Thursday, November 21, 2024

YouTube Pokémon Highlights: Even More Pokémon Parkour

Recently, I had covered "parkour with Pokémon" as one of the topics I meant to cover a long time ago but got delayed to the present. It also spawned a "YouTube Pokémon Highlight", as the topic was actually based on a few videos from that video sharing site. As it turns out, the world of this topic is a bit of a broad one, and I found that now it's worthy of spawning another one of these highlights based on some other videos related to the topic, a few of which were also incidentally found as I covered the topic initially.

One of these other videos is by Kuma Films, which features the traceur (parkour athlete) of Todd Robins cast as Pikachu, similar to the casting of Calen Chan in the other videos I initially covered. Unlike them, this video has less of a story to it and more of an impressionist feeling of Pikachu running across various environments - specifically around Taiwan and some rough terrain, as the setting of the video. Interestingly, this video was posted 11 years ago in 2013, which was three years prior to the release and boom of Pokémon Go, making the video a practical "forerunner" of others that came after it. It's still a neat video that is gripping of the "running Pikachu" concept, presenting it in an almost natural fashion.

Speaking of Pokémon Go, UrbanAmadei created a parkour video based on the viewpoint of a Trainer chasing a Pikachu, which further affirms this viewpoint and approach for bringing together Pokémon and parkour. The video was shot in a park in Berlin in 2019, which places it three years after the game's release and boom, yet still being relevant to its perspective. The video actually spawned a sequel one year later, which was incidentally during the big "downturn" of the world; further, it has a more relevant tie to the game, as it was used to promote the global Go Fest edition of that year. In either case, the Trainer was depicted as unsuccessful in the capture of Pikachu, definitely making it a different take.

Then, there was a video by Nick Pro, which is similar in concept to the previous one. This also takes the viewpoint of a Trainer running across various kinds of terrain (including the indoor setting of a house), encountering random Pokémon and catching them along the way. It's another video from just after the release of Pokémon Go - specifically, 2018 - but it still serves well to highlight the game in addition to parkour; in fact, the concept is what I would call "semi-AR" due to the way the Pokémon appear in the video and were caught by the Trainer... except for one, for which one will just have to watch the video in order to find out which one that is. The dynamics of the game and parkour are still well-represented.

Evidently, there is something about Pokémon and parkour that go together very well: they can be quite action-oriented for all the objectives that they might present and account for to be achieved. Some of them could also be realized at the same time, if all the parkour videos I've highlighted (here and previously) are of any indication. There will always be Trainers and Pokémon species going through environments - quite possibly in styles that evoke parkour - and that might just be worthy for further encapsulation in videos.

Six years ago: Traveling All the World

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