(Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/18/2025)
[Image from glitchwave.com]
Pokémon Black/White
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre(s): JRPG
Platforms: DS
Release Date: September 18, 2010
“Hey, did you hear that there’s gonna be a new Pokémon game coming out soon?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you gonna get it?”
“...Nah”
That was a line of conversation that occurred between a friend and I during our freshman year of high school in early 2011, right before the North American release of Pokémon Black & White. As you can probably tell from the curt answers to his casual inquiries, I did not give half of one fuck about Pokemon’s fifth generational mainline entry. No, it wasn’t solely because retaining an interest in Pokémon during my adolescence would’ve severely deepened any social ostracization I might have been facing, but because I genuinely couldn’t have cared less about the franchise I once loved. Once that key hormonal shift occurred, horror films, heavy metal, and the swaying hips of my female classmates were my primary interests, while Nintendo kept trucking along with its money-making monster catcher. After my pituitary gland had calmed down and I was no longer situated in a stressful social environment, Pokémon once again had relevance in my life after experiencing a revitalized interest in gaming during college. Out of the three Pokémon generations (that existed circa 2014) that I had glossed over, the fifth one in particular piqued my interest during this renaissance period. Somehow, several iterations onward and a decade after Pokemania was deader than disco, apparently, Pokémon’s quality had managed not to peak. In fact, Pokémon’s fifth-generation entries, existing on opposite ends of the color spectrum, were rumored to be the series’ finest outing. This praise might have been since the Pokémon fanbase had been halved since the franchise's popularity peak, leaving the staunch enthusiasts and fresh-faced children as the sources of this laudation. Still, I’m practically one degree away from a “gen-wunner” who abandoned the series after it had gone stale in the greater pop culture zeitgeist while also entering double-digit ages, and I have to admit that the hype surrounding Pokémon Black/White is perfectly justified.
Hypothetically, if Pokémon Black/White had been released in the earlyish 2000s, say, as the franchise's third generational representative when I was still interested in the series, my fanaticism would’ve received a fatal blow, making me renounce the franchise forevermore. I was greatly disappointed when Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire chose a modest selection of pokemon from previous generations to transfer over to Hoenn’s subtropical chain of islands, but I imagine that Black/White’s decision to wipe the slate completely clean and only offer the 156 pokemon expressly created for the newest title would’ve made me inconsolably hysterical. Fortunately, the wisdom that comes with adulthood allows me to appreciate Game Freak’s integrity and its conviction to preserve the allure of its series with distinctiveness. Still, the Pokemon Black/White frontrunners in question display a few telltale signs of creativity fatigue, if their designs and conceptual inspirations are any indication.
This plague of unsavory aspects amongst this vast crop of creatures is prevalent throughout, but I’ll begin my bagging on them with the three that welcome the player’s adventure: the new trio of starter pokemon. As per the customs of the pokelab that prepares amateur trainers with their first pokemon, the contrasting elemental variances of grass, fire, and water remain as the prime choices for the player to consider. Personally, I say obscure your sights, point your finger, and catch a tiger by its toe, because there isn’t a single one out of the pack that stands out as the exemplary pick. Sure, Oshawott attempts to continue the streak of water-type supremacy that Mudkip and Piplup established, as I’m sure the developers were saving an adorable otter for a rainy day to be propped up in the starting selection and occupy that special spot in the player’s hearts, thus squelching the competition. Admittedly, Oshawott’s cuteness cannot be maintained as the player accrues experience with it, but its final form, Samurott, is a shocking, unsightly monstrosity that looks like the result of a horrific mutation rather than a natural metamorphosis. Not only does the addition of two hind legs contradict the concept of evolution, but the boring, bog-standard single-typing from its Oshawott origins persists. The grass-type Snivy also indicates that Game Freak should’ve boned up on Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, for the long-snouted leafy reptile sheds its limbs and becomes a fully-fledged serpent when it becomes Serperior. The only physical characteristic it keeps well into maturation is that smug, self-satisfied grin on its face. Given that Serperior is also a single-type third form like its blue, wet cohort, what makes it so confident that the professor won’t end up tossing it in the trash bin where many other grass starters end up? Tepig’s evolved forms of Pignite and Emboar are the only ones that feature dual typing, but that additional elemental attribute is ironically what makes this spicy swine the most offensive of them all. Would you like to wager a guess which typing is tacked onto the evolved incarnations of Tepig? Correctamundo: Pignite and Emboar are yet another fucking fire/fighting combination that Combusken and Blaziken debuted. If Monferno/Infernape were like compromising with Pepsi, then Black/White’s insanely derivative fire duo is like being offered RC Cola. If this is a restaurant’s only cola option, run like Hell, for there are rats in the kitchen and they’re trying to poison you. Never before has picking a starter pokemon evoked the displeasure of voting for a political party candidate during an election, choosing based on which is the least objectionable.
Considering that the number of new pokemon in Black/White exceeds that of any previous Pokemon generation, surely at least a handful of them aren’t wretch-worthy wastes of cartridge space. You’d be correct, but the exceptional ones are few and far between in this regional Pokedex. I suppose I should give my commendations to the choice cuts before I begin my encompassing rant. Immediately, I admire the plethora of commonly caught pokemon who evolve twice and can therefore retain their prized position in the player’s posse as the game’s challenges grow steeper. Stoutland, for example, is the third form of Lillipup, the Black/White equivalent of a Rattata or Sentret for its normal typing and early availability. Unlike the previous two mentioned, this scruffy hound is formidable enough to be a contender for challenging the Elite Four instead of simply being relegated to the job of disposing of obstructions found on the field. I’m sure Timburr’s strength matches that of the classic fighting family of Machop, considering the rectangular object they hold gets heavier and heavier as they evolve. Seismitoad may be a combination of Poliwag’s conceptual evolution and Wooper’s water/ground elemental typing in a far uglier package, but who am I to judge a book by its cover when catching and training Tympole is so convenient? Scolipede is swift and scary enough to bolster the sour reputation of bug-poison pokemon, and the red and black Krookodile looks as terrifyingly vicious as Sharpedo with the bipedal physical stature of a pseudo-legendary pokemon. By the way, the earliest form of every single second evolution pokemon I’ve mentioned is present in the wild grasses before the fourth gym leader, so the player’s first few pokemon pals could certainly be in consideration for the task of tackling the Elite Four. For those who only evolve once or haven’t the capacity for drastic transformative growth at all, there are still plenty of standout picks. I, for one, adore Drilbur, whose innate digging habits as a mole are enhanced when its evolved form, Excadrill, sprouts a metallic drill in its evolution to wade through the earth with the grace of an Olympic swimmer. It’s a good thing that karate black belts, Throh and Sawk, are separated as respective version exclusives because they’d receive constant comparisons to Sesame Street’s iconic platonic life partners if shown together. Scrafty showcases so much spunk with its baggy pants and mohawk combination; the high-voltage spider Galvantula is quite fetching with its yellow glow; Cubchoo and Beartic are Teddiursa and Ursaring if you put them in a freezer for a few hours; phantom stone giant Golurk is the Pokémonification of the “Der Golem” monster of Yiddish folklore, etc. In listing all of the new pokemon, I find myself surprised that I’m in a position where I have to limit the selections I mention for brevity’s sake. Sort of speaks to the overall quality of Black/White’s extensive roster, doesn’t it?
Still, the last pokemon mentioned in the previous paragraph does admittedly veer towards the prevalent issue that plagues as many pokemon in Black/White’s roster in equal number to the exemplary ones. To preface my point of contention, I need to ask a question: how many of you are familiar with The Brave Little Toaster? In this 1987 animated film, a group of sentient, commonplace household appliances embark on a quest to find their human child who has disappeared, worrying that this young boy has forsaken them because he hasn’t been showing them the attention that he formerly did. On a thematic level, this film richly conveys obsolescence, abandonment, and the atrophying of a long-term relationship. However, the prevailing, nagging aspect surrounding these heavy themes and what ultimately sullies them stems from this issue: why and how the hell would a child feel any sort of profound attachment towards household appliances, and ones that he wouldn’t be interested in interacting with like a vacuum cleaner anyway? No wonder Toy Story persisted as the household name for animated films involving cognizant objects, for toys are far more sensible for a child to harbor a sentimental connection towards. Pets are also non-human companions that a kid could sensibly form a bond with, which is a factor in Pokémon’s widespread success. This is why when pokemon start resembling inanimate objects and commodities like a candle (Litwick), a snowflake (Cryogonal), and a fucking double-scooped ice cream cone (Vanilluxe. Seriously, what the good goddamn have you been smoking, Game Freak?), it’s difficult to perceive them as companions. One could argue that the spirit inside Cofagrigus is the focal point of that pokemon’s essence, but why then does its name allude to the ceremonial encasement and not the kooky limbs protruding from it? Klink is just a twin set of gears with googly eyes attached, and the fact that more metallic pieces are simply added to it per evolutionary stage is so half-assed that it’s hilarious. One could also argue that Trubbish and Garbodor are repurposed variations of Grimer and Muk’s conceptual theme: toxic waste build-up becomes so unmanageable that it literally becomes a monster. However, the vacant, tortured look of these garbage (literally) pokemon piles is far more pathetic than Muk’s menace, in which they express that their existence is a stifling ordeal they want extinguished immediately. Speaking of Grimer and Muk, they, along with pokemon like Voltorb and Unown, could present the argument that non-humanoid or non-animaloid pokemon have had a presence in the Pokedex since the series’ glory days, and I should cut their successors some slack. Still, there was purpose and intent behind the inanimate natures of these few pokemon, an item capsule mimic to dupe unsuspecting players and the alphabet of a cryptic, archaic language that adds mystique to the ancient ruins of Johto, respectively. Without any applicable outlying context, it gives off the disillusioning impression that the developers are now compelled to tap into crafting creatures around things that they once swore to use sparingly when they still had that creative spark and integrity.
Maybe the reason why Black/White doesn’t carry over any of the previous Pokémon games is that the title’s setting is so far removed from the rest of the Pokémon world. Apparently, the remaining regions of Japan weren’t interesting enough to be reimagined into a Pokémon-centric society, so the developers decided to study abroad for international inspiration. I’d be intrigued initially just by that prospect alone, but my attention is especially piqued because Unova is Game Freak’s depiction of my home country: the United States of America. Pretend that the instrumental rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” started playing just now. Given that I should be well-versed in my homeland’s culture and iconography, it’ll be amusing to see how a foreign (to me) team illustrates it with the creative liberties they are allowed. I trusted that Japan shared a respect and appreciation for the USA’s culture as we tend to mutually do with theirs, so there are no depictions of mass obesity, religious and/or nationalistic fundamentalism, gun-toting ignoramuses, or any other stereotypical caricatures running rampant throughout Unova. Instead, Game Freak seems to hone in on the geographical/cultural diversity and architectural modernity that is pervasive across the collective of fifty states. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that there is a desert located in Unova’s southwestern section, as the blistering sandstorms could evoke the arid, unpopulated sections of Arizona or New Mexico. (American) Football, or at least the ubiquity of professional sports, is a prominent cultural force, and amusement parks are cultural centerpieces unseen in any urban Pokémon environment beforehand. Nacrene City is an artistically inclined city with a museum as its cultural piece de resistance, like Philadelphia or my beloved Baltimore. The rain pours on Mistralton City as harshly as a city like Seattle, and Driftveil is a rough-and-tumble port town like Houston. Although I might just be making that comparison because the city’s gym leader, Clay, is the spitting image of a grizzled Texan man, complete with an oversized cowboy hat. Castelia City is unmistakably Unova’s NYC, a winding urban sprawl where skyscrapers eclipse the view of anything in one’s peripheral vision. Its multiple pathways are frankly byzantine, with so many people congesting the streets that the player automatically fills in the blanks of a cacophonous city soundscape even if the game doesn’t outright provide it. Beyond the overwhelming spectacle of this area’s colossal, all-encompassing architecture, what is also equally impressive is the bridge the player travels on en route to Castelia. The three-dimensional angles used to display the suspended mass of architectural support really accentuate the sheer size of it, causing me genuine awe-stricken speechlessness like I was an immigrant docking at bay on Ellis Island. I couldn’t believe that this was rendered on the same handheld system as Diamond/Pearl, and the scene really dawned on me of how far the series has come since every building was but a pixelated blip on a top-down screen. It is absolutely magical.
Flaunting the highest, unprecedented graphical flair seen in a Pokémon title is certainly impressive, but Black/White also showcases a treasure trove of new features and quality-of-life enhancements in addition to its marvelous presentation. Immediately upon pressing Start, the game will ask the player if they’d like to access the “C-Gear,” which is an all-purpose device that rearranges the bottom half of the handheld’s screen to include easy access to all things connected to the World Wide Web. Since I’m strictly a lone wolf in all of my Pokémon endeavors, I always opted to silence this gadget even if I admired its niftiness. However, one thing I couldn’t possibly avoid was the weather, specifically the temperature and other environmental conditions that correlate with the four seasons. Besides the subtle aesthetic changes that occur, the time of year also shuffles the likelihood of specific pokemon appearing in the wild (and the appearance of the darling deer pokemon, Deerling) and the triggering of various events. While adding a seasonal spice to the foregrounds provides a deeper layer of immersion to the player’s journey, what puzzles me is that each season is cycled every month and resets every fourth month (ie., the pattern of January, May, September being “Spring,” while February, June, October being “Summer” and so forth). What is this bullshit, the metric system? The Pokecenters have converged with the Pokemarts for a one-stop shop convenience of full healing and preparing for mobile healing in increments on the road. A gym’s “host” (the guy who greets the player at the entrance) will grant the player a preliminary “fresh water” with the same healing properties as a “super potion.” Most importantly, the game’s RPG action is silky smooth like a dream, ironically so considering how Diamond/Pearl ran like a lung with emphysema on the same system. High performance power, experimentation, AND tons of streamlined amenities? Black/White is really treating the players to the life of luxury.
Still, despite its overall agreeability, Black/White still manages to be one of the more challenging titles in the Pokemon series. In saying that, I'm happy to report that the steeper duels of Black/White stem from meatier turn-based gameplay instead of the hiccups and poor decisions of Diamond/Pearl. Elemental properties are obviously still factored into the result of a victorious battle, but Black/White pauses that conceit for a brief moment during the earlier duration of the adventure. Depending on which starter pokemon the player chose, the corresponding gym leader of the trio will contrast their (poison) pick with their elemental weakness in the form of the simian siblings (Pansage, Pansear, Panpour). The following gym fight with Lenora in Nacrene City evokes particularly painful memories of being bulldozed by Whitney’s Miltank as a small child traveling throughout Johto, for the fighting type that I desperately needed to penetrate her Herdier and Watchog offenses was just enough out of reach to put me in a state of despair. When I could eventually diversify my team to cover all of the necessary offensive bases, my opponent’s pokemon tended to buff themselves with stat increases and inflict debilitations that still proved to be quite as damning as blunt, direct offensive force. Admittedly, this strategy has always been employable, but the methodical, subtle, and sneaky approach seems to be far more fashionable in Unova. Factor in that tons of new attacks, status manipulators, and secondary physical abilities are floating around in the mix with an entirely unfamiliar smorgasbord of pokemon, and Black/White becomes dangerously less and less predictable as the game progresses. However, in another instance of sweet irony, somehow, Unova’s Elite Four proved to be rather unremarkable. I’ll kiss Game Freak’s feet with complete gratitude for lowering the levels of their Pokémon to reduce the classic grinding regime that I’m absolutely sick and tired of putting an inordinate amount of time into. Still, the so-called “elite” of an entire region exuded a bush-league amateurism that barely stimulated my sweat glands in the slightest.
The probable reason why Unova’s Elite Four felt like a facile flash in the pan is that a gauntlet of esteemed pokemon trainers has now become a simple formality as opposed to a climactic rite of passage before the player can be ushered into Pokemon prestige. The Pokemon series has finally realized that the zero-to-hero conquest arc is no longer as gratifying a power fantasy as it was when Pokemon was lighting the world ablaze, or at least not at the forefront of the primary narrative. Between the classic ascension to regional league domination, Black/White is the first game to truly reverse the precedence of the content that is usually the lettuce and tomato of the Pokémon sandwich, added for texture to the juicy meat of the narrative burger. Specifically, the mission to defeat, disband, or dispose of Team Plasma, the latest cultish coalition spreading their noxious influence around the Pokeworld like a pestilence. However, whereas Team Rocket’s motives were driven by lowbrow gangster greed, and the three other syndicates by complete lunacy, the tenets of Team Plasma are surprisingly quite virtuous…technically. The grey-clad, hooded (and homogeneously ginger, weirdly enough) clan has banded together for the purpose of pokémon liberation, separating the creatures from their “oppressive” existences as organic weapons whose worth is evaluated by how they represent their ego-centered human masters in combat. Their initiative sounds perfectly noble and ethically righteous on paper, but their roles as antagonists are made crystal clear in how they attempt to enact their goals through mafioso harassment and violence towards common trainers. Blatant hypocrisy even bleeds through their morality mission when they themselves cause physical harm to a trainer’s pokemon in trying to seize them. Hmm, Team Plasma sure sounds similar to an organization in the real world that has been quite critical of Pokémon in the past, but I’ll leave it anonymous because this group tends to assault any and all dissenters with a crack team of lawyers. Unlike all previous problematic gangs that plagued the Pokeworld in series past, where the line of morality was definitely crossed, Team Plasma actually presents a genuine ethical dilemma: are we, the player, complicit in abusing innocent animals for sport? Pokémon are admittedly burned, poisoned, frozen, electrocuted, etc. in the name of the player’s reputation, and it’s difficult to say if they’d succumb to those severe wounds if PokéCenter’s healing technology wasn’t incredibly efficient. Still, while the player is obviously intended to side with the game’s argument that the bond between man and beast is reciprocal, I actually have some anecdotal evidence for their claim. My very first pokemon was Cyndaquil when I played Pokémon Silver as a seven-year-old child. When that little flaming anteater grew up to become a strapping volcano-backed Typhlosion, I experienced a sensation of pride and sentimentality for its younger form like a parent watching their child walk across the stage to receive their high school diploma. Yes, I became irrationally emotional over a digital blob of black and orange pixels because of the time we shared. If Team Plasma isn’t moved by my story, then they truly are just a bunch of sanctimonious assholes no better than the obnoxious evil teams that came before them. Yet, their self-righteousness is what makes them the most interesting of them all.
Team Plasma preserves its prominence in Black/White’s greater narrative through the player’s rival, a relationship trope in Pokémon that hasn’t been this strong since we were gritting our teeth at Blue’s arrogant ass back in Kanto. No, Cheren and Bianca might seem like they fit the respective role initially, considering they both procure the leftover starter pokemon and chronically challenge the player with said starter pokemon throughout their journey. However, I’d hardly describe the relationship between the two and the player as heated or contentious, as a rivalry should connote. Cheren comes close to fulfilling that classic rival role due to his frustrated feelings of inadequacy that stem from his inability to dominate the player in a duel, with his perfectionist, anal-retentive personality blinding him to the fact that it takes more than fancy book learnin’ to become an outstanding pokémon trainer. Meanwhile, Bianca is relatively similar to May from Hoenn, stumbling through the Pokémon League with a bubbly aloofness like Cher taking her driving test in Clueless. Eventually, Cheren realizes the nuance in Pokémon training while Bianca comes to terms with the fact that she’s a virgin who can’t duel and decides that her true calling is elsewhere. Why is it always the female “rival” who is the incompetent one? Anyways, while I’d say that neither of these two matches the player’s Pokémon training prowess nor exhibits the interpersonal tension of a rivalry, they’re still worth mentioning because the Pokémon series has never given any of its recurring secondary characters this amount of screen presence or this dynamic of a character arc.
Rather than the player’s hometown peers, the player’s true heated equal in the Pokémon League is the guy with green hair who is referred to only by the single letter “N.” One may wonder why I’ve prescribed N with the rival label, considering that he seems to fit the stark antagonist role as the supreme leader of Team Plasma commanding the crude Pokémon liberation operation. He certainly exhibits plenty of villainous character traits in his motives and demeanor. Conversing with him at the heights of Nimbasa’s Ferris wheel even evoked the chilling Harry Lime monologue from The Third Man, one of cinema’s most dastardly criminals. Still, while the writing on the wall greatly suggests that N is indeed one step beyond a rival into the realm of scum and villainy, the truth behind N’s real narrative purpose is revealed when Ghetsis is in the picture. Suddenly, with an older opposing force decorated in cartoonishly villainous garb like all of the primary Pokémon gang leaders before him, Ghetsis causes the player to realize that N is not the looming threat hanging over Unova. It’s revealed in the game’s climax in N’s sublime castle that Ghetsis was always pulling the strings of Team Plasma. Ghetsis has been manipulating N’s passion for the civil rights of Pokémon and thus creating a driven lieutenant to execute a revolution not based on the protection of Pokémon, but to render all of Unova’s civilians defenseless to become its ruthless, iron-fisted ruler. With Ghetsis in the spotlight as the sinister force of evil in Unova instead, it seems like N could be disposed of like a piece of tissue paper. However, I think that his relegation to a red herring in the greater narrative is more fitting and puts the rival role into better perspective. As much as our blood might boil at the spoiled cockiness of Blue or cringe at Silver’s harshness towards himself and his Pokémon, the rivals are never intended to be the prime instigators of the greater conflict surrounding a Pokémon adventure’s narrative, hence the new crop of criminal radicals per entry. Also, a worthy rival should act as a character foil that reflects a warped perspective of the player’s strongest qualities, which seem to have been lost since Red/Blue, with all of the scrubs constantly trying to catch up with the player. Everyone playing Pokémon is obviously different in personality, but the game often likes to assign the avatar they’re controlling the glowing traits of passion, compassion, integrity, courage, and every other exceptional adjective submitted to the Oxford English Dictionary. N is not only an exceptional trainer, if his fairly challenging duels are any indication, but he truly does exhibit all of the aforementioned qualities that all of the NPCs will compliment the player on to the point where it's borderline flirtatious. Given his unique history of being raised by Pokémon like Mowgli from The Jungle Book, it's easy to see why he’d express a deep ardor for ensuring the well-being of his close companions with the imbalanced relationship dynamic at play with their human partners. His fervor is corrupted by the manipulation tactics of Ghetsis, but by seeing the example of the player’s genuine (or so the game claims) mutual respect and adoration for Pokémon, it reorients his cynicism for humanity and reminds him of his true, unadulterated beliefs and aspirations. N is such an extraordinarily strong rival because of how starkly he mirrors the protagonist, with a character arc so fascinating that it usurps the standard eight gyms+Elite Four conquest arc the series has been using as a narrative crutch since day one.
This is when I bemoan it’s a shame that a Pokémon game of this caliber wasn’t released when I was of the age of owning various Pokémon merchandise and memorizing the Pokédex as if I was preparing for a test on the periodic table for chemistry class. However, I count myself as fortunate to have experienced this game as a less overzealous adult because I would not have appreciated it way back when. A game with zero returning Pokémon, and a good portion of them are goofy-looking doodads? Hopefully, someone in proximity would’ve had smelling salts to revive me after fainting at that news. While I admittedly still find fault with the uninspired designs of a handful of Unova’s native Pokémon and its lackluster starter selection, everything else regarding Pokémon’s fifth mainline iteration has swept me off my feet. I don’t know how any series veteran couldn't be absolutely floored by the polygonal presentation and how grandiose it makes the adventure feel after generations of pixelated minimalism. Besides the splendor of the game’s surface-level attributes, the simultaneous striving for both accessibility and more complex battle conditions is commendable on all fronts. Place a story of an intricate moral dilemma surrounding the series with a mystifying character at the forefront of it, and the Pokémon series seems to have matured with the audience who grew up with it, namely, myself and several others. Pokémon Black/White is a phoenix that burns all traces of tired series traditions and rises from the ashes with great ambitions galore. I wouldn't have been ready for their gumption as a child, but as an adult, I’m beaming with pride that Pokémon isn’t content with coasting on the comfort of nostalgia.
