Withheld's poke theories: Pokemon world is actually the afterlife!

Think about it...
-Nobody seems to age. I think each person is in the age he's the
most comfortable at and stays there forever. For instance, persons
with mature interests, like Professor Oak, feel more comfortable
at a middle aged body. The innocent and asexual Ash is better
suited to being a child. The flirty Brock prefers an age at early-mid
20s.
-Pokemon attacks that should logically be fatal (ex. flamethrower,
thundershock) only result in gag cosmetic damage. That's because
everybody is already dead, so they cannot die.
-Anybody can just decide to wander around the world without any
preparations. There is no need to take money with him/her, since
there is no need for nutrition. Of course, people can still get hungry
and eat food when they find it, but they won't die without it. I'm
pretty sure that Ash, Brock and Misty (or Ash and his companions in
the later seasons) have gone by without food for days many times.
Also, there is no need for new clothes. You can wear the same
clothes for years and they won't wear out, because everything is
eternal in the afterlife. Your body will not get dirty, which means
that, after walking for almost a full day, you will not have to deal
with unpleasant smells.
-This also explains why there are no animals. Pokemon are indeed
the souls of dead animals! For instance, pikachus, are the souls of
mice or other rodents. Larger pokemon, like Charizard or Gyarados,
are the souls of proud carnivores.
-Now, you might ask: ''Duh, if it's the afterlife, why are the bad guys
not in Hell?''. Well, it seems there is no physical distinction between
Heaven and Hell. Everybody ends up at the same place after death,
Heaven and Hell being just states of mind. In this afterlife world,
villains can never do any evil; God orchestrates things so that they
always fail (which is why Team Rocket is always defeated somehow).
Therefore, good guys can enjoy eternal happiness, each of them doing
what fullfills him/her, whereas the bad guys are tortured just by the
thought that their plans will never succeed.

...or it's because it's a cartoon and not the real world.

No, Pokemon is not real life, humans in the Pokemon world are practically superhuman compared to IRL humans. The Pokemon World is a fictional world where things work differently in comparison to our own world, like many other fictional settings. Ash never ages due to status quo and the fact that the show is aimed towards the younger generation watching it. This theory is too bleak for a children's show and too contrived to be true, I doubt Pokemon takes place in the afterlife especially when it is known that Pokemon and people die in the Pokemon world. Unless you're implying there's an afterlife beyond the afterlife.

Junichi Masuda once stated in an interview this:

We actually don't think of the world of Pokémon as Earth. If we were to do that, we would kind of be limited by what we could do. By thinking about how physical objects work on Earth and how various elements work on Earth, we would kind of be limited to that if we thought of it as Earth. We think of it as a place that is 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. It's the type of place, the Pokémon world, where problems we face on Earth just wouldn't happen. There wouldn't be global warming, water shortages, or anything like that. It's a world where the people in it really want to work together with each other. Their value system is such where they would prefer to work together and eliminate these problems rather than feud.

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So no, it's an eath similar to ours but at the same time not that similar.

This "afterlife" theory reminds me of the "Ash's Coma" theory, only difference being that the Pokémon World is accessible after death.

Kuzehiko said:

So no, it's an eath similar to ours but at the same time not that similar.

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In the early 2000s, when I first got into Pokémon, I thought of it as taking place in a far-away setting, similar to Star Wars taking place "a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away."
Even now, at times I still think of the Pokémon universe being something far, far away from our world, like the aforementioned Star Wars galaxy, or even ALF's home planet "Melmac" that had been destroyed.