Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Deoxyribonucleic acid-mon?



Many video games have spawned from all sorts of ideas but only one has a strange controversial concept that remains untouched by this class. Pokemon. Most people recognize Pokemon as that one old show for kids where people catch animal-like creatures known as Pokemon which possess various superpowers. As ridiculous as the idea sounds both the show and video game have become known worldwide by both kids and adults. As a kid growing up with Pokemon I slowly watched the show grow into the multi-billion dollar corporation it's become. As I grew up I also looked back on the older episodes from the first season and saw that Pokemon was more than just a kid's show, often times containing content that I usually overlooked until just recently. A few episodes would involve people who had a tough childhood. The character Brock grew up as taking care of his nine younger siblings without his parents. The character Misty grows up with an inferiority complex when compared to her three other sisters. Many times Pokemon has close ties to the enviornment as well. Many episodes will envolve the fictional crime syndicate, Team Rocket commiting many forms of abuse towards Pokemon including destruction of habitat.

Moving aside from this idea I realized that even the names of the Pokemon have clever name puns that I'm pretty sure most 5-year olds wouldn't figure out. The Pokemon Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan are both obvious parodyies of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan. See the resemblance? Despite all the clever pop-culture references Pokemon once had, it seems that the cartoon industry once again fanned it's greedy wings and now Pokemon is yet another half-baked show that, although enjoyed by kids, contains little to no areas of discussion-worthy topics it once had.

Recently I was riding in a car with a few friends to get some pizza when one of my older friend's son coughed and in response my friend simply said "Koffing!" This was a reference to an original Pokemon who's name was Koffing (pronounced coughing). We soon got into the discussion of all pokemon with name puns and when I said DNA my friend responded by saying "Deoxyribonucleic acid... Deoxys!" Of all the Pokemon name puns before hearing this I never really put any thought into that name but as the more I thought about it the more I realized that Deoxys was a very clever name pun of DNA. This is seen evident by the shape of his arms in the movies and games.Diagram of DNA and Deoxys.

As you can see Deoxys has spiraling arms not unlike that of most DNA structures. Also in the Show Deoxys was described as a virus that mutated. This could be relating to the fact the DNA is on a microscopic level just as Deoxys once was at the beginning of it's lifespan. Now in my opinion I don't think Most kids know what DNA is and if they do they certainly can't memorize what it stands for (I know I can't). So with all that said I think it's safe to say that Pokemon will be remembered as more than just a mindless kids show.

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