Nintendo Gives Pikachu the United Airlines Special
Warning: The article and video below include content that some readers may find disturbing.
If trapping odd little creatures inside tiny balls and making them fight for our amusement didn’t raise enough ethical concerns, video footage has emerged of a horde of Nintendo employees attacking a defenseless Pikachu. The crime? Not fitting the Pikachu body image, and appearing more deflated than his peers.
Everything started so well, with a group of Pikachu (Pikachus? Pikachi?) dancing at the Pokemon World Festival in South Korea. In events bearing an uncanny resemblance to United Airlines’ customer service, Nintendo deemed that there was not enough room for this Pikachu, and viciously and violently removed him from the premises.
Upon seeing the doors in question, Silent Protagonist reached out to Nintendo, and received the following response from their President, Tatsumi Kimishima:
That is not who our family at Nintendo is. This will never happen again during a Nintendo musical number. That’s my promise. No Pokemon should ever be mistreated this way.
We are not going to put a law enforcement official into a crowd to take them off, to remove a booked, paid, dancing Pokemon. We can’t do that. I think my reaction to most issues is to get the facts and circumstances. But my initial words fell short of truly expressing the shame.
We have not provided our frontline supervisors and managers and individuals with the proper procedures that would allow them to use their common sense. They all have an incredible amount of common sense and this issue could have been solved by that. This is on me. I have to fix that, and I think that’s something we can do.
Despite online petitions calling for his removal, and accepting responsibility for the attack, Kimishima has as yet refused to step down from the role.
Pikachu released the following statement to Silent Protagonist:
Pika…Chu.
Indeed, Pikachu. Indeed.
You can see the sordid ordeal in its entire below. If you are sensitive to uncensored bloody violence, you may wish to look away at around the one minute mark.
Pikachu can currently be seen in recent franchise entries Pokemon Go, Pokemon Sun and Moon, and Pokemon Duel. Nintendo is continuing to exploit Pikachu with the upcoming Detective Pikachu film.
