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    Pokemon Satanic?

    Some people think so.  Here's an article that ran in Electronic Gaming Monthly.
     
     

    Poke-Banned

    The Dark Side of Pikachu

    There are people who don't like Pokemon, and then there are people who really don't like Pokemon.

    Sometimes they even make headlines.  Mark Juvera, a children's pastor at Grace Fellowship Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., nabbed national attention in August when he took a sword and soldering iron to Pokemon merchandise in front of dozens of kids during one of his church services.  While he says the whole thing's been blown out of proportion (newspaper reporters claim he used a blowtorch to incinerate trading cards, when he really just singed them with the iron), Juvera readily admits to bringing his wrath down on Pokemon.  "We do have a sword, which is symbolic of the word of God," he told us," and we struck a stuffed animal-that Pikachu guy-with it.  The sword isn't sharp, and since Pikachu is soft, we didn't cut it.  We only struck it one time and then ripped it apart so no one could take it from the trash."

    Juvera said he gave little thought to Pokemon (his 9-year-old son had even amassed more that $400 worth of games and toys) until he read an e-mail on the evils of Pikachu and his ilk.  "I learned it can be stepping stone toward other role-playing games like Magic the Gathering," he said.  "And I saw that one of the videos is titled 'Psychic Friends.'  When it starts talking about the ability to use psychic power, magic and things like that, well, all that's totally opposite of what we Christains believe."

    Juvera's son has stopped playing with Pokemon, and the pastor thinks he has other kids thinking twice about the pocket monster craze, too.  "I had one girl in the service tell me that they're not allowing Pokemon in her public school anymore."

    In fact, several schools across the country have banned Pokemon cards and the Game Boy games.  They're too distaracting, say some teachers, while others fear that bigger kids are bullying younger ones into unfair Pokemon trades.

    Cripes-and we thought it was bad when they just took our lunch money.

    What's so bad about Magic:  The Gathering?  I don't play card games myself (not even the Pokemon one), but I don't think it's bad.  Even role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons I can respect, even though I don't play them (I've played D&D, Shadowrun, and the like and found them boring).  They're not evil or satanic--it's not like the players are conjuring up demons or anything--yet people seem to think they are.

    Besides, other shows have characters that have psychic powers.  Just look in any Marvel comic and you'll probably have a 70% chance of finding a character who uses psychic powers.  Same with any DC Comics.  Shoot, any mainstream comic book (and the cartoons based off the comics) have psychic characters.  Why aren't these books getting condemned?

    I think it's a shame, though, that one man has persuaded so many parents to stop letting their children watch Pokemon.
    Pocket Monsters was not created by me.  It was created by Satoshi Tajiri and the crew at TV-Tokyo.  Pokemon is (c) Game Freak, Nintendo, 4Kids Productions, Hasbro, Bandai, and a ton of other companies. When you have a popular anime like Pokemon, lots of people own it so it's impossible to list every company who owns a piece of Pokemon.  No infringement of copyrights is meant by the creation of the web site.  All images were gotten from official websites (Nintendo, TV-Tokyo, etc.) unless otherwise noted (I don't steal images from other sites!).