Are Pokemon Tech or Nature?

One of the things I love about the Pokemon mythology is the complete ambiguity about what Pokemon actually are.

On one hand:

• Pokemon are found in the wild.
• They can eat, sleep, and breathe, and reproduce.
• They seem to have a history that extends as far back as any complex life.
• They are normally wild but can be tamed.

But on the other hand:

• You teach them moves by using disks on them.
• Once caught, they live in little electronic-looking ball thingies.
• They can be stored and retrieved though a computer system.
• You plug them in to recharge them (more or less).

So what are they?

Just normal animals maybe? Then technology has advanced to an awesome degree to allow them to be captured in pokeballs in what can only be a form of stasis, and to learn new moves matrix-style from a disk. And the pokedex, is an amazing piece of tricorder technology to be able to instantly scan, quantify, and categorize them.

Maybe a form of nano technology? Machine-creatures capable of assuming diverse tangible physical forms, or of collapsing into a dense nano-mush for storage?

Or is the whole thing some kind of huge augmented-reality game that has become so ubiquitous that everyone talks about it as if it’s completely real? And if so are we really witnessing a dystopia where people are so obsessed with the game they’ve forgotten life used to exist without it?

Maybe I don’t even care, because every one of these worlds is a world I want to live in.