birdboys-pokedex:

Wishiwashi have long symbolized organized labor in Alola, for while any individual Wishiwashi is only marginally stronger than a Magikarp, they can unite into a mighty leviathan. Pamphlets from Alola’s early industrial age exhorted workers to unite by picturing lone Wishiwashi chained or beaten by Grumpig, and their mighty school form chasing those same Grumpig away. In this period of Alola’s history, simply owning a Wishiwashi was strongly suggestive of union sympathies, complete with scattered reports of bosses blacklisting workers on the basis of their pokemon teams.

Yet humans can interpret their pokemon in a variety of ways, and a certain dictator ruling a coastal country far from Alola also prized the Wishiwashi, even while shooting striking workers; to him and his sycophants, it represented national unity, not class struggle.  And to be fair, the notion of many pokemon banding together into a powerful school can approximate any union, not simply a labor union; scattered universities around the world have chosen Wishiwashi as their mascots for this very reason, and argue that, as Wishiwashi join into schools, they have the strongest claim of all on these pokemon.

Yet pokemon rarely neatly map onto human symbolism, and the oft-praised unity of Wishiwashi does not last for a whole battle; when wounded, a Wishiwashi’s comrades will scatter, leaving it to face defeat alone.  While an embittered few have compared this trait to the actions of scabs or traitors, later generations of revolutionary guerillas have found inspiration in this behavior.   For while one Wishiwashi may be defeated, or even (in the wild) eaten when they scatter, the rest survive to re-school and take revenge on their predators, whenever they get their chance.  Although they are amazingly strong when united, Wishiwashi, like successful revolutionaries, grasp the importance of surviving to fight another day.