Pokémon

Pikachu Used To Be Way Cuter (and Fatter)

Pikachu, the iconic Pokémon from Pocket Monsters, looks slightly different these days. Adorable, sure, but not nearly as adorable as in 1997, back when the Pokémon anime first debuted. Not nearly as fat, either. Over the weekend, a thread called “Pikachu in the early days was way too cute” (初期のピカチュウかわいすぎ) appeared on 2ch, Japan’s largest…

Deciphering Pokémon‘s Mysterious Language

The Pocket Monsters anime originally used Japanese writing for on-screen text and signs. A pain in the ass if you need to localize the cartoon into other languages. So the Pokémon folks came up with a solution: a made-up language. A Pokélingo, if you will. Starting with anime series Pocket Monster Best Wishes!, the anime…

Realistic Pokémon Starters Are Way Cooler Than The Ones In The Games

I’ve accepted that we’ll probably never see something particularly realistic when it comes to Pokémon designs. Nintendo is all about the cartoony looks that aren’t graphically intensive. But sometimes, when I look at artistic renditions of Pokémon— like these ones by Sam Yang over at CGHub—I can’t help but think of what-could-have-been. The one above…

Pokémon Candy Comes with an Important Warning

In the Pokémon game, Rare Candy can be used to increase the level of a Pocket Monster. In Japan, you can buy Rare Candy (“fushigi na ame” or ふしぎなアメ) at Pokémon Centers across the country. But, bad news… As the candy’s label clearly states, “Even if you eat the candy, you will not raise your…

Oh, So THAT’S How Magikarp Became The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Um, I Mean Sinnoh.

Magikarp may be useless, but that doesn’t mean the poor Pokémon-fish can’t be funny. Look no further than the great Magikarp web comics below, which chronicle Magikarp’s misadventures—this one in particular riffs off of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Click for full size. Pretty great, right? The creator—mysterious “Chris S.”—has a whole Tumblr full of…

Video Game Plates So Gorgeous You’ll Pause Before Dropping Your Filthy Food On Them

Wait! Before you go reaching for your wallets, you should know that the 8-bit styled dinnerware pictured above doesn’t actually exist. The images come from superstar graphic designer Olly Moss‘ Tumblr and are the result of some noodling around while he had time on his hands. Moss says that the dishes riff on the famous…

A Collection of Crappy Animated Images

Just as not every anime can be a winner, not every animated image can, either! With all those still frames to deal with, you can bet some stinkers are going to slip past quality control. They always do. In Japanese, horribly drawn anime stills are called “sakuga houkai” (作画崩壊). They’re not necessarily only mistakes, but…

Download title Pokémon Scramble U allows 100 Pokémon to fight at once. It’s slated for this spring in Japan.

Naming Your Son “Pikachu” Will Get Him Girls. Wait, What?

Selecting names ain’t easy—especially in Japan. Some Japanese parents consult with fortune tellers in hopes of picking a name that will bring their child good luck. One soothsayer has one. That name is Pikachu. Kotaku previously covered why Pikachu is a terrible name for Japanese children. Today, a fortune teller tells us why it’s a…

Pokémon Has A New Eevee Evolution. How Many Eevees Do We Even Need?

That Pokémon above? That’d be Sylveon, the latest and likely most cutesy Eevee evolution to date. It’s debuting in Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, bringing our Eevee evolution options up to eight Pokémon. These include: Vaporeon, Jolteon, Flareon, Espeon, Umbreon, Leafeon, and Glaceon. That’s a lot of options. I’d like to imagine a future where…

This Week’s Pokémon Was Unexpectedly Sexy

Tonight, like every Thursday night in Japan, the Pokémon anime was broadcast across the country. This week, however, there was apparently some (accidental?) sexy time captured in this GIF and uploaded to 2ch for internet infamy. Gotta screw ’em all! 今週のポケモンエロすぎｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗｗ [2ch] Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest…

Now There’s an Official App for Watching Pokemon Cartoons

I had no idea I wanted an app that featured a weekly rotation of 50 episodes of the Pokemon cartoon sorted by game region until just now. The free Pokemon TV App is here, and it wants to show you its Pokemons. Not only does the free app, available today on iTunes and Google Play,…

Beware of Fake Pokémon Scans

This Pokémon trainer art does resemble the male trainer in very real Pokémon X/Y screens. But it is not a real Japanese magazine scan. It looks like one, but it’s so fake. Here’s why. For example, here it gives “atarashishii” as the reading for the Japanese word for “new”, which is “atarashii” (新しい). This mistake…

Things Get Weird When You Look At Pokémon As An Allegory For Slavery

Unlike the Pokémon games before it, Pokémon Black/White almost explored something interesting: why we catch Pokémon, and whether or not keeping/battling with them is “okay.” But before the games said anything meaningful or deep, they took the easy route and made Team Plasma—the group intent on “liberating” Pokémon and therefore the reason you’re thinking about…

Hella Jelly: Japan Gets Stupidest, Yet Possibly Most Amazing Event-Pokémon

There are some cool event Pokémon distributed for promotional purposes—legendaries, for instance. And then there are event Pokémon that leave you scratching your head. Enter level 99 shiny Magikarp, which will be an event Pokémon distributed by a Pokémon Centre in Nagoya. The occasion? They’re moving into a new building according to Serebii. The Makikarp…

This Pokémon X/Y Fake Amuses Japan, At Least

Blurry Japanese magazine scans are often a source of new info about eagerly anticipated games. Games like Pokémon X/Y. That is, unless the scans are totally fake. Earlier this month, what’s supposedly (apparently?) a “leaked” image from a Japanese magazine popped up on YouTube. To date, the video has been viewed over 50,000 times, and…

Pokémon Goes Noir In This Terrific Comic For Grown Ups

As kids who were/are Pokémon fans grow up, their tastes are growing up alongside them. Just like you can find more “adult” tales based on, say, the Star Wars universe, Pokécenter is a comic by Ray Bruwelheide that isn’t exactly you’ll find coming from Nintendo themselves. Down the bottom, it says “to be continued”. God,…

If This is What a Free-to-Play Pokemon Game Would Be Like, Then No Thanks.

Zuko Monsters has several advantages over Pokemon, the long-lived monster collecting role-playing game series that clearly serves as its inspiration. It’s got sharp and colorful graphics filled with personality, with nary a pixel to be seen. Timed finger taps during battles add a simple element of interactivity that Pokemon‘s battles lack. Zuko Monsters is also…

Now We Can All Pretend Our 3DS Is A Pokédex

I’ve never used the Pokémon compendium known as the Pokédex much in the Pokémon games, but the idea of having a physical Pokédex is still really cool. Sure, you could buy a toy Pokédex, or, you can put a decal on your red 3DS to make it look like one instead! If you think the…

Let’s Rank the Pokémon Games, Best to Worst

We did it with Halo, Grand Theft Auto, and Final Fantasy, and now we’re back at it again to rank the Pokémon series. The Pokémon world is an enormous one, one that spans over 20 core titles (mostly with slight variations) and countless other side stories (30 by my count), but for newcomers into the…