The power of routine is truly crazy. The way it takes hold of our brains and ingrains itself into our memory, like etching a song into vinyl, and played day in and day out. I can still remember waking up every morning before school. My mom yelling at me, ignoring my alarm clock, getting sprayed in the face with a water bottle by said yelling mom, and finally plopping down in my parents room to watch cartoons before school while she fixed breakfast. The routine was always the same, but the cartoons over the years would change. And while many of them captured my attention and affection over the years, like Sailor Moon, Ronin Warriors, and Batman, none captured my imagination quite like Pokemon. It is because of the power of routine and the bewitched state that Pokemon had me under that I am able to vividly recall all of my emotions from this time in my life, more so than any other set of emotional memories. It’s also because of how deeply I felt these emotions that I know I can never reach those highs ever again. 

A story of a boy leaving home to become an expert monster trainer amongst a world of monster enthusiasts of all kinds and ages. While I had fallen deeply into other worlds before, Pokemon grabbed me so deeply that at a certain point, I believed that it was entirely possible for me to have the same kind of adventure in the real world. And when that day never came, when I was no longer under its spell, I looked back and realized that I would never be able to fall that deeply ever again. This all started just as innocently as it sounds. I tried to research this a little bit, but it’s a little hard to understand exactly how the rights to this show were sold and placed into certain markets. I don’t know how early in the timeline of Pokemon the show aired versus when the game came out, but my memory has it set in the following order. The show was released a whole year or so before the game became a hit. For some time, it seemed like no other kid at school was even aware of it. It wasn’t even a weekly Saturday morning cartoon at the time, which was the prime-time slot for new cartoons. Normally, a popular cartoon would air all its episodes once a week for an entire season before going into morning syndication. And while Pokemon had obviously become a hit in Japan, it hadn’t made a splash yet in America. Maybe it was to drum up business or maybe they just weren’t sure it would sell, but in either case, it filled up the local 6 AM slot on a cheap cable channel. I always had just enough time to watch an entire episode before being brought back down to earth and sent to school. 

Looking back on it, what was even more surprising is that I must have caught the very first airing of the show. I wasn’t expecting to see something new that morning, and it was maybe October or November, mid-season for television. In a sense, it felt totally random. And yet, there it was, the very first episode of Pokemon. A week went by and still no one was talking about it at all, which kind of made sense because there were no toys and no games for it at this point. I felt like I was a host for the virus; passing along the fever to any kid who would listen. The craziest thing of all was trying to explain the show. It starts off with this call to become the very best, to search the world for monsters and capture every single one of them and become their best friend. I can see myself telling kids at school about Ash’s opening journey and how he almost dies saving a mouse that can shoot electricity. It’s actually a pretty wild and exciting opening episode; a perfect hook.

Less than a year later, it would become one of the biggest properties in the world and I couldn’t have been happier. The show graduated from weekdays to weekends, which means it had to re-premier to a broader audience. This meant they had to start all over again, and because tons of kids at school were not watching it before, I got to feel like a know-it-all, passing out future episode details whetting the appetite of newcomers. And then the real bomb dropped when the game was released. It consumed everyone I knew for the remainder of the middle school year. I was deep in the hole by this point. I started to believe somehow that life would turn out this way. That just beyond my little world was an actual adventure that I would have as soon as school let out for summer. It’s not that I believed in Pokemon, but rather the promise of adventure. Of walking from town to town or something. It was purely a feeling without logic. It had no shape or form. It was just the belief that something exciting was right over the horizon. As time passed, this nagging feeling was dragging me down. Reality was creeping into my fantasy and slowly the real world came into focus as I crossed over the horizon. There would be no grand adventure, not like the one Ash, Misty, and Brock would have. 

The dullness of my routine would become the prevailing feeling. The reality that it would simply be getting up and going to school for the foreseeable future. The hope of becoming a Pokemon Trainer, Power Ranger, Batman, friends with the Ninja Turtles, Sailor Scout or the boyfriend of a Sailor Scout were all put to bed. Pokemon was my last childhood dream. It was the deepest maybe because it was the last. Because I was growing into a full person. It didn’t help that over the years Pokemon kept growing in size without any depth. New designs that didn’t seem to have the same spark as the original. Creating 151 unique monsters was already pushing it. Now it looks kind of like it’s mocking all the emotion I put into it. A clown act. A Mr. Mime dancing on the grave of my childhood. Any other childhood property I can return to with some sense of nostalgia or gusto, but Pokemon hurts the most. It was easy to get into and easy to play, it inspired me at times, and I made friends because of it. I even committed crimes in pursuit of greatness because of it (sorry I stole your Pokemon cards buddy). 

In the end, Pokemon buried my childhood and itself along with it. The feeling it gave me is unreachable. In one way, maybe it was a worthy sacrifice. After all, it is still around today. It’s not really dead, it’s just dead to me. It died so that Sailor Moon and Batman could live. There is a part of me that says that I just grew out of it, but if that were true, I would have grown out of all the other childhood properties. I still feel electricity when I turn on the original Ninja Turtles film, or when I pop in Star Wars. When I play the original Legend of Zelda, I can see the world in my imagination, but when I boot up Pokemon Red or Blue, the lush fields and trails I used to see in my mind are replaced with flat beeps and boops. I can’t hear the unique sounds of each monster anymore. I can’t even say I have a favorite. Every year I forget a few more of them. But still, like groves in vinyl, I can still remember the rote motion of getting up for school, plopping on my mom’s bed, and falling deeply into the world of Pokemon for 30 dream-like minutes where the only future in my head was an adventure just over the horizon.