Masuda on if Humans eat Pokémon and What's in Those Balls?

US magazine GameInformer asked some probing questions towards Pokémon Director Junichi Masuda. Do humans eat Pokémon?

Aside from development questions on the latest installment, Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, there are those curious tidbits that interviewers usually shy away from asking - including what's it like for those critters when they go inside a Pokéball or what happens if a gym leader runs low on badges.

Firstly, those balls. Masuda feels that "it's a space that's incredibly comfortable for Pokémon", and decides it's down to the player to imagine what lurks inside. Could the clumsy Ask Ketchum ever enter one? "It's called a Pokéball, so probably not."

Another interesting area that's tricky to answer is whether the folk in the Pokémon world actually eat Pokémon. Why do fishermen farm Magikarp?

There's a lot of fruits and vegetables in the world of Pokémon. There is also a variety of snacks and various candies and whatnot that come from the different regions. The Pokémon world is much more technologically advanced than the world of our own, so perhaps there is probably a lot of different food that we can't even think of.

As for those levelling-up treats, Rare Candy, could a trainer ingest one instead? "You probably could eat a rare candy as a human, but it might not taste very good", Masuda remarked.

GameInformer also joked about whether or not a gym leader would retire if running out of those essential badges. The short answer is no, but only if "their ideals change or they want to do something else in life." Would they enter a great slump if shown to be beaten by hundreds of trainers? "They would probably be overjoyed by that fact, that there were so many great trainers that came to challenge them."

Finally, the world of Pokémon describes the non-Pokémon characters as human, but GameFreak doesn't consider the world of Pikachu and co. as "Earth", rather a completely different world in itself. Masuda feels that by limiting Pokémon to Planet Earth, the team would have to consider more so how "various elements work on Earth".

The land of Kando and Johto is thought to be "really similar to Earth, but is a different planet of its own with people in it who may be similar to people on Earth, but they have different values so they care about different things... where problems we face on Earth just wouldn't happen".

For more on Masuda's world of Pokémon, be sure to read the GameInformer interview.