Every time I look back on what makes me who I am, the roots of my personality always traced themselves to one video game franchise—Pokémon.

The Pokémon franchise, developed by Game Freak, is a series of role-playing games for portable Nintendo consoles, such as the Game Boy and Nintendo DS.

Now, my love for this franchise contributed to my desire to major in game design in college.

The portable nature of the games in the Pokémon franchise encourages players to communicate with each other in real-life. Pokémon fans learn how Pokémon creatures develop from other like-minded Pokémon trainers by trading and battling with each othe. As a result, players didn’t just catch ‘em all, but learned how to exchange their ideas through their Pokémon creatures!

In short, Pokémon games encouraged people to communicate and express their ideas with each other.

I fell in love with the aspect of expressing oneself through play.

I was just two years old when that game made me who I am. At that age, I owned a Game Boy Color which I brought wherever I went while playing Pokémon. I was using my Game Boy Color all the time, to the point where it would sometimes be confiscated by teachers or parents.

If ever I wasn’t eating my food or paying attention to what my parents were saying—swipe!—it would be taken away. But the Pokémon games themselves captured my attention only because I was captivated by how Pokémon worked. More importantly, it made me fall in love with video games, and I wanted to know how I could use that technology to express my ideas.

I ended up taking Japanese language classes when I was six just so I could communicate with game developers and learn from them, especially those of Nintendo, whose headquarters were based in Kyoto. Nintendo was responsible for publishing Pokémon, The Pokémon Company making it known the world over.

I couldn’t help but feel the need but bring my ideas to their table! As a bonus, I learned how to read, write and converse fluently in Japanese. As I learned about how Pokémon’s art was inspired by Japanese manga comics, I ended up studying manga drawing techniques and how artists crafted their characters.

I worked hard to analyze the styles of various artists so I could incorporate them into my own.

Lo and behold, did my drawings improve!

I then became the budding manga artist in my circle of friends, presenting my drawings to others and expressing my creativity and desire to improve. Manga in itself along with Japanese language classes gave me a high degree of exposure to Japanese culture. I learned about the subtle nuances in their crafts, their attention to detail and how orderly their societies worked.

And even then, it gave me a thirst to learn about other cultures, and it encouraged me to understand how people express themselves.

That thirst for learning made me absorb ideas like a sponge, making school much more enjoyable as I loved seeing what ideas people had to offer.

Be it a discussion, presentation or even as simple as a conversation during lunch, I made sure to let others express themselves. That exchange and expression of ideas seemed like battles between Pokémon trainers, and it only made communicating with each other all the more fun.

However, you can’t communicate if you can’t express yourself!

What ideas would there be to learn from?

Being able to exchange and express your ideas like Pokémon battles makes quite an impact on the world around us. After all, self-expression is what solves problems, what bridges faraway societies together and what enables human beings to break ground and evolve, much like Pokémon.

It’s no wonder I’m known for being so talkative—I value self-expression. Pokémon, art, video games, language and communication all share one underlying thread, and that common thread is…

…self-expression!