A Baseless Kneejerk Reaction to the Three Newly Announced Pokémon

Pokémon remains the greatest thing that could have possibly happened to 11-year-old me. It started, as so many important stories of youth and young boyhood do, with competitive collectible trading cards. One day they just appeared overnight: boys with backpacks would huddle around in schoolyard groups, skimming through their own decks, swapping, skimming again, holding their prized shinies aloft in special little protective baggies, the prized trades, swapping again, constantly, huge decks, two or three hundred cards, this thing I'd never heard of. Someone palmed a Ponyta card off to me and that day I made a vow. "I'm going to swap this," I said, solemnly, holding Ponyta up to the sky, "as many times as I can in one day!" I then immediately swapped it with Paul Schultz for a Diglett. Paul Schultz knew what he was doing. Fuck you, Paul Schultz. A Diglett is fucking worthless. A Diglett is less than worthless. I still have that Diglett, somewhere, in a special Pokémon card case I saved up my birthday money to buy. Because Diglett is fucking worthless.

The point is Pokémon is extremely important and responsible for both treasured childhood memories and longstanding near-baseless grudges. That's why today's announcement of the three starter Pokémon for the upcoming 3DS release of Pokémon Sun and Moon is so important and so iconic. In 17 years, whatever dystopia or utopia we've carved the year 2033 to be—flying cars and hover poverty, laser crime and astronaut pills, whatever world we will have molded for ourselves—there will be thousands of men and women, just simple idiot children now, who will have a grudge with their own personal Paul Schultz over Rowlet, Litten, or Popplio. There will be thousands of grown adults who still treasure a tiny, foil-enhanced trading card of these Pokémon, resigned to an attic somewhere back where their mom lives.

Shit though, look at Rowlet:

Rowlet is that kid at your school who loved his mom, like, way too much. Your mom made you invite Rowlet to your eighth birthday, even though you really didn't want to, even though you knew this would hit your cred. Your mom has no idea of how cut-throat it is out in these playground streets. She has no idea about the tiny, faltering little hierarchy at play here. Unless you are actively strong and prone to violence, or really good at soccer, there's no way you will naturally rise to the top of the pile. You have to carve your own little niche out in the middle; you got to work for every drop of credibility. And then your mom makes you write out birthday party invitations for everyone in your class, and that includes Rowlet.

Rowlet turns up to your party with his hair neatly parted (by his mom) and wearing a waistcoat and bowtie (picked by his mom) and won't leave your side, won't leave you alone (because his mom told him that you are best friends now) and Rowlet wets himself and Rowlet has a really low level egg allergy that means your mom isn't allowed to serve anyone else birthday cake and Rowlet runs slower than everyone else and Rowlet sucks at hide and seek and you all try and escape Rowlet, you all try and sprint off and weave your way through the labyrinthine back garden you are playing in, all go off and form your own birthday party, a Rowlet-free zone, and then when you come back after 40 minutes everyone is like, "Where's Rowlet?" and "Yo, where'd Rowlet go?" and your mom makes everyone split up and look for him and obviously you find Rowlet, sitting cross-legged in your treehouse and sobbing, those big sobs where you can–'t re–here–lly ta–alk pro–perl–ee–hee, and your mom asks Rowlet what's wrong and Rowlet takes a big slobbery breath and goes, "nobody LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIKES ME," and then everyone has to fucking stop what they are doing and go like, "oh, Rowlet" and "we do like you, Rowlet" and like Rowlet, mate: It's my fucking birthday, here—it's not about you, you little fucker, Jesus grow a spine, fuck me.

So that's Rowlet.

To truly measure the coolness of the other two Pokémon announced today we have to invent a new metric that I am calling "Are They Pikachu, Though?" Here's how it works: If the new Pokémon are Pikachu, then they are cool with me, because Pikachu is the best unevolved Pokémon there is*, **. Obviously it is impossible for either of the two Pokémon announced today to actually be Pikachu—that ship has sailed—and so they will be marked for coolness on a Pikachu scale: Five Pikachus is cool, and zero Pikachus is uncool. Five Pikachus can only be achieved by Pikachu. I did not say this was a fair system.

*Don't chat shit at me about Mew, Mewtwo, or any Pokémon invented after the original 151, because I do not want to hear about them.
** The best evolved Pokémon there is is Blastoise.

Popplio, now this is a Pokémon I like. This guy is like… how to explain this? I cannot look at this picture of Popplio without hearing a honking noise. Like a clown horn. Popplio is a fun guy. I can tell that straight away. This dude is here to entertain. He's essentially a seal with a clown's ruffle. This dude is circus. His big flapper says, "Eyy, buddy: high-five!" He can definitely juggle. He can definitely balance things on his nose. If I had to guess his starting move, I would go with "aggressive juggle." His finisher is probably "cough up some fish bones so hard you think he's going to choke." Another consideration: Popplio's name is also exceptionally fun to say in an Italian accent while doing a big molto bene hand gesture. Try it. Close your eyes, and imagine you're in any Robert De Niro film from the 90s. Someone walks into you and spills your drink. You're a made guy, this won't do. You just scored a whole bunch of cocaine, and you intend to both sell and take it. You can't take this disrespect. And you turn to the guy and go, "Hey. HEY. Popplio, motherfucker! Can't you see?" And then guy hurries to palm down your lapels and says something desperate and breathless like, "I'm sorry, Roddy, I didn't know it was you!" On this basis alone: Popplio is a cool Pokémon, and I approve of Nintendo inventing him.

PIKACHU SCALE: Popplio is four Pikachus out of five.

Litten is a lit kitten, i.e. a fire-type Pokémon that is also a cat, but could also be a frankly disastrous attempt by Nintendo to dip an innocent toe in the youth slang market. Because the kids say that, these days, on their Tumblrs, in line for their Supreme drops: "Oh," the kids say, "it's lit." And this kitten is lit. It's literally lit. It can control and conjure fire and use it to injure other animals. That is the living embodiment of lit. Both ways. That's double-lit.

I fear what the future of this might be. A large Snorlax rip-off called "$WAG." A water-type Pokémon called "woke bae." Clefairy learns a new song, and it's "Why You Always Lying?" In the innocent and pure world of Pokémon, I fear the encroachment of fleeting youth slang and dank, dank, tropically dank memes. The surest way to ruin something is to splice it into the modern ether. Keep Pokémon in its own world, away from our awfulness. Keep Pokémon in its own world, away from our horrid memes.

That said—and even though Pokémon traditionally has a bad time with cats, I mean Meowth sucked, Mew sucked, Mewtwo sucked, Persian sucks—I do get the vibe that Litten will evolve into something very cool indeed. A kind of Charizard/tiger mash-up creature. Fire cannons coming out of its shoulders. Eighty feet high. Really cool finishing move where it explodes. Litten is definitely the coolest Pokémon out of the latest crop. I am definitely starting with this Pokémon.

PIKACHU SCALE: Litten is also four Pikachus out of five, despite being slightly cooler than Popplio. I'm sorry. This Pikachu scale was flawed from the outset.

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