An idea on why Pokemon battling came about

[Blasko]

It seems incredibly inhumane to take away wild sentient creatures and train them to battle each other. Not to mention banal. There must be a good reason behind it.

And my idea is this. Pokemon are incredibly powerful creatures who can regularly cause earthquakes, thunderstorms, bushfires, tsunamis, explosions etc etc. The list goes on and on with their potential for destructiveness. What if people created this system of battling in order to control Pokemon and their power? If Pokemon are captured, trained, bred and indoctrinated to fight other Pokemon, they're focusing that destructive power onto other organisms, and not humans and the natural environment. And then after a while, the system could become steadily ingrained into society, to the point that no one knows how or why it came about, but they still do it.

Sure, this scenario is less rosy than the idea that humans and Pokemon became friends, but it makes a lot more sense.

 

[Skeelo]

Or it could be a case of wanting dominant power in both the Pokemon and trainer's case.

 

[Blasko]

But a whole society adopting it because of an egotistical thirst for power? It doesn't seem likely.

 

[Skeelo]

It happens all the time in reality, that's what capitalism is.

 

[Yamato-san]

a lot of monster raisers just seem to come up with the simple excuse that they're naturally inclined to enjoy fighting, and subsequently enjoy getting stronger. Getting stronger means experience from winning several battles, and battles are won with assistance from a human, who apparently have better capabilities of coming up with good tactics than any given monster in a franchise (no matter how sentient some of the monsters seem).

 

[Kriegsaffe No. 9]

Pokemon training is an enormously old enterprise, it seems. I would conjecture that Pokemon were first captured and used as weapons for one reason: they're stupid mighty. What use are stone axes and flint knives when you can domesticate a giant poison-spewing cobra or a giant cross between a turtle and a tank? Yeah, obvious choice.

Of course, there's also the question of how to get the things to obey you; as seen in the anime, a Pokeball only goes so far. We can guess that few Pokemon are actually forced to fight, because 1) many Pokemon seem to be either sentient or extremely intelligent and 2) unlike animals, can very easily decimate humans no matter how well they're armed. If a Pokemon doesn't want to fight, and you're trying to make it fight... well, it knows Thunder Fang, and you're made of meat.

Clearly Pokeballs contain some kind of domestication tool--I posited earlier that entering a Pokeball is like returning to the womb/egg a calming, soothing experience, not suddenly being stuffed into a hi-tech (or at least abnormal-tech) rucksack. Getting Pokeballed is a chance to steady one's nerves and acquiesce. And, as I mentioned in the OP's other thread, there's a lot of abstraction regarding earning a Pokemon's trust in the games.

Of course, there IS that fighting-other-Pokemon bit. Given that wild Pokemon are by and large very ornery creatures, and that Pokemon are heavily armed by nature, the prospect of fighting fire with water and ground becomes an increasingly good idea. Trained Pokemon have enough emotional investment in a trainer, for whatever reason, to get their fight on. Of course, the beasties have an incentive to fight--a chance to evolve sooner than normal, generally a good thing, and the respect of their own kind for becoming mighty.

Trainer-vs.-trainer is a logical extension of Pokemon making excellent weapons--other people are going to pick up on that and use their own pocket monsters, thus when two trainers clash they're going to whip their strongest nasties at each other. Modern Pokemon training has evolved from deadly (or at least deathly-serious) combat to the sport of kings, much like how fencing evolved from a knight skewering another knight through his faceplate.

That should about cover it, aside from the obvious logical weirdness we get from dealing with Pokemon.