The official White House TikTok account has posted a video featuring footage from Homeland Security that appears to show ICE arrests along with clips and music from the Pokemon anime theme song. The original Pokemon anime has an iconic theme song that is still fondly remembered and referenced to this day.
When the Pokemon anime's English dub debuted, it did so with the catchy theme song "Pokemon Theme" aka "Gotta Catch 'em All!" Future seasons of the Pokemon anime swapped it out with their own themes, but "Pokemon Theme" is still by far the most popular. Like many other popular songs, "Pokemon Theme" has been parodied to death and has also been used in countless TikTok videos, but one of the more recent ones has caused controversy.
White House Posts Controversial Pokemon ICE Video
On the evening of September 22, the official White House TikTok account posted a video that appears to show ICE arrests, with the footage credited to Homeland Security. Interspersed between the clips of the arrests are clips from the Pokemon anime theme song, showing Ash Ketchum and a Poke Ball being thrown. The video ends with Pokemon cards showing the people arrested and their alleged crimes.
As expected, the video has garnered mixed reactions. At the time of this writing, it has over 98,000 likes and 108,000 shares, but looking through the comments, the reactions are clearly split. The top comment asked Nintendo to sue the government for using the Pokemon theme song, while another accused the video of being an attempt to distract from the Epstein Files. One comment with hundreds of likes said, "A despicable attempt at leadership. This is shameful." Other comments praised whoever is running the White House TikTok account, saying they deserve a raise and another said that this is "exactly" what they voted for.
The Trump administration has had a somewhat hostile relationship with video games and TikTok. RFK Jr. Recently suggested that video games could be one of the causes of gun violence, and in his first term, Trump blamed a string of mass shootings on violent video games and called for regulation. TikTok, meanwhile, has been at risk of being banned on multiple occasions, though Trump has continued to push back the shutdown date and the latest news is that a deal is being reached between US and China to keep TikTok operational in the states indefinitely.
Nintendo and The Pokemon Company have not commented on the White House using the Pokemon theme song to promote ICE arrests at the time of this writing.
- Release Date
- 1997 - 2023
- Network
- TV Tokyo, TV Osaka, TV Aichi, TVh, TVQ, TSC
- Directors
- Shigeru Omachi, Koji Ogawa, Fumihiro Ueno, Hideki Hiroshima, Maki Kodaira, Makoto Ooga, Ayumi Moriyama, Keitaro Motonaga, Shigeru Ueda, Fumihiro Yoshimura, Minoru Ohara, Yoshitaka Makino, Kiyoshi Egami, Makoto Sokuza, Bjarne Heuser, Naoki Murata, Kenichi Nishida, Tomoe Makino, Masahiko Watanabe, Hiroaki Takagi, Tazumi Mukaiyama, Ryohei Horiuchi, Yoshihiro Oda, Hiromichi Matano
Cast
-
Rica MatsumotoSatoshi (voice) -
Ikue OtaniPikachu (voice)
