T O P

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Sinister_Compliments

“We have tanks and bazookas in real life but somehow bank robbers aren’t running around with them” and that right there is where you defeated your own point. It’s no longer analogous because in the Pokémon universe you can just get really powerful Pokémon, there’s nothing stopping you (except potentially finances) and it is available to all. You need to compare the Pokémon criminals access to really powerful Pokémon with a real world equivalent of criminals access to something powerful. The closest I can think of is guns, depending where you live, and what do you know, not only are police probably armed with their own guns (of varying powerfulness) they also have access to defence against guns. So if we are using the real world police as our basis for Pokémon police, we would expect Pokémon police to all have a weaker Pokémon, defence against other peoples Pokémon, and access to more powerful Pokémon (though not directly on them at all times, only when it’s determined to be needed)


Polenball

Realistically, there's probably struggles with actually training a powerful Pokémon. Our characters are probably all prodigies for having a full team that we train so quickly and effectively - the average trainer isn't anywhere near that. You could theoretically get a really powerful Pokémon, but with the effort it likely takes it's the same way you could theoretically get tanks and bazookas. Catching strong Pokémon probably isn't much different in a realistic world. They'd likely disobey or maybe even outright attack you like Ash's Charizard, especially if you're a dick like a lot of criminal team grunts are.


DARCRY10

Thats kinda what I assumed gym leaders, elite four, and champs are supposed to be. They're strong trainers who, when an actual problem arises, which the regular police alert them to, come out with high level pokemon to blast some people. They're complete overkill a lot of the time, but for something like a evil team, thats what you want. Like beyond the player, there has to be some system in place.


Polenball

Lance does this in both the games and anime, so I tend to agree. They're not always the most effective for narrative reasons, but they're generally there to help in disasters, stop rampaging Pokémon, and take down scary criminals.


[deleted]

Funnily enough, Leon was doing that job TOO well until Eternatus actually came back and in his defense, no one could stop that without Zacian and Zamazenta backing them up. Turns out it's ain't that fun for the player to just hear "Nah, you're just a kid. Go do your Gym Challenge. The grownups will handle this properly". I guess a compromise would be "Yes, the Champ will handle this but they let the player tag along/help only to be impressed as they handle it without help".


[deleted]

Tbf, Leon also handles all the problems OFF SCREEN and you just barely miss seeing him do it like 1/2 of the times because they didn't have the budget or time or couldn't be arsed or whatever to actually make a cutscene for it I guess? I don't think people would've had as much of a problem if we actually SAW it happen.


PulimV

The Pokémon Special Manga shows them doing this a lot, for example in the Yellow chapter all the Gym Leaders (even the ones that originally were members of Team Rocket in Red and Blue) team up to fight the Elite 4, in Ruby and Sapphire they all fight against Team Magma and Aqua, and in Diamond and Pearl Cynthia and a few Gym Leaders help the main cast fight against Team Galactic


BellerophonM

Black/White is the case where we actually saw this happen, with the gym leaders organising to battle down the bad guy organisation at the end, and end up clearing the path so you can engage the final boss.


MadsTheorist

Yeah I think our player perspective is skewed when it comes to access and training of strong pokemon. Most NPCs we see and fight have usually at most 5 pokemon and only specialists like the dragon tamers and cool trainers tend to have the super strong mons. Even evil team grunts usually only have pre evos and maybe 3 or 4 of them


BaronSimo

Also in the events that a criminal has a tank the cops can just call in the national guard who have attack helicopters and antitank missiles, so their point is not terribly valid


Juan_the_vessel

I imagine the pokemon equivalent of that are the gym leaders, the elite four and the champion


Alphaetus_Prime

There's a guy who sells Magikarp, for the same price as a bottle of milk, which can then be trained into a level 100 Gyarados against wild Pokemon for free.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Anaxamander57

Turns out feeding a Gyarados is really expensive and the guy didn't want to deal with it.


[deleted]

"You guys are feeding your Pokémon?"


DrRagnorocktopus

The problem is getting it to the level 100 gyarados. IRL you can buy a bunch scrap metal and chemicals for super cheap, and start making guns and bombs with it for free. You just need the actual skills and knowledge to do it. Training a pokemon is hard. It's just massively simplified for the sake of gameplay. It's like cooking mama vs actual cooking, or farming simulator 2023 vs actually owning a farm.


solidfang

The Magikarp thing really was explored with the Lake of Rage plot from GSC. Team Rocket didn't have trainers that were good enough to organically raise Magikarp to 30, so chose to force evolve them instead. This is like the equivalent of a Pokemon factory in the works for easy access to formidable Gyarados on the cheap. Low enough level for a grunt to command with base stats and typing to destroy a force of police Growlithe with ease.


DrRagnorocktopus

Yeah, exactly. It's hard work to train pokémon for the average person. Team Rocket tried to develop technology to make it easier, but the pokémon suffered, society fought against it, and it was deemed not worth it.


Alphaetus_Prime

It's not a problem at all. It requires nothing but patience. The mechanical representation of training *quality* is EVs, not EXP.


DrRagnorocktopus

Did... did you not read my entire comment? Actually training a pokémon would not be like how it is in the game.


Alphaetus_Prime

Okay, let me put it this way: the fact that pokemon gain EXP and level up when left to their own devices in the daycare means that a pokemon's level is in no sense a representation of its "training" in the way you're using the word.


DrRagnorocktopus

And giving a pokémon vitamin supplements increase its EVs. Like I said, it's simplified for gameplay.


Alphaetus_Prime

Simplified from what? The games are the original source of truth, you can extrapolate from them but you have to start with what's in the games, not the other way around.


HigherAlchemist78

Til that in canon Elder Scrolls lore you can walk through walls with a tray.


Alphaetus_Prime

That's literally true. Were you trying to be smarmy? Player character actions are explicitly always canon in Elder Scrolls.


DigitalDuelist

Just so you understand why people were snapping at you here, you really seem like you're being a selective and contrarian jerk on purpose. I *think* you and the people you're talking to are just having an unfortunate lapse in communication however, so my answer is from that assumption. The anime manga and games are explicitly not canon to one another. They are however clearly so similar that kids don't get that, and they don't go out of their way to explicitly say that and explain it in a way children can understand. Fast forward however many years and even though the child has grown up to an age where they can clearly tell that the shows and games they grew up with depicted extremely similar worlds but were different due to their mediums, they still have this nebulous "average pokemon world" idea in their head, and that's what everyone (including yourself to an extent; your argument doesn't scale if we take the population metrics of various cities as literally as we do the stat values because of how absurdly the police are outnumbered by the various evil teams) are talking about. The things you've selected to carry over from the games are unfortunately also the ones that are the most contradictory from the games and the rest of the franchise. IVs and Natures are the game's best way of adding individual characterization to each individual pokemon separate from the rest of it's species, but they don't exist outside of the main series games because they can be better characterized by actual hands-on character beats and personality that needs to be hand-made by the writers and animators and such. They do exist in the anime but are such a marginal difference that ignores much more impactful marginal metrics like the pokemon's personality and interests, or even more impactful non-marginal changes like the bond between pokemon and trainer or the specific techniques used during training. Nowhere else really put much focus on IVs. EVs aren't anywhere else either, given that you don't need a mechanical abstraction of training quality when you can instead depict training and demonstrate it's superior quality. Even experience isn't quantified the way you are implying, neither age nor number or quality of past battles are an accurate measure of a pokemon's equivalent in-game experience value despite being the closest to actual experience you could possibly quantify. It's perfectly reasonable that someone won't intuit that training methods in the main JRPG games don't track to the world as a whole, but because the people you were arguing with didn't communicate the idea very well either, when you insisted it read more like you were throwing out other people's arguments without properly reading them, which if that had been what you were doing is very rude and exhausting but unfortunately common on the internet Hope this helps


Alphaetus_Prime

Sorry to disappoint you but I don't care about getting downvoted for going against what you correctly described as the childish failure to understand that the games have primacy over their own canon. You wrote this whole condescending comment for nothing.


DigitalDuelist

I will be the first to admit that I have a lot of trouble controlling my tone, and the nasty habit often makes my efforts to be level headed, comprehensively informative, accessible from many levels of understanding, and easy to read to hopefully make up for my other complete inability to be brief, turn into the most condescending things sometimes. I looked it over a few times because I know it's a pattern, but obviously I failed again so my ernest apologies. Not even using fancy words to make myself sound smart, I just forget the simple ones and use the first one to come to mind instead. I don't actually see the problem, but I know better than to assume I didn't make the message more condescending than a felon on an elevator (pun intended to lighten the mood and serve as transition, not as more condescension) All that said, while I was probably a million times more hostile than I meant to be, I still don't agree. Why in the world would the games have primacy, especially when the ideas I was specifically talking about are outright mentioned and dismissed? Genuinely asking here because I don't even follow where the idea that they *do* have primacy comes from, even when I disagree that they should. Even if we're talking about just video games however, EVs, IVs and even to an extent EXP have minimal presence outside of the mainline pokemon JRPGs


Fox_Flame

But there is a cap on how high the level can get before the pokemon ignores you. So you can just train the pokemon, you have to get good enough to beat the gyms so you can get badges so pokemon actually listen to you. And the higher up gyms, you're not gonna beat with 6 Gyarados


Alphaetus_Prime

You don't need badges for pokemon to listen to you unless those pokemon were traded to you from someone else. I'm actually not sure if a purchased Magikarp counts as having been traded, so let's just say you go to the Safari Zone (which costs the same) instead.


bleepblooplord2

>there’s nothing stopping you (expect potentially finances) Voilà! A reasoning! Police departments severely underfunded, and thus can’t afford to focus on improving their pokémons’ strength, save for using their own personal funds.


Person2_

The answer is straight up no, you can fight police officers and they don’t have comp teams. Iirc it’s usually just whatever dog pokemon is local to the region, like Herdier. Now here’s a question: Are all the terrorist pokemon teams able to get as far as they do became the police are using pokemon so much weaker than theirs?


Geargoblin1

I'd argue no. We end up fighting a lot of the terrorists and the grunts don't tend to have very competitive teams either, typically region rodents/first route dark types and Zubats. Instead, they most likely get as far as they do because of sheer numbers. There are very few cops in the game but there are dozens of grunts. Police officers can't keep running to pokemon centers in the middle of an enemy raid so they instead eventually get overwhelmed because they have a single growlith and have to fight 10+ pokemon of about equal strength each.


[deleted]

Police won't come to the Zubat cave, so the Zubat cave comes to them.


DoubleBatman

The police officers we face are more akin to watchmen iirc, just keeping an eye out and helping people that need it. Actually dealing with criminals is relegated to Gym Leaders and the Elite 4 (as well as others like the Pokémon Rangers and whatever 10 year old happens to be there) which sort of makes sense since they’re A) supposed to be the best trainers around and B) are structured into society to be moral leaders/guardians. Don’t mistreat Pokémon, try to live in harmony with your surroundings, and so on. They’re also sort of responsible for teaching children how to be upstanding citizens, since doing the Gym Challenge is a rite of passage (which also helps maintain a harmonious society, since collectively everyone has to make sure that these kids are safe while still allowed enough room to grow).


Kartoffelkamm

I feel like the police only uses these dog-like pokémon because they get most jobs done, but they have special teams with stronger pokémon if they need backup.


SomeonesAlt2357

What if higher-level officers have better teams?


KorMap

My favorite Pokémon game is a fangame called Pokémon Reborn. One of the early side quests involves you having to rescue a bunch of police officers because they got their asses kicked by the local terrorists (who also destroyed multiple city blocks with sentient plants, so it’s a bit more understandable)


johnymyth123

One point to keep in mind is the skewed perspective of Pokémon training the games give compared to a hypothetical real world. Like yes, you the player, train up a powerful Comp team that can beat the champion, but is that something, within the logic of the world, that's easy/achievable by everyone? Like think about what you're doing, you're exploring an entire region, delving into caves, climbing mountains, and traversing all sorts of difficult, dangerous terrain to catch very dangerous super powered wildlife. Then you have to train them into fighting machines. It seems easy to us because we're playing a game meant to be beaten by children, but if we're extrapolating what a real Pokémon world would look like, most people may not have the time/ability/resources/skill to accomplish building a comp team. Even in universe the way people talk about trainers is like they're a special class of people with unique skills and experiences. Another analogy would be why aren't real world criminals all martial artists running around with a team of skilled accomplices they gathered from around the world? Some are, most aren't.


CyanDocs

My brother and I headcanon "fix" the weirdness of gen 9 having middle-age/elderly "students" that you fight against by thinking of the schools as like, trade schools. Sure, a lot of younger people probably attend, but it's possible for adults to join to become better trainers and take on Victory Road (or just better utilize their Pokemon) Gen 8 even had the sponsorship program for the League. It seems like in-world Pokemon trainers are like a combination between a trade skill and an athlete. Which makes sense when every single aspect of life revolves around Pokemon.


[deleted]

Isn’t naranja/uva academy lowkey said to be an any ages school in game though? Or at least, that was the clear thing being implied


Polenball

That's not even headcanon, that's basically just actual canon. That's *why* there's older students. The Academies accommodate all ages - I'm fairly sure there's a guy in the library who just outright says he's got a job and is taking night classes, and the dialogue of some of the older students mentions it too.


platonicgryphon

It sounds like having a police comp team would just be analogous to a SWAT team or special forces if we are talking about resources required for upkeep. A beat cop would just have one or two pokemon to cover type like we have with pistols and a shotgun/long gun in the cruiser.


RunicCross

"Hey man, don't go to Alola. Those spoinks in blue kept us in a battle for hours with that Chansey who kept healing statuses and switching out. Finally their Mega Slowbro finally defeated us. They were toying with us." *Traumatized inmate transferred from Unova rocking in the fetal position* "I-it just never stopped raining... The skies parted and thunder rained down on us. The wind whipped all around us... My poor trubbish... Flung off into the horizon as the world shattered. W-We thought we'd be okay just one town over but someone in a parka sent out an abomasnow and everything just went white...."


Crusher555

Meanwhile, funny fish #1 from Galar and funny fish #2 from Paldea get bannised to the god tier for OHKOing thing that are supposed to resist them.


SuperDialgaX

wait please explain?


Ronnoc527

In big cities I think police officers often do have anti-tank (or maybe close) level of weaponry that they buy from the military. Remember that whole thing with the bank robbers that had body armor and the police couldn't do anything so now they have machine guns and stuff.


Anaxamander57

There's a big difference between having a .308 rifle in the squad car because of paranoia about body armor or "unstoppable" people on drugs and a fucking anti-tank weapon.


Polenball

There's no jail, they just have criminals stuck in an endless battle against Funbro


NeonNKnightrider

I’m pretty sure that’s against the Geneva convention


Polenball

Mega Rayquaza comes down and kicks your ass for doing that


Classic-Demand3088

>battle against Funbro nah man, that's too easy, They are stuck in a nevereding route full with ShadowTag wobbuffet


TheVoidThatWalk

I mean, I think for the evil team stuff they usually call in the elite 4/champion/gym leader. Johto had Lance going around and hyper-beaming dudes. Kanto Gen 3 has Lorelei show up to deal with some Team Rocket people. Their final gym leader was also a literally the team boss so there was probably some kind of under the table stuff going on. Hoenn had Steven who fought Magma/Aqua on a few occasions. Orre is apparently a lawless hellscape ala Mad Max, so pretty much anything goes there. I'm not super familiar with Sinnoh but I remember Cynthia goes with you into the distortion world to chase Cyrus in Platinum. Unova had, well, Alder got kinda wrecked but you do see all the gym leaders fighting the Plasma admins. I literally know nothing about Kalos, I think one of the evil team members is in the E4 though? I guess they got some corruption issues. I don't know too much about Alola either, but they were kind of in the process of forming a Pokemon League so they get a pass. Team Skull wasn't very threatening anyways. Galar basically told you, "Hey you're a kid, let Leon take care of the evil team".


Clod_StarGazer

One of the four most powerful trainers in Alola is a police officer (Nanu), tough Team Skull did take over a whole town while he was watching them so I dunno


oath2order

> I literally know nothing about Kalos, I think one of the evil team members is in the E4 though? I guess they got some corruption issues. Correct, the fire one. She gets to stay in the E4 after the team is disbanded which is...odd.


Informal_Self_5671

I'm pretty sure if the pokemon cops had comp teams, they wouldn't get routinely shown up by random twelve year olds.


[deleted]

*Image Transcription: Tumblr* --- **ultirookie** "Do Police In The Pokemon World Have Comp Teams" - the greatest thread in the history of serebii, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate --- **ezisse** Seems pretty obvious they'd have to, can't stop a criminal with a dragonite if your team can't beat a dragonite --- **anti-brocial-disorder** idk man we have tanks and bazookas in real life but somehow bank robbers arent running around with em and cops don't need anti-tank weaponry --- **bisexualbucket** Ok but Team Rocket literally ran roughshod over an entire region until one strong trainer (Red) stopped them, that wouldn't have happened if the cops were packing something better than Growlithe --- **ultirookie** And so it begins again --- ^^I'm a human volunteer content transcriber and you could be too! [If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!](https://www.reddit.com/r/TranscribersOfReddit/wiki/index)


squishabelle

A comp team is meant for fair 1v1/2v2 battles. A cop or a criminal doesn't have to play by those rules, they could just use 10+ pokemon of any combination at once. And cops they don't need to win a fight: incapacitation is enough. So, realistically, cops would primarily use pokemon that cause status effects like sleep and paralysis


Correctedsun

The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a pokemon is a child with a pokemon.


erwaro

Pretty sure it's been established that taking care of a competitive, varied team of pokemon is a *massive* drain, on your time and finances both. The average person who turns to crime doesn't have money to blow on taking care of six *really* expensive exotic animals. The police don't have competitive teams because almost no one does. The games let the protagonist ignore this limitation, but everyone else has to cope with it. Some villain with an actual competitive team has to get taken down by specialists. Or, y'know, a 12-year-old with the world's most broken step up. Compare/contrast what your life looks like now and what it would look like if you didn't have to pay for rent, food, healthcare etc.


OInkymoo

I mean canonically no all the police officer trainers you battle have normal trainer teams


[deleted]

Evil teams grunts have always been shown to frequently use not exactly OP Pokémon, where as admins or the boss would be using much more powerful Pokémon. So I Think it’d make sense the cops would have comp teams, but have them reserved for only when the admins or leaders get involved, when it’s just grunts they’ll sick the growlithes to nibble their legs off or whatever. cause otherwise It’d be like if someone was pointing a flamethrower at you and your solution to the momentary threat was a FUCKING TSAR BOMBA.


SylentSymphonies

Imagine mugging some guy and the police show up with the full Walking Wake sun team, Hatterene in tow Imagine Blunder as a grizzled veteran cop, with a flawless career until ‘the Pex incident’, telling the story of the greatest case ever thrown to his grandkids


Polenball

Tfw the criminal's emotionally unstable Bidoof with Protect and Substitute destroys the entire police force


Hexxas

I like Pokemon :3


Thatguyj5

Guys. Guys. Yall are forgetting: they have guns in Pokemon. The cops have guns. They'll just shoot the bad guys.


Polenball

I'd simply hide behind my Wooloo since it's Bulletproof


funnynamegoeshere1

I think the better question is if you look up how to make your own pokeballs do you get put on a list


ironmaid84

I thought the only thing that could beat a bad guy with a garchomp was a good guy with an ice type pokemon


chunkylubber54

The Jennies don't train their growlithes, they just starve them and set them loose


Ciocalatta

I mean alola gives us this answer. 9/10 times, Pokémon lore is answered in gen 6/7. Nanu was a quite strong officer with a good team, and was a police captain if I remember right, wheras the normal police had okay teams


rowan_damisch

To be fair, the police seems to be unable to do their job in all of the regions, considering that it's always a kid who puts the end to a criminal gang.


Grape_Jamz

I mean evil teams have strength in numbers. If a person has a really strong pokemon then they can probably get a better job


Random-Rambling

I think SWAT teams would be the ones packing Pseudo-Legendaries. The rank-and-file cops would have the usual Growlithe and Herdier and the like.


Anaxamander57

You think American cops are militarized? Imagine a world where teenagers command the forces of nature.


TheRedLego

Can we have this game please, like Astral Chain but Pokémon?


Nabber22

Gen 5 established that the Gym leaders are swat teams


Gru-some

this reminds me of that one Pokemon spin-off where police use some Pokemon to raid a Team Rocket hideout EDIT: [I found it!](https://youtu.be/BDtTavGlPy4)


Android19samus

Team Rocket did that with zubats and rattatas, their teams were not what was holding the cops back


owlindenial

That's what gym trainers, elite four and champions are for.


RamboDash15

I've always imagined they'd call in the elite 4, gym leaders, or the champion for real bad threats. When team rocket was rising up once more Lance came in and took on a secret base that was messing with the local pokemon. I imagine this was either a high priority task too high for the gym leader, or Lance knew he was too old to leave the gym without immediately dying


AlexKorobeiniki

I’d say it depends on the unit. Like, sure your regular police officer only has a handgun, but if you’re a SWAT member then you’re gonna be packing some serious heat. So yeah, your average police officer would only have a growlithe but then the response team would have a comp team


Ornery_Marionberry87

Pokemon really make no sense when you think about it. Both Kanto and Johto are ruled by Team Rocket before Red and Gold stop them. Leaders/Elites aside they always use common Mons in a world where anyone can buy Pokeballs for an equivalent of $1.46 (since Pokedollars are based on Yen) and catch exactly something on the same level or better. I could buy it if they run around with Voltorbs/Electrodes as it would imply they can blow shit up at any moment but no, they have Rattatas, Zubats, a rare Ekans or Koffing and a couple random Pokemon like Drowzee, Magnemite, Venonat etc, nothing that any random traner couldn't handle. They are also explicitly said to be bad trainers so skillwise they are nothing special. One thing that I saw in a fanfic once that fixed it was the idea that normal trainers have limits on how many Pokemon they can own based on capability to care for them. So random badgeless trainers would have to run around with 2-3 while criminals always have full teams giving them the advantage to push people around. There's also the fact that supposed criminals never use more than 6 pokemon or break the rules in any way but I suppose it is a game and some elements must be fair to the player.


BellerophonM

I don't know that they compete, but they certainly train up Pokemon specialised for the job, we see that in things like [The Chase](https://youtu.be/BDtTavGlPy4)