That Pokémon Butcher Video Serves Up Disturbing Imagery (and Uncomfortable Questions)
A YouTube video featuring a Pokémon wet market has raised some serious questions about the morality of eating Pokémon.
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Category : Pokemon
The following article explores a video that shows the graphic butchery of cartoon characters (Pokémon), and might be disturbing to some audiences.
There’s a viral Pokémon video going around that shows a Bulbasaur being prepared for a meal. We watch as a butcher brings down a chopping knife, pries its bulb off, then serves its bulb stuffed with filling and the body parts well roasted. The video continues to show how else you can prepare the original Gen 1 Starter Pokémon, as served at a “Pokémon Wet Mart.” It is a visceral video, made all the more disturbing by how casual it is in tone.
This video touches upon an interesting topic. We’ve known for some time that Pokémon are subject to being eaten. Some, like Farfetcht’d, became rare due to poachers serving them with their leeks. However, with this new YouTube video, we see the visceral results of what Pokémon food products would look like. So let’s ask… is this too far?
The History of Eating Pokémon
In the games, there are a few canonical cases of humans consuming Pokémon. Slowpoke tails are chopped off and eaten. Miltank’s milk is drunk. Farfetcht’d is poached to near extinction. All associated Pokémon lore, in the early days, implied that there was other livestock, such as when Ash dons a cow costume in the early episodes of the Indigo League.
However, as the number of Pocket Monsters increases, references to animals other than the titular monsters have decreased. There was even a scrapped idea for the third Pokémon film that would have included a T-Rex skeleton coming to life — an idea that was ultimately replaced by Spell of the Unown.
Even the video itself has precedent in the original anime. After the S.S. Anne capsized in the anime, the crew becomes so hungry they fantasize about eating Team Rocket member James’s newly acquired Magikarp. The fantasies are eerily similar to the end result of the viral video’s Starter Pokémon recipes.
Furthermore, the very presence of meat byproducts throughout Pokémon, including the recent addition of sausage curry to Pokémon Sword and Shield, indicates that the meat is coming from somewhere. With decreasing evidence that any animals other than Pokémon exist in this universe, the only logical conclusion is that people are eating Pokémon.
Why is This Disturbing Pokémon Fans?
All signs indicate that humans eat Pokémon. However, since they’re essentially animals, why is this so disturbing for fans? One strong possibility is that, as the Pokémon franchise has continued, gruesome violence has become less widespread. While Pokémon Adventures shows Pokémon being sliced apart, we rarely see that in more modern Pokémon media.
Part of this has to do with all collective Pokémon media emphasizing the love and affection between trainers and their monsters. The more humanized Pokémon become, the harder it is to imagine eating them. For example, eating a pig is far easier if you imagine pigs as livestock. However, you wouldn’t eat your pet pig unless under dire circumstances, and even then the experience would likely be traumatic.
The more humanized a creature becomes, the harder it is to consider eating it. Even though we eat plenty of animals on a regular basis, modern Pokémon are rendered too affectionate to consider eating or chopping up. This is in part what makes that video so disturbing for so many. Even though this absolutely is something that could exist in the canon Pokémon universe, that doesn’t mean everyone would want to watch it… even if it probably does happen.
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