...as a random side-note, I think the 10-year-old starting age is established by the anime alone (and probably adapted by the manga, but it's been a while since I read them, so...). Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the games ever mention what age you are in the beginning--everyone just calls you 'kid' or 'child' or something, which indicates it's still ridiculously young, but no exact age.
OK, I just started up my old Blue version again (the save file's still there.... I'll be damned), and apparently, they didn't bring up the age that Pokemon Trainers start off at. I also dug out the instruction booklet, and to my surprise, the introduction sounds a LOT like the scenario that Special started off with: an 11-year old (not a 10-year old) who just randomly hears about the local professor giving out starting Pokemon and decides to pay him a visit one day.
BTW, I just thought I'd point out: apparently, they constantly refer to you as a kid in Colloseum as well, which is pretty ****ed up considering Leo is, without doubt, the oldest protagonist featured in a Pokemon RPG to date (he looks to be in his late teens AT LEAST. The game also indicates that he's particularly experienced due to the fact that you start off this game with two evolved Pokemon whose levels are four times as high as the Level 5 starters you usually get, not to mention the whole "used to be in an evil organization" bit). Now, I don't mind it too much if Leo's being called out as a kid by all the seemingly middle-aged+ Trainers roaming around, of which Colosseum contains a lot, but I think something's seriously wrong when that roller-skater you Snatch a Pokemon from in Pyrite Town, who's gotta be no more than 3/4s Leo's age, calls him a "little boy" (whether this was Nintendo of America's fault or something that was actually in the Japanese version, I have yet to find out).
I completely agree with what you said (except game canonically, I don't think there is a starting age), and also point out that R/B/Y/G were a lot... darker than their predecessors. They made more sense, and kind of had more depth. When the game really took off, the show and furture games aimed at younger age groups, and I think some of the logic of the situation was really lost.
oh god, not this **** again. I'm only gonna say this once: I HATE blind nostalgics. Seriously, I am so sick of people praising the 1st seasons of the anime as the greatest thing since sliced bread, whining about Misty being gone, saying any Pokemon past the original 151 sucked balls, etc. The idea that the franchise has gotten less "mature" is just another one of these false beliefs. So what if in the anime, a guy used a gun and James wore a female body suit? That kind of stuff would no doubt still be around today if they didn't try appealing to the rest of the world and our censorship standards (likewise, if the anime producers considered international releases from the outset, such material probably wouldn't have been around at all, not even in the earlier Japanese episodes).
So what if Team Rocket killed a Pokemon and there were dead Pokemon in the Lavender Tower? Is that any different from Team Rocket cutting the tails off of Slowpoke and Mt. Pyre? Face it, since the beginning, Pokemon's content seems to be below the content of your average shounen manga (remember,
shounen=/=adult), and this is taking into account all the various multimedia in the franchise (except maybe Dengeki! Pikachu, and even that doesn't exceed shounen manga level). Hell, if anything, I'd say the franchise has gotten a slight bit more thought-provoking and full of substance over the years (even if the demograph is more or less the same). We've got the games featuring more depth to the characters, villains trying to manipulate the universe to create their views of an ideal utopia (coincidentally, I've been planning to use such antagonists myself).
Also, the anime's writing has come a LONG way from the days when unevolved, personality-lacking Pokemon were doing nothing besides sitting around acting cute and gimmicky half the time in order to sell plushies (the mini-movies that played before the movies seemed to be a testament to this... only the last one, "The Dancing Pokemon at the Secret Base", seemed particularly good), and they were all capable of pulling off cheap, deus ex wins against what easily seemed like tougher opponents in some short, crappy battle (it wasn't really until Orange and Jouto that battle scenes greatly improved and actually invoked strategies more often. It also helps that nowadays, more Pokemon are evolving and showing actual character development). Let's not forget stuff like "Dare da?"/"Who's That Pokemon?", and Pokemon Ieru Kana/Pokemon Rap (as you could tell by the slashes, these were present in both sides of the world, the international aspect and this franchise's place of origin being something I clearly haven't been ignoring throughout any of the posts I've made).
To put simply, Pokemon has been making some attempts to look less like the giant marketing gimmick that it actually is. It's really shown progress from trying to senselessly wh*re out plushies and getting the little kids to recognize every Pokemon they could potentially buy toys of. Though, it's still quite a ways off from the likes of, say, Digimon, which actually tells a story and doesn't bide its time introducing every single monster (literally hundreds of Digimon have yet to make an animated debut) and/or aspect of the franchise to the consumer (yes, even the Special manga is guilty of this in spite of the fact that it follows a lot less of an episodic format than the anime), which arguably makes it one of the most well-done marketing anime out there.
