An unprecedented leak took place this past weekend, and a full terabyte of Game Freak’s internal files are currently being sifted through. I’m not here to discuss the moral ramifications of these files getting out (I think it’s cool the developer stuff is public, but the personal information of employees is a big no-no), but instead I wish to comment on the biggest controversy that has launched from these leaks: The Pokémon myths.
A large amount of lore regarding the origins of the world of Pokémon was nestled in these files, with most of it being a fascinating look at how Game Freak plotted out the interactions between Legendary Pokémon. Dialga and Palkia created the lake trio and Gen 3’s box art legends? Pseudo-legendaries such as Tyranitar, Dragonite, and Gyarados (which isn’t actually a pseudo, but I can’t argue with the chart!) were more deeply involved with how the Pokémon world was formed? Incredible stuff, even if it’s obviously outdated with the addition of six more generations of legendary and mythical Pokémon.
A few other stories were mixed in, and these were a bit more eye-opening comparatively. The myths detail human and Pokémon interaction, and often include sexual and violent relationships between humans and non-humanoid Pokémon. Two surprising examples include a group of villagers who torture Slakoth until a Slaking impregnates one of the village’s women, and a Typhlosion who takes a young woman in, hibernates with her, and eventually leaves her as a half-Typhlosion being with a half-Typhlosion offspring.
People on social media, understandably, flipped out. This is semi-official Game Freak writing not only detailing human and Pokémon violence, but human and Pokémon sex and marriage. I was shocked at the time. After a while, however, I thought of a few things, and I don’t think very harshly about this writing at all.
First and foremost, these are not canon. This is not in any released Pokémon games. The closest thing to this in-game is in the gen four titles, Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, is a series of books in the library in Canalave City, specifically the third Sinnoh Folk Story which reads as follows:
There once were Pokémon that became very close to humans.
There once were humans and Pokémon that ate together at the same table.
It was a time when there existed no differences to distinguish the two.
As well as this tale from Veilstone City in which a human repents for the violence he has enacted on Pokémon:
A young man, callow and foolish in innocence, came to own a sword.
With it, he smote Pokémon, which gave sustenance, with carefree abandon.
Those not taken as food, he discarded, with no afterthought.
The following year, no Pokémon appeared. Larders grew bare.
The young man, seeking the missing Pokémon, journeyed afar.
Long did he search. And far and wide, too, until one he did find.
Asked he, “Why do you hide?” To which the Pokémon replied…
“If you bear your sword to bring harm upon us, with claws and fangs, we will exact a toll.”
“From your kind we will take our toll, for it must be done.”
“Done it must be to guard ourselves and for it, I apologize.”
To the skies, the young man shouted his dismay.
“In having found the sword, I have lost so much.”
“Gorged with power, I grew blind to Pokémon being alive.”
“I will never fall savage again. This sword I denounce and forsake.”
“I plead for forgiveness, for I was but a fool.”
So saying, the young man hurled the sword to the ground, snapping it.
Seeing this, the Pokémon disappeared to a place beyond seeing…
These pieces are quite obviously reflective of the myths included in the leaks, but far less graphic. This shows that the leaked versions are drafts. They are versions of the stories that were not meant to be seen by the wider public. I am glad they’re out there now, and believe they always should have been, but having these tales released with zero context allows for rampant misinterpretation.
Said misinterpretation comes from a combination of poor translation and lack of reading comprehension. Most of these stories were run through Google Translate and treated as the correct interpretation, when an actual translation may have far more nuance. On top of that, context is completely gone here, with the text dumped onto 4chan and Twitter without acknowledgment of the real life history behind the style of writing. Ancient Greek, Roman, Japanese, and Egyptian myths are full of some of the craziest shit ever.
Zeus turned into pretty much every possible animal to seduce women, including a bull, and the child born from this coupling became the great king of Crete, Minos, who would then deal with his own bull monster in the Minotaur. In Japan, Kappa were beings who would steal people’s souls via an organ called the shirikodama, which was drawn out from the individual’s anus. Horus and Set, two Egyptian gods, basically had a sex battle to determine succession as king, which ended with Horus grabbing Set’s semen and having his mother, Isis, cut his hands off to dispose of it. Myths have always been weird!
The Minotaur is often seen as a warning against disobeying the gods, as Posideon demanded King Minos sacrifice a bull, and Minos refused. Poseidon then had Minos’ wife fall in love with the bull and birth a monster, a living memory of King Minos’ failure to obey. Obeying the gods was of high importance to Greek life, as the gods controlled nearly every aspect of their day-to-day lives. The story contains a completely insane premise, a woman falling in love with and producing offspring with a bull, but the tale is really about the importance of following orders, which surely Greek religious leaders would appreciate, especially when even kings can be punished for their hubris against the gods.
These wild tales are humans trying to understand the world with less scientific tools than we have currently, and the Pokémon myths are the same; a simulacrum of the youth of humanity, attempting to suss out how sentient beings called Pokémon came to be the way they are. These stories, even ignoring their status as unreleased, were never meant to be actual things that happened.
Instead of taking the tale of a Rapidash marrying a man as direct truth, consider how it was meant to explain how humans and Pokémon learned to work together instead of having Pokémon be seen as just food or tools. Limiting the conversation about this writing to “Game Freak has gooners on their team!” is foolish and reductive, and comparing the actions of mythological Pokémon -that are supposed to be stand-ins for in-universe phenomena- to real life humans is also wrong. Please, stop making posts about Typhlosion. It’s not funny.
I recommend anyone reading this to look into myths from around the world. Once you read the myths, look into the state of the world at the time, and try to figure out how those myths were created, and what they were made to explain. Do the same with these Pokémon myths, come up with some theories as to what each represents for the Pokémon world. If you can’t, that’s fine too, since none of these are canon texts. I just implore you to read beyond the text, and search for context. Mythology is messy, strange, and often offensive to modern sensibilities. We should not read it directly, as a story to be accepted as fact. Instead, we should use it as a tool to understand history. Pokémon’s myths could be the same, in respect to the world around us that Game Freak took inspiration from.
