, they blame you, the main character, and exile you. The criticism stops there, though, as everyone is sincerely sorry and everything is made right by the time the credits have rolled. Considering the real history, it is still difficult to portray the protagonist as the agent of a colonial mission sent to tame the wilds, but maybe that is sufficient.
There have always been hints of subtle evil beneath Pokémon’s family-friendly exterior. Pokémon are strange, alien creatures. According to previous pokédex entries, Primeape “has been known to become so angry that it dies,” to use my own words. Pokemon Rowlett, the cute owl, glides silently and “pelts them with vicious kicks” as it approaches targets. The sole individual who managed to get a clear view of the Pokémon Mimikyu wearing a disguise was reportedly so “overwhelmed by terror” that they “died from the shock.”. Whether intentional or not, Pokémon Legends’ vibrant and colorful examination of a gory era undoubtedly keeps up with the series’ cherished tradition of startling juxtaposition, and these macabre bits add texture. However, I did question whether taking the player character to the fictional equivalent of a real, authentic colonization commission that uprooted thousands of lives and displaced thousands of people was too far.
Maybe I shouldn’t make this judgment. I have never visited Hokkaidō, despite the fact that my brother lives there. Although I work in hunter-gatherer communities where I have encountered similar discrimination and displacement in my day job, I am unable to speak for Ainu people because I do not know any of them. Being from the UK, a nation that hasn’t fully accepted its own turbulent past, I’m in no position to advise others on how to deal with the more depressing aspects of their past. The one and a half centuries that have gone by might be sufficient to lessen the impact of these occurrences. And the game does bring attention to a culture that is far too frequently overlooked. However you interpret it, the game ignores a lot of historical turmoil. Although this makes sense for a kid’s game, was the original setting selection a good one?
To address these concerns, I talked to Dr. John Hennessey, a historian at Lundt University whose research has examined popular depictions of imperialism in general as well as Ainu colonial experiences personally. He felt conflicted about the game, just like me. He concurred that there is a commendable trend of more positive Ainu representation in the media: “Golden Kamuy is a manga series that is currently very popular in Japan. The protagonist is also a Russo-Japanese War veteran. Then he meets this Ainu girl, and they spend time together. He told me, “She is really tough and kick-ass.”. When Noda Satoru, the manga’s creator, asked Ainu representatives how to portray their culture, they replied, “We want to be strong and not just the victims.”. Legends: Arceus also does a good job of this.
“1969 is the turning point because the Meiji regime started actively colonizing Hokkaidō,” Dr. Hennessey acknowledged, adding that the game does not always accurately depict the time period. As a new source of land, they viewed it as a significant source of wealth for the country’s development. “Our wild west”. These parallels were fairly obvious: “They brought in American experts and compared it over and over again with America – very self-consciously,” Dr. Hennessey says. “This type of portrayal is being perpetuated here,” he informed me, referring to the common colonial trope of “terra nullius,” which treats a territory as essentially “uninhabited” or a “wilderness” that is just waiting to be explored and claimed, despite the fact that it was already inhabited. Furthermore, settler-colonialism was justified not only in Hokkaidō but also globally using these same arguments.
We also talked about whether there was anything the game could have done to draw attention to the crimes of the era. Though not all of it, a large portion of the real history is undoubtedly too dramatic for a game aimed at families. As an example: “Deer and salmon used to be abundant.”. They subsequently established canning factories. And they were nearly extinct after ten years. The topic of ecological destruction is frequently addressed in children’s media, such as Wall-E and The Lorax. According to Dr. Hennessey, Game Freak could have “planted the seed to get people interested in reading and studying the history” because Pokémon “has a nature focus.”.
In conclusion, we discussed the function of Western journalists and if it is our place as foreigners to criticize how another nation has portrayed its own past. Regarding the conversations taking place in Japan today, Dr. Hennessey stated: “There are many persistent stereotypes. “The Ainu have been [legally] recognized twice in different ways, and they are currently working on improving things,” he said. However, many activists and academics believe that Japan is not fulfilling its obligations under the treaties. “,”.
The question of whether “the Japanese government is sponsoring Ainu cultural revival enough” is up for debate, he informed me. For instance, the trains make announcements in Japanese, English, Korean, Chinese, and Ainu when you head to Shiraoi, the location of the Ainu museum. However, they did it only at that station in Hokkaidō, and it’s not like this is the only Ainu residence. Though he felt that “often people have blind spots about their own cultures,” he added that “you have to have a degree of self-criticism” when writing as an outsider. Both are necessary because, in my opinion, studying oneself can be challenging. This means that there is room for both internal and external dialogue.
“It’s really important that these conversations exist, because if they only happen in Japan, then we miss out on them,” Dr. Hennessey said, emphasizing the importance of raising awareness of the issues. We must learn about the history of the Ainu and Japan as well,” he declared. He went on to say, “We are more likely to reinforce harmful cultural stereotypes if we don’t engage or are too afraid to talk about these things.”. “.
