I love anime, and for some reason purple haired girls in anime are unnecessarily sexy. Was that a tangent? No, not really, because this is about anime and more specifically the infamous Pokemon. Let's forget about the popularity of the little pocket monsters and look past the trading card phenomenon and the long running cartoon and the amazing video games, and we can see what Pokemon is really about: SLAVERY!

Yep, we're not going to talk about the racial stereotypes and blackface:
Let's forget about the fact that the show is responsible for thousands of seizures:

Let's look past the transgenders:

We can even look beyond the support of the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms:

And we're not even going to touch the topic of September 11th insensitivity (this one isn't so harsh as the others; the episodes were made before the event even occurred):

Nope, we're going to focus on the slavery aspects and how pikachu is the token black guy.

Yeah... creepy. In any case, let's get into it.

Don't say I don't like Pokemon; as a franchise I think it's genius. Take something as simple as capturing monsters and using them to do your bidding and then create more than 300 types of creatures you can capture and use to do your bidding and what do you have? A basic concept. Expand on it a bit and you have methods for capturing them and various locales reminiscent of the land they originated at. Now you have a stronger concept. Lastly you add the financial backing of a large company and television, movie, and video game presence and there you have a phenomenon. Isn't it great? When Pokemon started I was one of those kids that loved it too, one of those "I wanna go see the Pokemon movie!" kids that was visibly disappointed when he didn't get his promo card. I was one of those kids that collected the cards but didn't have a clue how to play the game. I was one of those kids that begged his parents day in and day out for a Game Boy just so I could play the game. In a way the game is the main reason I still like the franchise; when they finally make a console version of it I'll be pretty happy. In any case, it's a genius creation, and because of all the glitz and glamor of it the underlying (and I might be reading too much into this, sue me) themes of it can be tossed aside rather calmly.

I mentioned the aforementioned elements because I notice them now as opposed to when I first watched the episodes, those I remember at least. Some of them I waited a little while to see because they were banned in the USA. When I went back to watch them I was just happy to see the shows, didn't really take into consideration the more adult elements of it all. Then again, as I grew up I started to think just a bit more adult as well, both positively and negatively. I noticed the budding love and/or sexual tension between Ash and Misty but I was also wondering how she would have looked after... er... "development"... yeah, I'm assuming something like this:
I don't know, that's just me. You have to remember that this was and is a children anime, so you can't think or say things like that on the regular. Even so, and I'll admit it now, I don't understand why they gave all the females on this program breasts except for Misty. Moving away from the dirty thoughts, Pokemon is a concept based around catching and using creatures, all for the purpose of self gratification and sloth. The parallels can be drawn very easily between this and slavery, but there are so many elements thrown within to mask this to a degree. Take the capturing method first of all: the pokeball:
Notice how Wario is attempting to capture this pikachu. He's throwing a ball at him in hopes of capturing him and keeping him captive, and why? To use him. Much like the cubicle and the eternal damnation of Drew Carey's middle management existence, the pokeball is used to control and keep organized the creatures caught. They are then carried around or put into storage, confined to a box made by "Bill" and kept there until the master - "trainer" - lets them out.

Pokemon are used for battle purposes and to work. Some people simply play with pokemon, warranting a strange form of bestiality, but I wonder just why in the hell you need to literally capture a creature to play with it. That's cruelty.

The trainers are mirrors of slave masters. They capture these creatures and use them to their bidding, deciding whether or not to let them go eventually if they please. Ash, the main character of the anime, has, to the best of my knowledge, released two slaves, I mean pokemon: a pidgeot(to) and a butterfree. When he embarked on a new adventure he simply brought along pikachu (getting to him in a minute) and put the others in storage. No, that's cruelty.

Pikachu... the token black guy. Pikachu is the benchmark for the token character, the one exception to the rule of the usual pokemon by being the "free" pokemon that follows his master like a loyal "house nigga" and defends him from most dangers. Alternatively, he displays a mind of his own and doesn't always bend to Ash's will, but 9 times out of 10 he will. Ash's other pokemon are captives and they stay in their balls until called out, at least until Ash gets rid of them (correction: he actually let go of a lot of pokemon) or they get out of control. Example: Charmander, who was obedient and turned to Charmeleon, who was lazy and only turned obedient to immediately cross the final threshold into becoming the almighty Charizard... who didn't give a shit what Ash had to say and fought on his own terms. And lost. Often. Unless he listened to Ash. I found that to be funny: a rebellious pokemon doing his own thing and only succeeding when listening to his master? Oh my, that's not strange at all! Bastards...
When you consider it, looking past the simple animal cruelty, a lot of the pokemon are racial stereotypes within themselves. Let's look at some of those. First off: Snorlax
Fat, lazy, useless... with the exception of when he's awake. That way he can stand up for two seconds and fall asleep again, falling on the enemy. He's a waste of space and he can't even do one sit up, and I find it crazy that he resembles a new character on primetime:
Next victim: Psyduck!
The mentally retarded and overweight duck that can't remember how to do anything but be stupid! For shame! Even his clone was a moron! Even capturing this thing was a mistake! What more is there to say?

I'm going slightly off topic but maybe that's for the best. Going any deeper into this topic is like forbidden territory: you want to delve into it but you know that you shouldn't. Too often in this show there is an element of the "happy slave" that joyfully follows the words and actions of his master, and any sort of rebellion is met by failure. I've always wondered why humans weren't capable of being captured by pokeballs, but that would just open up the door to dirty thoughts (I know I wish I could have captured Mya in a pokeball, insert sexual innuendo here) and we can't have that on a kid's show... can we? I'm DiZ: I rant about it so you don't have to. Lastly, to remind you of the evil of Pokemon: