I had a dream about posting a political entry today, but that fell through because I don't really have any insights that are current or relevant. So, here's a short story I wrote.
“Are you going to ask me how I sleep at night?” He asked. His voice sounded like an abused wife explaining a dry roast.
“Of course not, Mr. Tajiri,” I replied. I wonder it, but I dare not say it. I’d wager he has a noose hidden away somewhere in this ratty hotel room, just in case. “This is going to be very straight, just the facts, in your own words.”
He snorts in mirthless laughter. I’ve no doubt he’s heard it before, but I really have no desire to demonise him any more than the rest of the world has. The ashtray full of cigarette butts and the half-empty bottle of scotch tell me he’s not far from the end of his tether.
“Just start from the beginning.”
He sighs. A small wave of pity can’t help but wash over me as he starts to speak. “I wanted to make a game for my son to play. But you know that part. It was the marketing department at Nintendo who came up with the tag-line, but in the end it was my decision to push it the way we did. Gotta Catch ‘Em All. You have to catch them all. Just get it everywhere, get it stuck in kid’s heads.”
I scribble frantically. Of course I could have recorded this interview, but shorthand felt more appropriate. I don’t know why. Maybe I have the madness too, who can say? “So, there was every intention for the marketing to be subliminal, then?” I inquired.
“Of course not!” He replied at once, shocked. “I had no intention to mess with the kid’s heads, just to get them to buy our damn video game! It was a tag-line. Nothing more. It was meant to be Coke, Happy Meal and Pokémon.”
It’s very odd to talk to a man like Satoshi Tajiri. To the uninitiated observer, he just seems like a doddery old Japanese man. As much as he looks like a man that could be your favourite grandfather, it’s impossible to shake the sinking feeling that he’s really the single worst man in human history. Sometimes journalism deals you some very odd hands. I push on, “so, what happened next?”
His face falls. “We noticed the trend at the same time as everyone else. People think we had some tremendous insight that we just refused to share, but I assure you this wasn’t the case. Birth rates and reported STI incidents slowly climbing, and then it all comes out, a few worried kids tell their parents what was really going on.”
“And what was that?” I ask. “That kids all over the world...” He begins, before trailing off. He lights a cigarette and takes a rather heroic gulp from his glass of scotch before continuing. “That kids all over the world had been trying, literally going out of their way, to catch ‘em all. Well, it was a total disaster. Parents calling Pokémon the devil! It was just a videogame, nothing more, but the rumour was that we had brainwashed everyone born between 1989 and 1999, give or take. So, a decade of kids were having unprotected sex, getting pregnant, becoming sterile... it was awful.”
It was at this point I noticed just how slurred his speech had gotten. The steady intake of scotch will do that to you. I went to ask another question, but it proved to be unnecessary; he had gotten very chatty by this point.
“At first, we thought it would just pass, fads do that. Even at Nintendo, we didn’t expect Pokémon to last, but the plan was to make as much money as we possibly could from the project before moving on, which makes sense, right? I mean, it certainly was a PR nightmare.”
He drained the remnants of the brown liquor from the tumbler before refilling it. No ice, no water, just scotch. I tried not to resort to foot-in-the-door journalistic hounding, although the less rational part of my brain wanted to berate him and never stop. I exercised all the self control I could muster and pushed the interview further. “Did you try to do anything at all to stop it?”
He looked out of his window, to the grimy sunset glimmering behind high rise buildings just beyond the horizon. Whether her was searching for the right words or just taking in the dappled orange and grey palette, I couldn’t say. When he spoke it was barely more than a whisper.
“Donations to lots of charities, helping orphans, teen sex awareness...to be fair, a lot of it was just trying to save the company’s image. There was talk of funding research into cures for the more serious cases, but the accounting department vetoed that one, on account of it ‘not projecting enough profit to be worthwhile endeavour.’.”
“But it was your company, could you...” I began, but he cut me off. “In name only!” He said with an unusual mix of conviction and resignation. “When the TV show became a veritable printing press for money, I was ‘promoted’ to a powerless figurehead and the boardroom executives took over. As much as I wanted to do everything I possibly could to fix the problem I’d started, it was very much out of my hands by that point.”
I was in two minds as to what to make of this. On one hand, he really seemed like nothing more than a victim of fate’s cruel irony, trying to make sense of a mad world. Yet it’s very hard to shake off years of being told that he was single-handedly responsible for the downfall of mankind. I pressed on.
“This is where the reports get hazy; the stories don’t seem very consistent after the initial wave of infections.” Once again he stared out the window. The sunset had long since become a starless city night, the sickly glow of light pollution matted against the inky black of the sky. Prophetic? Who can say? “It’s almost science fiction,” he sighed. “No-one knew this kind of thing was even within the realm of possibility. For some reason, the viruses mutated, evolved if you will. They became far more potent and infectious. This new strain caused brain degeneration, but also increased violent tendencies and physical strength. The fundamentalists where calling it the end of days.
“So, the average age of the population plummets. The prior increases in birth-rates fed a population explosion, but they’re all sterile. Sterile, but still infectious. So the worst hit places, it’s just chaos... Tokyo and New York were the first to get evacuated. There was even a call to leave me and all the other Game Freak developers in the epicentre to get torn apart by the mob.”
My hand is almost cramping from how desperately I try to document everything I hear. He seems to have hit a lull. “So, then what?” I ask. Excellent journalism there, I know. He gives me a withering look. He knows as well as I do that it was the last resort of the dumbstruck. “Well, it spread, didn’t it? 7 years on and it just keeps going. You’re a lucky young man, in one of the safe zones. Thank god for Western Australia, safe from everything, even marauding plagues of syphilis-zombies.”
“But where does that leave us?” I ask. At this point the line between my journalistic integrity and my own morbid fascination has been blurred. He chuckles without happiness. “Well, we’ve got bleeding hearts still trying to find a cure, we’ve got gun nuts wanting to go on a “culling” rampage and you’ve got me being compared to Hitler. It’s the end of says, my friend. Pokémon has ushered in the apocalypse.”
That last line is the one I needed. A headline to grab attention and to ignite emotions. I stood to shake his hand, but he didn’t move, save to take a drag from his cigarette. Sheepishly I withdrew my hand. “Well, thank you, Mr. Tajiri.” I said politely. He didn’t respond, just turned his head to once again glance out the window.
As I wandered to the door, my head swimming with bizarre revelations, I heard his voice quietly mutter, “Young man...” I turned to face him. “Yes, Mr. Tajiri?”
“Always wear a condom.”
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