Monstera pocketii: The Botanical Vitality of Pokémon

This paper argues that the Pokémon franchise should be read through plant studies rather than solely as representations of animals. Its author, Nikolas Matovinovic of Monash University, builds on ecocritical and critical plant studies frameworks to emphasize the botanical and "living surface" qualities of Pokémon and the franchise's media ecology, positioning these as elements that exceed the category of the animal. The argument draws on Sean Morey and Jason Crider's concept of the "Hyperanimal" and on theories of plant agency and interspecies communication, including accounts of orchid-wasp relations.

A central claim is that Pokémon modeled on carnivorous plants, such as Victreebel and Carnivine, constitute the most significant contemporary screen depiction of carnivorous plants, a category that existing academic writing on plant horror largely overlooks. The paper also suggests that ethical critiques of the Pokéball as confinement shift meaningfully when its metaphorical referent moves from a cage to a pot. Its scope is textual and theoretical rather than empirical: it engages with a franchise of over a thousand creatures and draws on scholarship from screen studies, ecocriticism, and philosophy, without reporting survey data or sample-based findings. The paper's stated aim is to contribute to emerging discourses on thinking machines and the agency of a rapidly changing biosphere.