Pokémon
What if we told you that there exists a Britain not tormented by the prospect of a general election? A Britain where the sun shines perennially over smiling folk ensconced in chocolate box villages, folk not pathologically obsessed with immigration? A Britain where the young don’t despise the old, because the old aren’t insistent on reducing the planet to ash? A green and pleasant land and workshop of the world unified under a single, golden imperative â€" gotta catch 'em all!
Last week Nintendo released its eighth generation of Pokémon games, the typically symmetrically titled Sword and Shield. For those who haven’t become a Pokémon Master since the halcyon days of Red and Blue â€" perhaps put off by rumors of ugly new creatures resembling ice creams and shoes â€" this release demands your attention for at least two reasons. The first: Pokémon is finally, actually 3D. Such news is a joy, particularly for those of us spinning in the abyss of our obscure little desk jobs, secretly dreaming of the wide open road and roughhousing with their trusty boy Squirtle. Until they plug us into the Pokémon matrix, this is the closest we will come, friends.
The second reason to get worked up about this latest iteration is that it’s set in the UK, or at least a land inspired by it. Intrigued by the elements a Japanese toy conglomerate might pinpoint as key to our national character, I set off to Galar, dreaming of lands strong and stable, and actively blocking out background noise from real life â€" even the Pokémon world is currently racked by its own “Dexit†crisis.
Like all Pokémon games, you are asked to name your protagonist, and like all Pokémon games, you are required to name them foolishly (although within a strict character limit). So it’s with extreme excitement that David Camero sets out on his quest across pseudo-Britain. (I now comprehensively regret this name.)
At the game’s outset, Camero hulks on the couch, glued to his smartphone, no doubt checking the latest YouGov polls. It’s at this point that I get an unwelcome reminder that the music in the Pokémon series is interminable. I recommend lowering this and replacing it with the smooth hits of a British national treasure â€" Craig David, I choose you!
I check around for trappings of Britishness. There’s a cup of tea on the table; a puzzling selection of abstract and landscape art crowd the walls. I’m dressed in traditional British uniform â€" curling polo, ripped skinny jeans and blocky little clogs. I look ready to douse myself with Lynx Africa and hop on the next train to Reading festival.
My “mum†â€" notably, not mom â€" corners me on my way out, adorned in flowery wellies. She wishes me well but, in a concern familiar to most British mothers, warns me not to enter the forest. I breeze past her, intent, in the words of prominent Brexiteer Dan Hannan (and many others), of stepping off the doorstep, out into the sunshine, and into the summer meadows beyond. Mum is cool with me hitting the old dusty trail, later handing me a few quid and shooing me out the door, no doubt concocting plans to rent out my room.
The world of Galar is a thing of pastoral beauty, an idyll of green fields, serene windmills and happy sheep (Pokémon). The National Trust would be proud. We reside in Postwick town, over the rolling hills lies Wedgehurst. Later, you visit a bounty of delightfully named cities, like Circhester and Spikemuth and Wyndon. (The latter known for the popular aphorism, attributed to the creator of the first Pokedex, “when a man is tired of Wyndon; he is tired of life.â€)
Unfortunately, I’m halted in my quest by my “friend†Hop, a real loudmouth know-it-all who sports a gaudy shearling jacket and lives in palatial Victorian palace that leers over the town. It’s here I get a first taste of Nintendo’s attempt at British slang, which takes the form of Hop’s bullying. "No wandering into the tall grass if you've got no Pokémon of your own, mate†he chides me; notice the mean placement of that comma. “You’re pants with directions,†he says later, triggering years of embarrassment about my dyspraxia. I long for the ability to thwack him on the nose, and for him to go away and let me get on with solving more pressing questions (Like why does Mum wear her wellies in the house, when the sky outside gleams blazing blue?).
After I’m gifted my first Pokémon by the league champion, Hop’s brother who repeatedly pulls the Freddie Mercury pose, I head over to the Pokémon centre. I notice a thriving business next door that sells only freshly picked berries, and I reflect on how local businesses have been desecrated by global capital. The Pokémon centre turns out to contain a pub; as a pre-teen boy, I figure I’m just about the right age to flash my fake ID and order a couple of WKD Blues, but this isn’t an option.
As the game progresses, the references to home pile up. The Pokémon, it turns out, are Britain-inspired too. There’s Rookidee, the owl that sounds like an Edward Lear limerick. There’s Nickit, the fox that “survives off its ill-gotten gains.†There’s Inteleon, the final evolution of one of three starter Pokémon, who bears a clear resemblance to Jacob Rees-Mogg, but, being a Pokémon, cannot speak.
Galar, it turns out, is a lovely place, just as I expected it to be. There are speeding trains, but no Virgin rail. There are summer meadows, but no Dan Hannan. Like the Wind and the Willows, Peppa Pig or Paddington 2 it is really nothing like Britain. It's a real sunlit uplands â€" a Britain that never existed, and never will.
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