Pokémon Primer?

As I was deciding what I should write about for today's post, a question popped into my mind. The question is: "how would I introduce Pokémon to someone who may not have been fully introduced to it?" It's a good question, since Pokémon by now has been around for a good long time, and within that time there would be many people whose exposure to Pokémon vary to different degrees. It also becomes a good one to answer, and thus I immediately made it the topic of today's post.

The answer to this question seems to depend on a couple of factors. One of them is the factor of age, whether the people are younger than Pokémon, about the same age, or older. The second factor is whether they are receptive to playing games, particularly to a great extent, even "hardcore". The combination of these two factors will certainly result in people with different characteristics, and therefore the ways to approach them will also surely surely be different. They would necessitate different ways of introduction to Pokémon, or in other words different kinds of a "primer" to it. 

Those who are younger or about the same age as Pokémon should have no trouble playing games, so they might be able to just jump in and play, particularly the main series games; they ought to be introduced with them if possible, if not something simpler like Pokémon Go. For those who are really young or not as game-aware, the anime or further adaptations of that may serve to be better introductions of at least the very basic things about Pokémon. It may be that their gaming instincts are not yet attuned and they need another way to get into Pokémon, and such ways might make this viable.

As for those older than Pokémon, the situation might be more complex. If they are already seasoned gamers, grasping the basics of the main series games might not be hard and thus can serve as a good introduction. If not, and/or they are older, it might serve them well to play simpler games, again like Pokémon Go - a few of my raid fellows are in fact older and can be considered to fall into this category. Those who are even older might not even care further about games, but it might be possible to introduce Pokémon through the power of stories, as one of my friends did with something else.

The question that ran across my mind is one that seems worthy enough to be answered, and I've given my take above. What's clear is that the presence of Pokémon is a lengthy one and there will always be people who are interested but perhaps don't know where to start, or those whose interests haven't been kindled. There's a good thing in allowing people to be receptive of Pokémon through its various guises, and that should hopefully be the case for as long as Pokémon fans like me continue to exist.

One year ago: Picking Battles

Two years ago: Cosplay Cards

Three years ago: Ghosty and Me