YMMV / South Park S 3 E 11 Chinpokomon

• Americans Hate Tingle: The episode experienced backlash from Japanese nationalists due to its stereotypes about Japan as well as mockery of Emperor Hirohito and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Ultimately leading to it's banning in Japan, with South Park never touching Pokémon as a result, outside of cameos.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The Alabama Man commercial. Domestic abuse and rampant alcoholism advertised to kids with a catchy jingle.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The parents' befuddlement over the Chinpokomon craze is this when you remember the franchise it was spoofing proved to have massive staying power, developing a huge Periphery Demographic as the kids of the 1990s grew into young adults who still enjoyed the franchise. Today, the parents of South Park would likely have fond memories of watching the show and collecting the monsters themselves.
  • One of the Chinpokomon is a metal rooster, which looks a lot like Skarmory from the second generation of Pokémon that came out later that year. Additionally, the Ash Expy mentions said monster being able to evolve if it learns a certain move, which became a requirement for several Pokemon after Pokemon Diamond & Pearl.
  • The rival character to the Ash-expy bears a uncanny strong resemblance to a future rival Ash himself would gain a decade later in the Diamond & Pearl anime.
  • This episode features several white American characters who speak Japanese and become obsessed with its culture (or at least the Theme Park Version thereof) after watching a lot of anime. In other words, it more or less predicted weeaboo/otaku culture.
  • The climax of the episode has the parents pretending to like Chinpokomon too so that their kids will decide it's not cool anymore and give it up. A photo fad known as "planking" was similarly killed off when older adults started doing it.
  • One of the advertised Chinpokomon being explicitly named as just Shoe ends up being a lot funnier in hindsight, with how much discourse the higher abundance of object Pokémon ended up causing in the fanbase in later generations. And while we never got a shoe Pokémon, in 2024 a Shoe Digimon was revealed. And its name? Shoemon.
  • The Chinpokomon slogan states that they must all be collected to defeat some unknown power. In Pokémon Legends: Arceus you need to catch all the Pokemon to earn the right to fight the ultimate power of the Pokemon world, a goal that was never a requirement in any other Pokemon game.
• Shallow Parody:
  • Chinpokomon is designed to look as shallow and Merchandise-Driven as possible, so accuracy to the Pokémon franchise takes a backseat to the greater point about trends and marketing. The parody of the anime is depicted as not much more than an Ash Ketchum expy rambling about becoming a master, and the video game doesn't resemble any of the Pokémon games released at the time, as it's just a simulator of the Pearl Harbor bombing. The Chinpokomon collectables in South Park: The Stick of Truth, however, are a lot more of an Affectionate Parody including expys of specific characters introduced after the episode, such as Lucario.
  • Chinpokomon also falls victim to the usual shallow parody tropes of anime in general; the characters speak in Japanese accents, which never happens in real English dubs of anime, only in spoofs; and kanji and other Japanese motifs are constantly bouncig around on the screen, when at the time American distributors tended to go out of their way to remove all traces that the shows were made in Japan, heavily editing the visuals for Cultural Translation, with the Pokémon anime in particular being notorious for it.
• Unintentional Period Piece: The episode treats Pokémon like just another heavily-marketed passing trend, which was the common perception when the franchise first came to America in the late 1990s. In subsequent years it's become one of the most profitable franchises in the world, consistently selling well to children and the young adults who grew up with the franchise. Matt and Trey have both admitted that they vastly underestimated the franchise's staying power.

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