Detective Pikachu scratches a lingering childhood itch

When I was a kid, Pokémon was more than just a thing I liked. It was a world that I wanted to live in. I wished Pikachu was real. I wanted to have a real Pikachu, and I wanted to find Pokémon in the wild and catch them.

Detective Pikachu is the first piece of Pokémon media to scratch that itch.

A delightful tale of intrigue set in the world of Pokémon, the film marks the first live-action Pokémon property in the two-and-a-half decades since Pokémon first debuted on the Game Boy. While the games and anime helped imaginations run wild with what it would be like to be in the Pokémon world, they also led fans to imagine what Pokémon would be like in our world.

In an early scene in the movie, human protagonist Tim Goodman sets off with a friend to try to catch a Pokémon. After walking through some trees, there was a Cubone, dramatically wailing in the middle of a field.

It immediately reminded me of being a kid, growing up amidst the zenith of Pokémania, walking around outside with my brother and our friends pretending we were Pokémon trainers looking for Pokémon.

Pokémon was an inescapable force and we surrounded ourselves with it: playing the games, watching the show, collecting and trading cards.

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Detective Pikachu, with its cascade of different Pokémon popping up on screen, felt like it was fulfilling a wish I had since I was kid, showing what it would be like to live in a world where Charmanders help street food vendors heat up their pans, Machamps direct traffic around sleeping Snorlaxes, and you can chance upon a small army of Bulbasaurs in the wild.

There’s always a bit of a disconnect when something is animated and cartoony, but to see Detective Pikachu put real-ish looking Pokémon inside a very real world makes it feel much closer to reality.

During the movie, I was sitting in front of a couple of kids who came to the movie with their parents. They couldn’t help but excitedly whisper the names of all the Pokémon that were popping up on screen.

Normally I’d be annoyed by noise in a movie theater but this was different. I could remember me and my brother begging our parents to take us to see Pokémon: The First Movie in 1999 and how much the franchise meant to me back then.

I’m glad Pokémon can still make kids excited, and I’m glad Detective Pikachu could light up my imagination again.

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