Pokemon Is Set In A World Of Pure Horror
Most of you probably wish you lived in the world of Pokemon, but when you look a little closer, it’s legitimately horrifying.
You Are Reading :Pokemon Is Set In A World Of Pure Horror
Category : Pokemon
Ah, Pokemon. The brilliant post-scarcity world where little kids get to ditch school and leg it around with magical creatures, never needing to worry about money or education or proper careers. Such a wonderful concept – shame it’s a great big facade for the most horrific universe ever conceived by the human mind.
What’s that? Pokemon is lovely? It sure is, right up until it isn’t. I used to bring a plastic bucket and spade out my back garden and scour the muck for Diglett. I’d often look to the sky, convinced that planes were, in fact, Ho-oh. Then it dawned on me: why on Earth would I want to live in a world where ghosts roam free, devouring people’s souls, spirit, and vitality? Given that it’s officially spooky season, I thought it was worth writing a Halloween-inspired piece on why Pokemon is the scariest shit that ever existed.
This has been the case ever since Red & Blue launched over 25 years ago. While we’ve all heard the stories about Lavender Town and Hypno, it’s important to note that everything in Pokemon is terrifying, actually. Consider Gengar, one of Gen 1’s most enduringly popular Pokemon. In its Pokedex entry for Sun, we get some valuable and petrifying information about what a chance encounter with Gengar might actually entail. “Should you feel yourself attacked by a sudden chill, it is evidence of an approaching Gengar,” the description reads. “There is no escaping it. Give up.”
Imagine this in real-world terms. You’ve just seen a nice dog in the park. You type a description into Google to find out what breed it is. “There is no escaping a golden retriever,” Google says. “Give up.”
Give up! If that’s not the most foreboding warning of all time, what is? For context, Ghost Pokemon are the second rarest type in the Pokemon world, but they still constitute 6.55 percent of all known ‘mons. Given how prevalent pocket monsters are in the games and anime, that’s a whole lot of ghosts knocking about. The funny thing is, Gengar is nowhere near the most bloodcurdling.
“Dusclops’ body is completely hollow,” reads the Beckon Pokemon’s Dex entry in Pokemon Ruby. “There is nothing at all inside. It is said that its body is like a black hole. This Pokemon will absorb anything into its body, but nothing will ever come back out.” A bit eerie – ominous, even – but, you know, just stay away and that. The real problem lies with Dusclops’ evolution, Dusknoir.
“At the bidding of transmissions from the spirit world, it steals people and Pokemon away,” reads its Sword description. “No one knows whether it has a will of its own.”
“With the mouth on its belly, Dusknoir swallows its target whole,” says Shield’s Dex. “The soul is the only thing eaten – Dusknoir disgorges the body before departing.” So this big, scary ghost lad takes orders from a parallel dimension, steals people against its own will, and devours their soul before regurgitating their life-depleted body. You want to live in a world where this can happen while you’re waddling home from the pub? Don’t lie. You don’t.
Speaking of souls, Spectrier can punt yours right out of your body. Palossand castles conceal “masses of dried-up bones from those whose vitality it has drained.” Houses where Chandelure is used in place of a non-sentient chandelier constantly host family funerals. Mimikyu, after having its cutesy disguise broken, involuntarily and instantly kills anyone who looks at it. Shedinja has a similar effect – if you peer into the crack on its back, you die. Funny how trainers are literally forced to view their Pokemon’s backs at all times, eh? You nab yourself a Shedinja, you better get your will in order.
I reckon one of the most concerning cases in Pokemon history outweighs all of the above by a long shot. Do you know Drifblim? The cute balloon lad that looks like it’s dressed up to attract kids at a party? Let’s go through its Pokedex entries for Sword, Ultra Moon, Shield, and Ultra Sun in that precise order.
“Some say this Pokemon is a collection of souls burdened with regrets, silently drifting through the dusk.”
“The raw material for the gas inside its body is souls. When its body starts to deflate, it’s thought to carry away people and Pokemon.”
“It grabs people and Pokemon and carries them off somewhere. Where do they go? Nobody knows.”
“There’s a rumor that if you catch a Drifblim floating on the wind at dusk, you’ll be carried away to the afterlife.”
So, basically, nobody knows what the story with Drifblim is, but if you consider all of the evidence it appears that it a) is an entity made of regretful souls, b) needs to consume more souls to survive, c) accomplishes this by ferrying people into the unknown, and d) brings them to the afterlife because, actually, it kills them. Wonderful!
A choice selection of other lovely creatures you might encounter while you’re out for a walk: Froslass freezes handsome men and uses them as decorations in its lair; Hydreigon uses all of its three heads to “consume and destroy everything”; and Hypno, as we all know, puts people to sleep, tastes their dreams, and, if they’re having a nice one, carries them off to some unknown place and almost definitely maybe eats their brain. Not their actual brain, just the thoughts in it, which somehow feels even worse.
My favourite Dex entry is for Yveltal in Pokemon Y, which reads, “When its life comes to an end, it absorbs the life energy of every living thing and turns into a cocoon once more.” Sure, most of the above Pokemon can bump into you and consume every fiber of your being, but at least you can lock yourself in a fallout bunker with tinned food and Strontium-12-laced cartons of milk, right? Wrong. If Yveltal dies, so does literally everyone and everything in existence. Imagine the existential dread of knowing a Legendary Pokemon you’ll never find can die at any moment and bring you with it.
Pokemon is a magical world full of happiness and adventure? Yeah, right. Pokemon is pure nightmare fuel. Our world might be rubbish, but at least there’s no chance of you being cryogenically frozen as a Christmas decoration in Shiver Snowfields for all eternity. Really makes you think, eh?
See more : PokemonWe