Happy Black History Month!

pokemon-black-white-2-lenoraI thought it would be fun to honor our fellow trainers of color with our first post mentioning Black History Month here at PJN. Pokémon has millions of fans around the iris-vsworld, but it wasn’t until Pokémon Black & White that more diverse characters were added as main characters. Lenora, the Normal-type Gym Leader, and Iris, a Dragon-type Gym Leader and future Champion, brought some welcome diversity into the games. In Pokémon X&Y, trainer customization finally brought the opportunity to something other than a light-skinned boy or girl as well as another Gym Leader, Grant.

Hopefully as the series grows and expands we’ll get more and more different kinds of characters who represent people from all over the real world. To my fellow fans and readers, let’s all celebrate the differences that help us expand our horizons just a little bit more!

<3 PJ

  1. Happy Black history Month
    commemorating all the diverse an beloved characters
    All 4 of them

    1. Or commemorating and reminding people of the history of inequality and racism, slavery. There’s a whole month of it too. :’)

  2. I appreciate this! Even though there is only like four, but seeing how most games are based in Japan and they arent any blacks in Japan. Unova and Kalos are in US and France, which both have blacks in the actual country. Anyway, i do appreciate this! Thanks for the article!

  3. As an African American who has followed this site for about 4-5 years I must say that I appreciate you going out of your way to acknowledge trainers of color and the possibility of more to come in future series. I also hope that all races and/or ethnicities are covered in future Pokémon series.

  4. We did get to see those dancers and the Basketball (Baller) characters in Black and White and Black 2 and White 2.

  5. Episode 913: Zapdos and Noivern! A Furious Strike of Lightning!!
    possibility of Ash’s Noibat evolving?

  6. I think GameFreak should aim for adding three skin tones for each trainer class. It would make the trainer designs less repetitive and more diverse. Yet, I’m glad they added more black characters in the series.

    1. Saying Marlon is white is the equivalent of saying Jason Momoa is white. He’s not. He’s an islander. Black and white arent the only races that exist yet the world revolves around both.

      1. Not need to get so defensive. And can you really declare that he is definitively an islander? To my knowledge, he isn’t from any known island within the game. He does, however, have pale (or white-ish) skin. Although it really doesn’t matter because “nations” do not exist in the world of pokemon. At least not our same nations.

        1. Not very pale to me. And considering he’s in Humilau city, an island, and gyms are usually based on the actual gym leader’s personalities, typing, traits, whatever, it points to being from an island. It even says he would practice jumping with Mantine that lived outside his home. Where are Mantine typically found? In the ocean. What are also found in the ocean? Islands. It doesn’t even have to be an island. He obviously comes from a tropical climate of some kind. He is NOT white.

          1. Look at his feet! They are white as hell 😛 But yes, we could probably assume he is from Humilau city (which I forgot was an island) and his ethnicity is most likely “islander” or however they classify in the pokemon world. Although that doesn’t stop the fact that his actual skin color is not brown-ish. And that’s the entire point I was originally trying to make- that he is not black.

    1. I get the feeling she’sjust more dark skinned than black. Not a white person with a tan necessarily, but just more Hawaiian or something

  7. Pokemon GO is going to be shown off at GDC 2016! Were finally going tos see actually gameplay! The GDC event takes place between March 14th to March 18th.

    1. He’s the perfect man for Pokemon, to be honest. He looks so much younger than he is. This video proves that Game Freak is still developing new mainline games, as he mentions at the end.

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