DESIGN FICTION: Dead Pokemon
DESIGN FICTION: DEAD POKEMON
Tokyo, 2029
Life imitates art.
Mass protests outside the high-rise of The Pokemon Company in Roppongi Hills and the offices of their joint-owners, Nintendo, Game Freak and Creatures Inc., have brought Tokyo to a standstill. The Japanese games conglomerates behind the hit Pokemon franchise from the 2000s have seen share prices tumble on market opening, only to be brought lower still when a DDoS attack ground the massive multiplayer role playing game offline. Hi No Mu (Nothingness of the Day) the Japanese hacker group, responsible for last years leaking of Chinese bribing of the Imperial family, claimed responsibility with a simple ransom request.
De-extinct Charmander.
The beloved fantasy character, a baby dragon, was declared by The Pokemon Company as endangered and later extinct in the latest online game and all Pokemon properties (movies, tv series, games and merchandise). The move, a targeted effort of social engineering, was an attempt to open the eyes and hearts of young people today to the extinction crisis. The Pokemon Company CEO, Hikari Ishii, revealed that she felt a deep responsibility to use the influence of the beloved media empire to spur young fans into taking action on the very real extinction crisis facing the real world today.
Spur them into action it did.
Drone footage of the protests estimate the crowds at 2.5M people, or approximately 12.5% of Tokyo's population. Protestors travelled from all over Japan, with anger and indeed mass grief visible in television and social media coverage of the event.
A sister protest in Bellevue, Washington saw 200,000 people amass on Bellevue Way, an ordinarily quiet Tech district in a city that has recently been notable for its subdued and nerdy quietness and right of center politics. A more conservative balance to neighbouring Seattle across the water.
Bemused commentators and disgusted editors spoke out against GenZ and Gen Alpha and their apparent devotion to fictional cartoon characters while the real, complex beauty of the natural world is being erased before our very eyes. It is clear, that the youth of today don't in fact lack the energy and protest passion of their grandparents in '68 or their parents in the Iraq War.
Instead, they lack a credible link with reality.
Tens of vertebrate species eliminated from the great book of life each decade, to the deafening chorus of silent indifference.
One scrawny cartoon character, and it's Chaos. War. Protest.
The crisis escalated further in India, where the Japanese embassy was attacked by a group of youths demanding that they bring Charmander back.
In an age when the biodiversity crisis raged on, the people played fiddle while the world burned. But they will not stand by while their beloved fictions are torn apart, even for the most noble of reasons.
In an act of incredible defiance, an unfazed Hikari Ishii, addressed the protestors on Xstream. She had a simple message for the outraged youth.
"There is hope for Charmander to rejoin us if those beautiful creatures that inspired him are saved.
Charmander will return when the most endangered 20 species in Japan are conserved.
If you wish to protest, protest those ensuring the biodiversity holocaust on our noble islands.
Turn your fire on the enemies of our planet.
And we will raise Charmander from the ashes."
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Epilogue
The protests and mass movement that followed are estimated to have stabilised 23 of the 40 most endangered species in Japan, as of 2043. Charmander has risen from the dead.
