POKÉ WORLD WAR
Thursday
The following has been transcribed by the Pokémon Channel Radio Station crew in order to archive the World War Week Special.
VENETIA: Hi, everybody! This is your host, DJ Venetia, and you're listening to another episode of Word War Week! Before we start today's interview, I would like to share a little research of mine. Yesterday, Leopold said their truck exploded near Diglett's Cave. That's the same place Surge made a trap with a voltorb, according to Mr. Tucker, right? I found out that, after the war ended, Lt. Surge hired a specialized team to unbury those voltorbs. It turns out one was still there. Since he buried three and one exploded on the Japanese troops and the other was rescued by him, we have a missing voltorb, right? So the explosion that pushed Leopold's truck out of the road could very well be one of Surge's traps! We discovered brand-new information about the war! Yay! Now, without further ado, I would like to introduce this week's guest. He was already a major figure in the pokémon world during the war and has a show at this very radio station. You probably guessed already, right? This week's guest is no other than my good old friend Professor Oak! Old in a good way!
OAK: (Laughs).
VENETIA: Welcome, professor!
OAK: Hello there! Thank you for inviting me! It's a pleasure to be on your show! First, What's your name?
VENETIA: What?
OAK: What's your name?
VENETIA: (Brief silence). Professor, it's me, Venetia. We've been working together for years!
OAK: Ah! Sorry, Venetia. l brought you a present, but I need to set it up first. For official reasons I would need to ask your name even if we knew each other for all our lives. "Venetia" has seven characters, how convenient. Otherwise you'd have to abbreviate.
VENETIA: Oh! A gift? What is it? Let me see!
OAK: Here. Your own HANDY505, the very first Pokédex model ever created!
VENETIA: Wow! That's awesome!
OAK: You're lucky I didn't bring some newer model, otherwise I would have to ask you if you're a boy or a girl! (Laughs). Did you like it?
VENETIA: I loved it!
OAK: Wonderful!
VENETIA: I wish you guys at home could see it. It's bright red and It has this retro look about it. Thank you very much, professor!
OAK: You're welcome, Venetia. Congratulations on hosting the show. You're doing great.
VENETIA: Thank you! Have you been listening?
OAK: Of course! Every episode.
VENETIA: I'm so glad! Ok, now, to the interview!
OAK: Let's go!
VENETIA: Professor Oak, assuming some of our listeners lived all their lives inside Dark Cave and never heard about you, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
OAK: My name is Samuel Oak and I'm a Pokémon Professor. Today I'm responsible for Kanto's main research lab and I co-host a radio program called Professor Oak's Pokémon Talk. I was once a popular pokémon trainer, but I'm better known for inventing the Pokédex.
VENETIA: Now, I want to focus the show on the wartime, but can you tell us just a little bit about your phase as a pokémon trainer? Some of our younger audience might not be familiar with it.
OAK: Like most people that work with pokémon, my passion started when I was a child with a pet...
VENETIA: Which pet? Sorry for interrupting you.
OAK: I had a growlithe.
VENETIA: Very popular pet in Kanto, I heard.
OAK: It is. On my tenth birthday I finally became a trainer. I won Kanto's eight badges by the time I was thirteen and by the age of fifteen I beat the Elite Four.
VENETIA: Impressive. What was your team at the time? Wait! Let's see if I can remember! Hm... A taurus, a gyarados, an exeggutor... How many were in your team?
OAK: Four.
VENETIA: I can't remember the last one.
OAK: It was my old buddy, that had already evolved into an arcanine.
VENETIA: Right! I remember now!
OAK: How do you know all this stuff?
VENETIA: I listen to a lot of records of classic fights. Perks of working at theTower. But why only four pokémon? I remember not understanding this while listening. The Indigo League's rules already allowed six pokémon, right?
OAK: Yes. I had lots of pokémon, but I liked to train only a few at a time. That way I could really focus on them. It used to work.
VENETIA: Maybe the trainer's blood runs in the family. You grandson was Kanto's Elite Four's champion for some time, right?
OAK: Yes, he was. For a brief time.
VENETIA: How's he doing?
OAK: He's doing great. Studying in Kalos.
VENETIA: What's his name?
OAK: He's name is... (Brief silence) Er-hem... Let's... Just...
VENETIA: Ok, moving on... Where were you during the war?
OAK: Hm... I spent most of the wartime in my lab, in Pallet Town, studying and helping the government as best as I could. After the attacks that devastated the town and almost killed me, I exiled myself to a place called Pokémon Island, where I built a new lab.
VENETIA: Pokémon Island? Never heard about it.
OAK: No wonder. It's a small, little-known, volcanic island near Kanto. It was once inhabited by humans, but it's a nature reserve today. More than fifty kinds of pokémon live there, in the wild.
VENETIA: It seems like such a dreamy place.
OAK: It is. Excellent place to study the creatures in their natural habitat! It has a river, a volcano, beaches... As part of the Pokémon Data Recovery Program I've organized a photographic expedition through the island. It was wonderful! I'll show you some pictures another time.
VENETIA: I would love to see them. Now, you made all kinds of contributions after the war, but you were especially important on the technology field. Can you tell us a bit about this aspect of the post-war?
OAK: The pokéball had changed the world. To transform a living creature into a computer's code. Can you imagine how revolutionary this was?
VENETIA: It must have been crazy. How does this mechanism work?
OAK: Well, Venetia, I can't tell you much about technology per se. Sorry. I can talk about how it changed our lives, though. People think I'm a computer geek, but they couldn't be more wrong. My contributions were idealistic. The Pokédex, for example, I conceptualized the device, but I wouldn't be able to produce it without a team of young geniuses working with me. You were very sweet to say, in the first episode, that I always come to Goldenrod to record the show so I can have company, but the truth is I couldn't do it on my own. I'm bad with technology. I always think I will break everything. (Laughs).
VENETIA: (Laughs).
OAK: I like technology, but I grew up studying pokémon and human relationship and that's what I'm passionate about. For your generation, pokémon and technology are interconnected, but not for mine.
VENETIA: Ok. Let's back up a little bit. You mentioned young geniuses. Tell us about them.
OAK: During the war, a group of kids went to Kanto's Lab to show me their new invention: a way to transfer the code of a pokémon captured by a pokéball to a personal computer. According to them, this would allow anyone to withdraw their pokémon and even trade the creatures among themselves from anywhere in the world.
VENETIA: Promising.
OAK: The problem is that they showed up during the time I was exiled. Professor Elm was managing the reconstruction of Kanto's Lab, but they refused to show their invention to anyone but me.
VENETIA: Ok.
OAK: Later, working at the lab again, I read all the reports about the time I was away. That's when I found out about them. But I was so busy at the time that there was nothing I could do.
VENETIA: So, how did you meet them?
OAK: A couple of months before the war ended, a box from Silph Company arrived at the lab's door. They were expecting us to do a report on a new product they wanted to commercialize. It was a box that could fit a pokéball and had a compact disk socket. It was a prototype of a TM Case. They sent us four or five disks too, so we could test it. We weren't sure how to deal with it because the instructions came in a very technical pamphlet. According to it, the pokémon would learn moves automatically. I couldn't understand how was that possible. We were afraid we would hurt the pokémon, or something. No assistant of mine seemed confident enough about how to deal with that.
VENETIA: Today TMs and HMs seem like such trivial concepts, but I can imagine how confusing it was back them. So, what did you do?
OAK: I called for the kids! If they came I would be able to check out their invention, and maybe they could give us a little hand with that weird box. We managed to track them and brought them to Pallet Town.
VENETIA: Who were they?
OAK: A bunch of youngster. I'm sure you heard about most of them. The one that stood out was Bill, always acting like the leader. The same Bill you're thinking of. The poké maniac! He and Cassius, a young boy from Kalos, seemed very close. They both dressed and acted like rebels, but you could see it was just a phase.
VENETIA: And they helped you with the TM Case?
OAK: Yes. With their help, my team finally mastered that technology and was able to make a report about TMs. We classified them as safe. In a matter of days the armies of every allied country were using pokémon with Surf, Fly and several other strong attacks that could be taught with TMs, while Team Smoke counted only with moves naturally learned by their pokémon.
VENETIA: So this one report was very important to ending the war, right?.
OAK: Oh! I don't think the government approved the TMs based solely on our opinion, but I like to think that we contributed to it.
VENETIA: What about the kid's invention? Did it work?
OAK: Ah! It worked very well! They brought their own computer to the lab to show me what they were doing. One of them, a girl named Brigette, was using it to communicate with her little sister in Hoenn. I had never seen anything like that! A server, home-made by kids, was functional enough to trade information between two different regions? So, right in front of me, she traded her skitty with her sister's zigzagoon, used one of the sample TMs to teach him a new move and traded back. Outstanding! Those kids had not only built a private computer network, independent from the destroyed servers in Unova, but were doing things with it I couldn't even imagine were possible! That's the origin of the several Pokémon Storage Systems across the regions.
VENETIA: I didn't know the details of that story! Those kids are so brilliant! I can't even imagine how would it be like to have such intellect in such a young age!
OAK: They were excellent! I saw their idea as safety device. Keeping all those pokémon and pokémon data stored in several independent systems, uncentralized, protected by different people, but, maybe, in the future, interconnected, somehow.
VENETIA: That could stop a future loss of data like the one that had just happened, right? How did you show their idea to the world?
OAK: I had my chance at one of the League of the Nations meetings. I got to...
VENETIA: Wait. Can you tell us a little bit about the context of these meetings?
OAK: Sure! After the war ended, a peace conference happened in Lumiose City... Have you ever been to Lumiose City, Venetia?
VENETIA: Yes, I have! It's so wonderful! One of the most beautiful places I've ever been to!
OAK: Well, someone agrees with you. Someone with the power to decide who will live and who will die during the war. Even though Team Smoke occupied the city at some point, Lumiose City was never bombed. Since it was one of the few functional capitals after the war, it hosted this big meeting called Lumiose City Peace Conference. There, a group called League of the Nations, composed of world leaders, scientists and other influential groups, was created. Their goal was to achieve world peace and security. Several meetings happened in their headquarters, in Castelia. Of course, pokémon were a recurrent subject there. And the use of pokémon at wars was very discussed. Was it ethical? Should it be banned? What other choices did we have?
VENETIA: Do you think it's ethical?
OAK: What? Of course not!
VENETIA: So you supported the idea that pokémon should be banned from wars?
OAK: No, I didn't.
VENETIA: Why?
OAK: I hate seeing pokémon fighting at wars, of course, but.…Is there something you like to see fighting in the war?
VENETIA: (Silence)
OAK: I mean, do you like to see humans fighting in the war?
VENETIA: No, but...
OAK: So, you think humans should be banned from wars too?
VENETIA: Well, I mean, if there was a way... this doesn't really make sense... What's your point?
OAK: My point is that war is always bad. It's always a tragedy, doesn't matter who is fighting. We should worry about not making any more wars instead of worrying about how they are fought.
VENETIA: But don't you think it's extra cruelty making pokémon fight for us?
OAK: Do you think regular pokémon battles shouldn't exist? They're fighting for us all the same. Don't you think it's kind of contradictory to be against pokémon in wars but in favor of pokémon battles?
VENETIA: It's different! Pokémon battle all the time in the wild! That's how they are! Making war isn't their nature! Nobody would consider abolishing pokémon battles!
OAK: Well, actually, that was very discussed in those meetings too. I was against abolishing it.
VENETIA: Really? But it's a completely different thing, in my opinion. In a normal battle, one trainer will even help the adversary pokémon if something bad happens. In a war there's no reason why one wouldn't kill the enemy pokémon. Pokémon at war is cruelty and should be illegal. Do you think using them for war is fair?
OAK: Of course I do not! But there is no justice in war! The concept of applying rules to war is contradictory. It makes us see bloodbath as something fair, something normal. It makes us accept war!
VENETIA: But war will always exist. We have to accept it. At least we could take our friends off the battlefield.
OAK: It will always exist, but it should never be banalized. Making wars less cruel could promote more wars. If banning pokémon from the battles could make war acceptable enough to create just one single extra war in history, then, in my opinion, it's a bad idea.
VENETIA: I get your point. I think you have very good arguments, but I just can't agree with it. Sorry.
OAK: That's ok, Venetia. This debate divided the whole pokémon community. It's not a simple issue.
VENETIA: Who was representing the pokémon community in these meetings?
OAK: The most important Pokémon Professors of the time, some hotshot trainers, the elite four of every regional pokémon league...
VENETIA: That's before they merge into one bigger league?
OAK: Yes, it was.
VENETIA: What else was discussed?
OAK: We talked about methods for promoting human and pokémon rights, fostering social and economic development, the revitalization of areas devastated by the war, the scientific reconstruction of all that lost knowledge, specially about pokémon, the punishment of all the war criminals, environmental protection, several plans for helping starving populations in case of any future conflict or natural disaster that could happen... This kind of stuff.
VENETIA: How do you get invited to a meeting like this?
OAK: I worked several times in the past with the great Professor Rowan, from Sinnoh. He was one of the main representatives of the pokémon scientific community in the conferences and invited me to speak due to my specialization in human and pokémon relationship.
VENETIA: Did you get nervous? Speaking in front of all those important people?
OAK: (Laughs). I did, of course. But I need to do a lot of speeches in my field, so that's a felling I learned to ignore.
VENETIA: What else did you stand for in your speech, besides not banning pokémon from war?
OAK: Although I spoke against the abolition of pokémon fights, I defended that even the occasional battle for sport should be regulated and have restricted laws. I voted in favor of making the pokémon leagues the managers of all the rules regarding pokémon battles. Hm, I made a few statements about the future of TMs. I also presented the idea of the uncentralized systems with the kid's invention and the Pokémon Data Recovery Program with the Pokédex!
VENETIA: How were these ideas perceived?
OAK: The Pokédex and Bill's invention didn't face a lot of opposition. Even though they were such new technologies. There were a lot of progressive people in the League of the Nations meetings. For example, Porygon was presented to the world in one of those presentations. The first digital pokémon, made by the inverse process: created as a computer code, transferred to a pokéball and then released into the real world.
VENETIA: That's cool! What about your other ideas?
OAK: They were a little harder to pass (laughs). A lot of people were against restricting the power of trainers. My old friend Agatha opposed this idea so much that she called me an impostor in the middle of my speech! (Laughs).
VENETIA: The Six+ law almost didn't pass, right?
OAK: Yeah, this one really divided the voters.
VENETIA: Today everyone thinks it's normal to carry only six pokémon, I mean, why would you need more? Right? But at that time people should've seen it as an oppressive law. I mean, why would the government control the number of pokémon I carry with me?
OAK: Yeah. But In my opinion this law actually permitted people to carry more pokémon with them than they would otherwise. Everyone saw what could be done with excessive power. Anyone would get scared if they saw a trainer with a lot of pokéballs in their belts. You have to remember that before pokéballs nobody walked around with several monsters. But pokéballs were a thing now, there was nothing we could do about it. Everyone wanted to have a pet. Every kid wanted to be a trainer and carry lots of pokémon with them. This law permitted people to carry a good number of them without being considered hostile.
VENETIA: We talked earlier about the rules of the League when you were young. They permitted six pokémon per battle. Does this rule have anything to do with this law?
OAK: Yes, of course. Most competitors were used to train six pokémon, anyway.
VENETIA: You were applying professional rules to the everyday battle.
OAK: Exactly. Same thing with the Four Moves. Most leagues made their trainers register four moves per pokémon, and that was all they could use in the official battles. Now, any pokémon linked to a pokéball can only know four moves at a time. Another professional battle rule being used as a security measure.
VENETIA: The speech you gave is famous for being very theatrical. Why did you choose to do it this way?
OAK: I wanted to persuade those people that the transfer system was a good idea. How could I do that if I couldn't explain the technology myself? And most people in the audience were older than me! I needed Bill there. We needed to be didactical. On stage, in front of everyone, we traded pokémon between ourselves, captured some wild caterpie, filled six pokéballs assigned to us and caught one extra caterpie. People saw the captured pokémon being automatically transferred to the PC, thanks to some modifications the boy made to the pokéballs. All of this was new to the audience.
VENETIA: Earlier you said you made some statements in this meeting about the future of TMs. What kind of statements were these?
OAK: We were dealing with an easy way to learn a strong move. We had to be careful. If people started to fabricate TMs at home, the danger would be even greater! But TMs were already part of our reality. It would be pointless to ban them. The solution, in my opinion, was to regularize them. If we had a reliable company making TMs, people would buy the official ones instead of some unstable false move. Once again I vowed that pokémon leagues should have the responsibility on the matter. Silph Company and any other firm could do the product, but the leagues would supervise every TM sold.
VENETIA: What about HMs? Why do they exist?
OAK: The war didn't show us only bad things about pokémon powers, it also reminded us all of how they can save people's lives. Trainers should have access to free moves that can be used in dangerous situations, like Fly and Surf. The leagues got their share on the TM sales as long as they produced and distributed this kind of special moves for free, through gym leaders and any other way they could. That's why it's illegal to sell them. And that's why since the beginning one HM disc can be used many times.
VENETIA: Why did TMs could be used only once, anyway?
OAK: Profit. Silph Company was the only one making them. They would sell more if the TMs could be used only once.
VENETIA: Really? But they openly said that? They didn't give an excuse?
OAK: They used to say that if TMs could be used more than once people would share theirs with friends and the company would not sell enough to keep it's business. They only changed this strategy years later, when the competition got permission to release their own TMs, challenging Silph Company's monopoly.
VENETIA: What about the Data Recovery Program? Each region was assigned with a topic of study, right?
OAK: Not every region, but every main professor. Elm, whom I referred to the job, would lead every research on pokémon breeding in Johto. I would lead the pokémon and humans relationship studies in Kanto. Cedric, in Unova, would lead a team focused on tracking the origins of pokémon. But the labs always help each other and the scientists often jump from one to another. Professor Rowan, for example, went to Kanto to work with me for some years.
VENETIA: And of course, your biggest contribution to the Program was... The Pokédex! Why do you think it was important to start recovering the world's lost knowledge with pokémon? I mean, I know Team Smoke's target were pokémon databases, but a lot of other important info was lost, right? Why did the device focus on pokémon?
OAK: Well, because I created it!
VENETIA: (Laughs).
OAK: It has been my field of work, I had the idea and I projected it. Of course I made it pokémon related. But we had to start somewhere, right? And my idea would work because thousands of youngsters wanted to become trainers now that it was so easy, with pokéball and all these new technologies. Pokémon was the thing everybody was talking about. Oh! And nothing else changed that much during those years. We needed to see new data about it because it was probably very different from the past.
VENETIA: What do you mean? Like, human-made pokémon?
OAK: Not only this. With the war people took pokémon from one place to the other. Soldiers caring their monsters from one country would die in another. The pokémon sometimes survived and started a population in a region that it was not natural from. The whole pokémon demographics changed. But yeah, some people would have started somewhere else. I created it, so I made it pokémon-related.
VENETIA: Well, now pokémon is one of the most studied fields around the world and almost every little city has a pokécenter or pokémart, even if it doesn't have other kinds of important services. I bet it's because of your initiative. The world breathes pokémon. I always say you're one of the men that shaped the world as it is today.
OAK: (Laughs). Wow, Venetia. Thank you!
VENETIA: But what exactly does a Pokédex do? We all know the trainers side, but how it helps the scientific community?
OAK: Every time someone points one at a catalogued creature, the Pokédex recognizes the pokémon, records it's size, weight, physical constitution, speed, these kinds of data. Based on them the pokémon level it's calculated. It also files the place where the creature was found. All this data go to a system Bill created for me. In a few months we built a huge pokémon database doing this. It's a collaborative encyclopedia.
VENETIA: So, what's the difference between the Pokédexes used today and this one I have in my hands?
OAK: Well, there are several small differences, but the main one is the quantity of registered pokémon. This one is a prototype, based in Kanto. It has 150 catalogued pokémon that could be found in the region. I mean, 149 pokémon natural from Kanto and Mewtwo, that I believe was still around there. Oh, and I secretly hoped someone would point one of these to a mew someday, so I inserted him before releasing the product. (Laughs). 151 pokémon.
VENETIA: That's great! But how did you convince people to use the device?
OAK: This Pokédex shows the trainer a brief explanation about the encountered creature. It also shows Its type, all those particular stats of the individual pokémon and the average size and weight that our lab is constantly calculating using this same information the user just sent us! This was already very helpful for the trainer, specially young ones. Oh! And to give the users an extra incentive, we promised prizes to everyone! A gift according to the number of different kinds of pokémon they pointed the Pokédex at.
VENETIA: Is this method of research still used?
OAK: Yes, these are the basis of the modern Pokédex, too.
VENETIA: This one in my hand is still working both ways? I mean, if I use it, will the data be sent to you, even today?
OAK: If you leave this interview and point this old Pokédex at some creature, Venetia, you will be contributing to science.
VENETIA: (Laughs). That's awesome! I love it even more now!
OAK: Good to know.
VENETIA: Professor, we are out of time. This has been a wonderful interview! I still can't accept the fact that you're against banning pokémon from war, so my final question to you is: what do you care about the most, humans or pokémon?
OAK: (Laughs). Polemic question, right? You're becoming a great DJ!
VENETIA: (Laughs).
OAK: Venetia, I spent my life studying pokémon and guarantee nobody in the world respects them more, or is more fascinated by them than me. I've seen their powers unleashed in full capability, used for good and bad, to heal and to hurt, to create and to destroy, and I can assure you: their powers are nothing compared to the power of the human mind. For me, humans will always come first.
VENETIA: Wow! That's the statement I want to close this interview with! But, if you want more Professor Oak, don't worry! Stay tuned for Professor Oak's Pokémon Talk, hosted by himself and DJ Mary that starts right now! Have a happy Thursday! See you tomorrow!
OAK: Thanks for having me! Bye!