[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by ChrissieXD

And my mom probably saw a few of the Pokemon episodes I was watching on TV
Why in the world did I like that show?

Don't feel bad, Chrissie, I enjoyed watching Pokemon with my daughter when she was in elementary school.

Spoiler for OT Pokemon reminiscence:

I thought Team Rocket, particularly Meowth, was quite cute, and all the girls, and Brock, were sexy. Brock was my favorite character -- smart, competent, and hot.

Pokemon might have been my first experience with anime as an adult; that was about a decade ago now. The stories they told were basically positive ones about friendship, caring, and loyalty, but the emphasis on competitive fighting, as central as it is to the franchise, turned me off. (I'm just too much of a peacenik, I guess.) Pokemon was also my first experience with the "punch that launches the opponent into outer space," so I didn't know it was an anime cliche. It got old rather quickly.

My daughter obsessed about Pokemon for a bit less than a year. Before she'd go to sleep each night she'd work on memorizing the characters on the Pokemon poster near her bed. She knew all 120(?) original Pokemon in order in a month or so. (I consider that a positive influence,) I also remember driving to a card store across town to buy one of the rare Pokemon on a foil card to add to her collection. She had a yellow Game Boy and played the Pokemon games on it. (The amount of money we paid to the franchise was a not-so-positive influence.) She was hardly alone in her obsession, either. I went to the first and second movies, and they were both packed. Lots of kids her age were collecting cards and playing Pokemon videogames. Her focus on the Pokemon phenomenon seemed pretty common among kids her age in our Boston suburb.

I recall trying to play the card game with her once or twice, but that wasn't her thing. She was into the collecting and "knowing stuff about" parts of Pokemon. She loves beating videogames, but she wasn't interested in playing out mock battles on the card table against human opponents.

Originally Posted by Icehawk

and when she does its mostly crime dramas and such.

Try Monster.