Pokémon: The First Movie taught me to embrace my inner geek

I felt extremely uncool sitting in that theater to watch Ash die

It was the spring of the year 2000. The world had survived the Millennium Bug. The PlayStation 2 had been out for just a month. The following year, history would take a darker turn, but for the moment, everything seemed good to a soon-to-be 13-year-old boy living in a small city in southern Italy. The biggest thing going on that April was that Pokémon was coming to the cinema with Pokémon: The First Movie. The massive entertainment phenomenon that had dominated my imagination and free time for the past couple of years was getting even bigger. More importantly, a sweet, exclusive Mew card for the Pokémon TCG would be given to all movie-goers. I couldn’t miss that chance.

And yet, the overwhelming feeling I had that day was not joy or expectation. It was shame.

Nowadays, the Pokémon fandom transcends age and gender. Back then, however, it wasn’t really clear who this thing was for. I was about to attend my first year of high school: shouldn’t I be thinking about other things, like girls and motorbikes (you can legally drive a scooter from the age of 14 in Italy), rather than those silly little creatures? In fact, the friends I shared that passion with were all younger than me, neighborhood kids around 10 years old. I couldn’t even play serious matches of the TCG with them.

Nonetheless, I decided to head to the cinema, partly because friggin’ Mewtwo was in the movie, and also because I really wanted that Ancient Mew card. I went alone, and I felt awkward even telling my family, who was driving me there, what movie I was going to watch. When I sat in the theater, my embarrassment got even worse. The only people there were little kids and their bored parents. I felt out of place. Guilty. Luckily, when the movie started, I forgot about it all for 75 sweet minutes, then went home clutching my precious Mew.

Looking back at that day, I shouldn’t have felt like that. Twelve years old is a perfectly normal age to be a Pokémon fan. However, cultural nuances can make all the difference. My hometown was far from a rough place, but it also wasn’t exactly the most tolerant. Bullying was a common occurrence, and being a small city, people cared a lot about their social status and how others perceived them, especially as kids. This wasn’t limited to Pokémon, either. I always had geeky interests, but it took a long time before I felt comfortable sharing them. I remember, when I was 20ish, my girlfriend at the time thought I was cheating on her because I lied about being at home while I was playing wargames. “Darling, I swear, these orcs are just friends!”

I am still baffled by the shift in popular culture that has occurred over the past two decades. A recurring joke I have with my old friends explains it best: Back when we were young, you had to hide a manga behind a porn magazine to look cool. Nowadays, you have to do the opposite.

Geek culture’s shift toward the mainstream is one of the few improvements I’ve seen until now in the third millennium. Sure, sometimes I take the grumpy old man stance and look at all these kids wearing anime merchandise with contempt. “What do you young-uns know about downloading Naruto episodes with fan subs? Let me tell you about watching Saint Seiya on TV…” But overall, I can’t deny the change has been for the best.

If the first Pokémon movie came out today, I wouldn’t feel at all ashamed going to watch it in a cinema. Sure, moving to a city with almost two million people and an entire neighborhood populated by geek shops makes a big difference, but I’ve seen the flourishing of geek culture in my rusty hometown too. If I had walked around those streets dressed like kids do today, I would have probably been beaten up at some point. Now, thankfully, this culture isn’t just accepted, but it’s thriving. Geekdom dominates the world of entertainment. And it’s also thanks to Pokémon that this happened. No other franchise has been so widespread in its popularity. The only comparison I could make is with Dragon Ball, another massive part of my early fandom. But for some reason, Dragon Ball was always easily accepted outside of the geek crowd — likely because it’s about beating people up.

My biggest regret about the Pokémon movie, however, is not being ashamed of attending that screening. It’s the fact that I’ve always been a terrible collector, and I’ve lost that precious Ancient Mew card (along with many others). It’s not crazy expensive, but it would have been an important memento of a lesson I learned much later: Don’t be ashamed of who you are and what you like. Maybe just leave Gardevoir alone.