As we were lying underneath those starry skies (original) (raw)

Because what we have ourselves here is a Twilight situation - Stephanie Meyer thinks Edward is the perfect boyfriend while his actions demonstrate what a massive creeper he is. In this case, the Pokemon anime portrays Senri & Mitsuko as decent, loving parents to Haruka when their actions demonstrate neglect and a general total lack of interest in their daughter's emotional, psychological and physical well-being.

The most important, core stuff is in Haruka's SC app, but there's a lot of not-as-significant stuff that didn't need to go in there. But just for the sake of completeness, I'm going to copy pasta that stuff in here as well:

" One’s true thoughts, feelings and intentions are not necessarily a large or even small part of one’s outwards appearance. Haruka learnt this at a very young age after a traumatic incident left her deeply frightened of her world’s non-human inhabitants: Pokémon. Born the daughter of a powerful and respected Pokémon gym leader, Haruka grew up knowing that regardless of her personal feelings in the matter, at age ten she would be obligated to go on a journey while fighting with and against creatures she had been frightened of since early childhood. It was an unquestioned standard of her society – that was just what the children of gym leaders did. To reject it would mean publicly embarrassing her family, weakening their high standing within both their city and region – yet committing to the journey openly unhappy wouldn’t be much better. So from a young age, Haruka forced herself to ignore feelings of unhappiness and to constantly think optimistically. "

For the record, that traumatic incident came about as a result of Senri and Mitsuko not being bothered to watch their two-year-old at the beach. Who then goes into the water by herself. And gets swarmed by Tentacool. When she screams for her parents to help her, they look up, see the swarm and then-

Well, Senri goes back to sunbathing. Mitsuko decides she's going to catch a Tentacool for herself!

She then mistakes her daughter for a Tentacool and attempts to capture her. This part of the flashback isn't shown, but we're told that that's what happened next. I think it's valid to assume that her mother sent out a Pokemon of her own to weaken the capture first, since that's standard procedure (unless you're Satoshi). Buuuuut I also think that it's not likely that her mother's Pokemon would have attacked a human, let alone its trainer's daughter, even on command.

Moving on. It's actually stated by her mom that she was the one who sent her out on her journey. Which means:

-> Haruka's mother barred her 10-year-old from continuing her education, forced her to go out into the world travelling with/constantly encountering creatures she hated/was frighted of. And as stated above, both parents were perfectly aware of their daughter's fear.

Gross. And things manage to get worse. Her brother announces he wants to go on Haruka's journey too. Parents immediately agree, with any say from Haruka and Satoshi, who are visibly shocked.

-> They demanded their ten-year-old 'look after' (raise) her seven-year-old brother. while on a mildly dangerous journey around the region.
-> That is a shit-ton of responsibility for a kid, and that's why I really don't think they expected much from her, badge-wise. Senri and Mitsuko are a lot of things, but they're not deluded.

This is where the assumptions get a little bigger but again, given what we see, I think it's a valid conclusion to draw. That is, their parents probably figured that this was a brilliant opportunity for their bright, pokemon-loving boy to get a head start with his own pokemon journey, in terms of picking up valuable real world experience, with his written-off sister as his caretaker. At least she can be useful to them in some way now.

(What I'm unsure of: I'm assuming in part that Masato was able to skip school because he's a) the gym leader's son but also b) possibly advanced at school? He's more of a know-it-all than gifted though, so iiiiidk.)

Anyhow, it is clear that Masato's the favorite and Haruka the unfavorite.

I need to talk about dem grand festivals but since this was mainly for Holo and we've talked about them and the showcased bad parenting, for now I'm calling this done.