>>45524169It may not be slavery but there is a clear level of exploitation going on. Humans take advantage of pokemon for reasons of personal glory and entertainment all the while pokemon surrender their agency to their trainers. Some people have compared it to MMA and the like but it's not really it as people don't surrender themselves to their coaches. You can box your pokemon away in a PC, trade them away with no repercussion or even release them when they're far away from their natural homes. Even capturing them is breaking up families and probably fucking up habitats and it's still messed up even if you buy the half assed way they've tried to justify it.
But to be fair this is a kid's franchise about capturing, raising and battling monsters so with that premise it's bound to look messed up if you really look into it. Probably series like digimon avoid it by making digimon into actual characters and having it take place in a separate world where IIRC the digimon asked for help.
