It’s sort of a cliche that everyone has a different favorite Pokémon. To be clear, some Pokémon are clearly a lot more popular than others, but why there’s a popularity gap between Pokémon often comes down to a fairly arbitrary matter of exposure. Pikachu, for example, wasn’t intended as a franchise mascot- but it was the only elemental Pokémon available in the first-generation (1995) early game that wasn’t a starter. And even finding Pikachu felt like uncovering a secret, as it was a rare encounter in Viridian Forest, where players were likely to grind in order to defeat the game’s first gym leader Brock, even if Pikachu itself, an electric-type, was worthless against Brock’s partially ground-type Pokémon.
I bring all this up because the second episode of the second season of Pokémon Concierge makes the frankly remarkable decision to spotlight Sealeo, a Pokémon from the third generation (2002), that occupies quite a specific niche. In normal gameplay in that generation, most players are unlikely to use the ice/water type walrus/seal hybrid because it can only be acquired late in the game by capturing a Spheal, which will evolve quite quickly, but ultimately will just evolve again into Walrein before too long. Sealeo, in the context of Pokémon at large, is obscure to the point that it doesn’t even feature in the current generation of Pokémon games. But in the context of Pokémon Concierge, Sealeo is the Pokémon loved by Uncle Dan. Despite the fact that Sealeo is just too big to easily take care of.
Strictly speaking, Sealeo isn’t really that big. The in-game data only describes Sealeo as being 3 feet, 7 inches tall and 193.1 pounds. Sealeo on Pokémon Concierge is at least twice that size. But then, the stories we tell about Pokémon aren’t really that related to the exact digital data. To whatever people on the staff of Pokémon Concierge loved Sealeo so much that they decided to make a stop motion figure and give it such a big starring role, Sealeo is of course larger than life. It’s a big oafish walrus that you can ride around.
And that’s the mostly pedestrian story that Pokémon Concierge tells here. What happens to the pets we love when they become so big we can’t take care of them. Or to perhaps be more accurate, give them the sort of care they deserve? Sealeo isn’t real, of course, but Uncle Dan’s concern over Sealeo’s well-being is exactly the kind of story that’s easy for anyone to relate to. That the object of Uncle Dan’s affection is Sealeo, of all the random Pokémon available, is rather beside the point. Except to the extent that nobody loves Sealeo, aside from Uncle Dan probably. This episode is mainly about just providing a compelling argument for why Uncle Dan loves Sealeo so much.
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