I Choose You, Nanking Massacre!

Once in a while I get someone asking me how I can dislike the new Pokeyman designs so much. One reason would be the simple fact that many of them are just fucking ugly and superfluous. Another good reason would be that at least one design in this children's game made by a profit-seeking entity is based on a national tragedy that killed the loved ones of some of this game's target demographic. (Scroll down to the bottom.) And just to add insult to injury, it's exactly 9'11 inches tall and looks like it's made up of airplane wreckage.

This is NOT like Godzilla. He was made by Japan itself, the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. It was a way for them to give a face for the chaos that caused so much suffering for them. It was therapeutic in a sense. "Kyurem" was not an American invention. It was not designed by people whose mothers and fathers died in the Twin Towers catastrophe as a way to make sense out of the senseless devastation. It was made by Japan to get money from kids.

That, and its head looks like a peener.

I can only imagine being a young man or woman in this day and age, maybe one who lost loved ones ten years ago in the attacks. Maybe video games would be a calming force for me. Maybe I could look to Nintendo's colourful critters for some respite. How would I feel if I found out that Nintendo was literally waving its cartoon dick at the memory of the people I'd lost? And that a lot of other families lost? And now all of my friends at school at laughing and playing with it, and if I don't partake in this thing that glosses over and trivializes the pain of thousands of human beings, then I won't fit in.

For comparison, here is one of six creatures in the game that were designed by James Turner. Notice how it's just a baby vulture with an egg-shell diaper, instead of a thinly-veiled mockery of the internment camps for Japanese-American citizens in the 1940's? That's because James Turner isn't a complete asshole.

(Well, okay, he DID design the ice-cream trio...)

Is this unreasonable? Should I be offended? How offended would you be if in ten years we got a new Halo game, where we get to play as the parasitic "Flood" creatures attacking people in Japan? Or if I submitted an unsolicited Pokemon design based on a failing nuclear reactor?

You know, to to show our respect. <_<

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~A.H.