To the game that taught me to persevere for my dream, to open my mind to different viewpoints,

To the game that taught me to persevere for my dream, 
to open my mind to different viewpoints,
and to accept different ideas to achieve something bigger together…. 

Happy 10th anniversary, Pokemon Black and White! 

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This was originally planned to be a two-part piece, but I couldn’t finish James (Hilbert) and Fluffy (Reshiram) in time haha. They will be followed up on this week as a week-long celebration!

[Unova/Gen V lovemail ahead!]

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Gen 5 was the very first time I was able to catch the pre-release hype of a Pokemon game online.

At the time, I was 13, a freshman highschooler who caught the intrigue of the very first Unova Pokemon in silhouettes, the starters and the Tao Duo…. wow, there’s gonna be new mons!

I witnessed everything that unfolded during Gen 5 from start to finish: heck, I was even one of those bandwagon haters from back then, I knew too well how they thought.  

“Wow this dex SUCKS they try too hard to copy kanto”
“pokemon went downhill this year”
“wth they changed so much?? this isn’t even pokemon”

I feel like these days people have been undermining how it was negatively received, so I want to share what I’ve seen firsthand.

Everyone was so angry at how the dex didn’t have any old mons, and that the designs we’re stuck with are tryhard expies of the original 151. That’s beside the overused “ice cream and garbage pokemon UGLY” argument which rooted from that sentiment with the designs. Surprisingly I actually bought this thinking at first (YES, I started out as a Unova hater) and tried hard to lift up the then-latest Digimon season (Xros Wars) by saying the designs are ugly lol

Hate aside, younger me still wanted to see the game anyway and pirated a JP copy of the game release day…. but I couldn’t understand anything, so I got stuck at Nacrene City and just waited for the English version haha.

Fast-forward to March the next year, it was a happy time of the year for me because school years used to end in March in my country! School was heavily winding down and I get to play a new Pokemon game fresh, wow!! I was still in denial but I really liked the new story focus. During that time, then-Unova hater me was in a denial stage, trying to water down what I liked about the game and being bitter about it breaking the mold too much…. but over the months I tried to engage with it more, and the biggest gateway for me was Spe BW.

At the time it was still in its earliest chapters (I think it was before the Nimbasa stuff?), and I thought hey, why not try to follow it while it’s ongoing? (RIP) I just got really endeared with Black and especially White at the time! You can see where that led to today LOL

So now you probably guessed this is the start of my Hilda fan backstory, and yes, it is HAHAHA. I didn’t pay it much mind at first but 14 y/o me was like, WOW…. wait…. her design really speaks to me, this is the aesthetic I want for myself?? She’s so boyish compared to the others!

I started veering away from Spe White, taking aspects of her and projecting (HAHA) onto the actual player, and protagverse White was made! She isn’t actually made for the verse, but someone I’ve been treating as an avatar for a while now since 2012. I was so happy with her that I even restarted White and made a new file playing as her character! 

For this anniversary piece, it was meant to be a culmination of my personal feelings with the games:

My 1st G5 game was White ‘cause I loved Zekrom, protagverse White was my comfort character that helped me cope so much as a teen, and they just influenced me in so many ways.

I wouldn’t know how I would be today if teen me didn’t find comfort and inspiration in the Unova games. It was a big part of my art journey.

Since 2012, every 4 years, I’ve made a small tradition to redraw my 1st White art.  This art is redraw #2.

In 2012, I was in my 3rd year of high school.
In 2016, I was in my 3rd year of college (and 1st year of art school).
Today, in 2020, I’ve graduated and now working as a freelance artist.

White, and Unova as a whole, grew up with me, and I’m so thankful they exist.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for reading, and I hope that I’ve imparted how much I love Unova, and how much it’s helped me over the years. It’s had a rough start, but I will never regret sticking for it until it got out of the spotlight now as the appreciated sets of games it is.

Thank you so much, Unova!

Love,
A fan since 2010 <3