A Look at Pokémon’s Gym Leaders (Kanto-Sinnoh)

Comments · 77

• PA

  @pandorapanini6036 · 10 months ago

  Misty's "sneakers" can probably be assumed to be water shoes/wet shoes, especially since they do look fairly different from the more-traditional sneakers on other Gen 1 characters.

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• AM

  @Amberwolf23 · 10 months ago

  Actually in the pokemon sun and moon series during the epsiode the group have a field trip to Kanto Brock goes shirtless during a battle with Kiawe. He rips it off to reveal he has a mega stone on a necklace

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• AD

  @adrian.y8563 · 10 months ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEqEThPyLNk&amp;t=2256">37:36</a> <br>As someone who speaks Mandarin and lives in a Chinese-speaking country, I can somewhat explain this. <br>Hoenn is based on Kyushu and Okinawa. Okinawa was actually not a part of Japan; it was an independent nation that had close ties to China. It was not until WW2 that the Japanese Empire forced China to write an unfair treaty that recognised Okinawa as a part of Japan. Genetically speaking, Okinawans are more closely tied to the Chinese than the Japanese, which is also why, to this day, Okinawans will prefer that you call them that instead of calling them Japanese. <br>Kyushu was also the earliest places in Japanese history to open up and trade with foreigners like the Chinese and the Dutch, so a lot of foreign influences was more evident in those regions. Mossdeep city is based on Nagasaki, which is exactly the first port to open up.<br>In Chinese religion and mythology, souls and psychic powers have been prevalent for a long time. The whole psychic twin trope originated in China.

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• DR

  @Dr.Barber · 10 months ago

  I think Paldea gives us a decent look at what the League and role of Gym Leaders is like. It&apos;s more or less A Job, often not their only one, but a job. Because we see from various examples like Norman or Larry that you don&apos;t become a Gym Leader just because you&apos;re the best in town. Norman moves his family form Johto to Hoenn to pursue a career as the Petalburg Gym Leader and Larry runs double duty as a Gym Leader and E4 member. We even see from later in S/V that Gym Leaders have to pass like quarterly exams to maintain their positions as gym leaders and there&apos;s been a few instances of handing off gyms from one person to another. <br><br>I think being the most talented trainer in town encourages them to help out where Battling can be helpful, but it seems like they become pillars of the community because of how popular and important a gym can be along with whatever their other roles in town are whether it be running a mine or teaching at a school.

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• FO

  @FourLetterLWord · 10 months ago (edited)

  It doesn&apos;t play into many of the early gym leaders but all of the gym leaders over the years(except Blue and Cheren) are originally named after flowers/fruits/plants in Japanese, and some later designs, especially redesigns of older characters, do play off that pretty explcitly either visually or thematically or both. &nbsp;But it&apos;s knda hard to appreciate the design work without acknowledging one of the main things the designs hinge on.

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• IA

  @IAmTiredOwO · 10 months ago

  I&apos;m suprised you didn&apos;t mention the thing about Bugsy being mistaken as female often. Even in the code of the gen 2 games, Bugsy is falsely flagged as a female character.

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• MO

  @MoonlitSlime · 6 months ago

  The change in design philosophy for gym leaders is so interesting to me. The older, subdued designs make them look more like people while the updated designs often make them more like characters. Neither one is better per se, but they go for different things and I think that&apos;s neat!

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• GI

  @giboit. · 10 months ago (edited)

  Fun fact: Erika is incredibly rich. She’s the daughter of the CEO of Silph Co, the biggest corporation in the Kanto region, and the pocket monster manga even states outright that she’s the daughter and heiress of the company’s president. There&apos;s even a pokemon card Erika’s maids that also makes her wealth very clear.<br><br>She also has geisha training, which explains her kimono, and she’s both a practitioner and a teacher of ikebana, the traditional Japanese art of flower arrangement. It’s heavily implied she left geisha training to become a gym leader because she was far stronger than the other kimono girls and likely because of her narcolepsy.<br><br>In the games, her gym leader title in Japanese describes her as &quot;an ojou who loves nature&quot;. Ojou refers to a traditional and respected high class girl, and it often overlaps with the idea of a yamato nadeshiko, the ideal Japanese woman. That image includes traits like having average height, being relatively thin, pale skin, dark hair, traditional clothing, and skill in traditional arts like geisha training and ikebana, all of which fit Erika perfectly.<br><br>She’s portrayed the same way in the pokemon adventures manga, the pocket monster manga, the card game, and the anime, where she’s repeatedly shown performing traditional flower arrangements. So basically across every medium, she’s consistently depicted as a wealthy, traditionally raised girl with a strong connection to classical Japanese arts. Which is very cool and makes her easily the most wealthy of the Kanto gym leaders.

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• KS

  @KStarPR · 10 months ago (edited)

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEqEThPyLNk&amp;t=124">2:04</a> Brock&apos;s shirtless design is actually referenced in Pokémon Masters. I believe when his Pokémon uses a sync move, he has a short animation of his shirt bursting off or something like that.<br><br>And isn&apos;t Misty&apos;s HGSS hairstyle also in Gen 2?

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• GU

  @guilhermefarias5255 · 4 months ago

  Just an addition, Whitney not only introduces you to the pokeathlon, but she appears as an opponent on the master rank

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• AR

  @arill_b_r · 10 months ago

  Heyyyy new avatar. It&apos;s so cute! Anyway... Thank you for covering gym leaders!! Despite having relatively minor roles, especially in earlier gens, they can be some of my favourites <br> <br>It&apos;s really neat to see the way the designs for those early gym leaders evolved. And just taking a look at their designs, concepts and roles in general is very interesting <br> <br>I really liked the intermission to talk about the gym leader role from a lore perspective! I&apos;ve been fascinated by how the league systems work in the Pokemon world for a while and I love your take on it!

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• BL

  @Blanka7913 · 10 months ago

  Yooo YES! 51 min long lets go i can watch the first half for breakfast and the other half for lunch. I cant wait!

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