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I answered this in the villagersonline email, but thought I'd put it here to be out there in case it can be of use.
We avoided Pokemon to start with and then changed our minds, related somewhat to conversations with my sister [my now a freshman in college nephew was in to it briefly]. Don't really know if there are really occult connections. The movies [I've seen them all a few too many times and listened to them more when I was trying to grab a nap or do something else.] have some spiritually new-agee stuff in them, although it doesn't seem much different than the messages in other cartoons that are around. Less dark than, say Bionicle or Yu-gi-oh, but clearly more than, say Veggie tales. [OK... I've seen much too much kid movies.] Although my guess is if you're opposed to your kids seeing Pokemon, Yu-gi-oh and Bionicle may have not ever come up--although the lego toys are quite popular [remember that one I got you for your birthday one year? but I digress...] Personally, I found the focus of the Pokemon stuff to be about the games, which seem pretty innocuous [sp?]. Basically, you're a trainer and you have little "pocket monsters" [Pokemon] that battle each other. That's pretty much what the cards are about anyways. The movies have some stuff about the "ancient pokemon" which may be the cultic stuff of concern. I actually talked to Jesse about some of the concerns [more with Yu-gi-oh than Pokemon] and used it as an opportunity to talk about what we believed v. some of the other beliefs out there and to talk about the reality of "dark forces" and what certain kinds of magic really were. That approach, I guess, depends on the age, maturity and sensitivity of the kids. A main reason that I went ahead and allowed Pokemon was that the concerns didn't seem to be real and weighty enough to offend a nonbeliever over. It didn't seem worth setting up a divide between Jesse and his friends over. Anyways, that's my rambling $.o2 about it. |
