Pokemon vs Palworld

Pocketpair or Pocket Monster?

A titan of creative expression was dealt a rare tick in the "L column" on Tuesday, with the Japan Patent Office (JPO) ruling their capture mechanic "Lacked Originality". While this isn't the end of Nintendo's lawsuit against rival Palworld creator company "Pocketpair", it is a severe broadside to the titanic vessel that is the Nintendo legal machine.

Famous for suing the absolute APRICORNS off of anyone and everyone that threatens their precious IP, Ninendo and the pokemon company gained infamy for suing content creators (Or at least, issuing cease-and-desist) such as Smosh way back in Youtube's infancy. And they've been alarmingly successful for most of their lives since 1998, when this writer was going into fifth grade, standing in a hushed huddle with his friends, elated over the inevitable capture of a pesky Magnemite in the power plant.

Now, the clash of these two companies, The Pokemon Company and Pocketpair, raises ethical and emotional concerns to a verbose fever pitch, with supporters of both sides railing against one another, mostly along vague, ideological grounds. What follows is probably laced with my own opinion, but I did not promise a perfectly objective piece of journalism here, so do with it what you will.

• One one hand, the Pokemon Company has been alienating its older fanbase for a decade or more now by phoning in its mainline games with lazy, half-asleep storyboarding and technical issues that would make Missingno blush%#SKYATTACK.bat
• Despite this, Pocketpair can hardly be absolved of some of the most flagrant and despicable plagiaristic artistic chicanery this side of Raid: Shadow Legends. Illustrated below are a few damning examples.

Palworld finds its greatest defense in the name of Artistic Freedom(tm)

If you can swallow the grave similarities in the artwork, you might be first in line to go out with a banner defending Pocketpair in the name of creative freedom. What a romantic and noble cause, after all! It's decidedly uncool and off-trend to support the obscenely wealthy and powerful Pokemon Company as they pick on poor little pocketpair, right? But how do we define "Creative"? How far do we let the aping of intellectual property descend into rote copying, to quote Walter White on two occasions, there.

In the end, all I can say is that I have every desire to watch the overly-litigious Pokemon Company have their Snorunts handed to them in open court. They're predatory, unwelcoming of innovation both within and without, and have atrophied into a shadow of their former selves with the textures in "Legends ZA" only the latest example of their lazy, entitled, borderline treacherous handiwork. One hopes a resounding defeat would force a restructure, and a return to what the fans are ACTUALLY asking for. But thats a story for another day.

On the flip side, Pocketpair and their "creation" Palworld is without a doubt the poorest paragon of "Creativity" anyone could ask for. You can't build the foundations of your world on some of the most egregious intellectual and artistic theft the world has ever seen, then cover it up with a genuinely unique set of game mechanics a-la guns on the assembly line. No, we aren't going to ignore the Kirkland Signature Electabuzz toting the gatling gun. Nor the Great Value Cobalion hosing him down with a Hyper Beam Pal Blast.

I have nothing for Pocketpair but the most heartfelt desire to see them fail in miserable bankrupt failure for what they've done. So color me conflicted. But on this one, I fear I'm mostly on the side of the big, scary corporation. Excuse me, I need to sew in my shoulder pads.