I fell in love with Pokémon as a kid, and like many others, I never really grew out of that phase. Whenever Nintendo launches a new mainline game, I’m always quick to grab a copy and start playing. Adulthood has done nothing to dull my love of that classic Pokémon formula.
But I realized recently that while I’ve continued playing Pokémon as I’ve aged, I did stop watching Pokémon at some point along the way. When the anime first came out when I was a kid, I woke early to watch every episode on TV before going to school. I was so hyped when the first Pokémon movie was announced! Then at some point in my transition to adulthood, I just lost interest.
It was this very thought that spurred me to do a rewatch of the first season that had hooked me so long ago, hoping to rekindle some of that childhood magic. But what I found was a three-episode arc that got me thinking about what I’d actually want from a more adult-focused Pokémon movie or TV series: A lot more horror.
The specific episodes I’m talking about are 21-23, starting with “Abra and the Psychic Showdown.” This is the arc in which Ash has to overcome the Psychic-type Gym Leader in Saffron City to earn his next badge. What he encounters is an extremely powerful girl named Sabrina who has seemingly lost her marbles. When he loses his first battle against her, she shrinks him and his friends down to doll-size, places them in a little town, and then tries to straight-up murder them with a toy ball.
Seems pretty intense for a kids' show, right? It only gets darker as we learn more about Sabrina’s life. After accidentally turning her mother into a doll as a child, she split part of her personality into a creepy puppet and basically lost her mind. Ash is later able to defeat her and help save her family using the power of laughter (via Haunter), which certainly softens up the ending of this story, but it’s still some pretty wild lore leading up to that.
As a kid, I absolutely loved these kinds of details and it made playing the game that much more fun and interesting. Rewatching as an adult, however, it just makes me want more of this kind of thing from the franchise. There’s so much room to dive into the darker side of Pokémon, and I can’t help but think psychological horror would be the most natural way to go.
It’s easy to forget that Pokémon aren’t just adorable little companions; they are literally monsters. It’s right there in the name! These are terrifying creatures with supernatural powers that have canonically killed people. Humanity may be able to coexist with them via superior technology, but that doesn’t take away from the fear they can potentially invoke.
Psychological horror seems like the obvious direction for an adult Pokémon movie because the franchise has already shown just how terrifying Psychic abilities can be. The Sabrina arc in the first season of the anime was just a taste of what that could look like, but the first movie was where it really escalated.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/pokemon-horror-movie-possibilities
