I, uh, don’t even know where to begin. Game Freak has been hacked and countless files have been published, which unfortunately includes some personal information about its employees. But it also includes everything from unused concept art to discarded lore stories from the universe, and one in particular has gone a little viral. More than a little.
That would be a story about Typhlosion, the initial Gold/Silver evolution that I definitely chose growing up. I also chose Charizard before that. I like fire, what can I say. But now my memories might be… a bit tainted.
Fans have discovered some sort of lost lore history on Typhlosion that…. well, here’s a short excerpt:
‘A long time ago, when the line between Pokémon and humans was unclear…’
Okay, no, I’ll stop there. Yes, this is going where you think it’s going, a relationship between a human and a Pokémon. That kind of relationship. But it’s… even stranger than you might think.
A young girl is tricked by a shape-shifting Bakufun (Typhlosion) into thinking she’s a human. Eventually, she apparently has a child with him and is called his wife. Eventually her father arrives and kills the Bakfun and when he returns to the village, she and her half-Pokémon baby are mocked by the men of the village who at one point cover him with furs. They then run into the forest and are never seen again. Here’s a particularly nightmarish passage from when the father goes looking for his daughter:
‘You broke the branch. Your father will be here soon. Now I will do something bad to your father. If you kill me, you can have my eyes, my voice and my heart. Then I want you to light a fire where I was killed and let it burn. And I want you to sing this song until it goes out’.
Many forms of mythology, including Japanese mythology, have animals turning into humans or vice versa to show some form of deception. Zeus often did this, for example. Specifically, Typhlosion is supposed to be based on the Mujina, the Japanese badger, where in folklore he is often depicted as a shape-shifting Yokai (demon/imbroglio/monster), so it’s not entirely made up out of thin air. But something like that ending up in Game Freak’s Pokémon documents is, er, something.
It is unclear why this story was created or why it is in these files. We have no idea who wrote it or if it was even close to becoming a game (there are plenty of really obscure stories about Pokémon lore, though none are that crazy). But the text still took off online and now no one will ever look at Typhlosion the same way again. I certainly won’t.
I’ve contacted Game Freak for comment and will update if I hear back.
Update (15/10): I thought it would be interesting to find another story about the shape-shifting Mujina on which this creepy version of Typhlosion is based. The following is part of an adaptation of an ancient myth from Japanese folklore, The Faceless Woman (via Rikumo):
‘Late one night, he was running along the Kii-no-kuni-zaka when he saw a woman crouched on the moat, all alone. She was crying bitterly and her hands completely covered her face as she pushed herself forward towards the moat. Fearing she was going to drown, he stopped next to her to offer his help. As he approached, he saw that she was agile, well dressed and that her hair was styled like that of a young girl from a good family.
He was a kind man and pity clutched his heart. ‘O-jochu (young girl),’ he exclaimed, approaching her, ’O-jochu, don’t cry like that…. Tell me what the problem is and if there is a way to help you, I will.’
Suddenly, the girl turned around and removed her sleeve from her hand. Where there should have been two eyes, a mouth and a nose, there was nothing but a void of featureless skin, smooth as an egg. She began to slowly stroke her face with her hand in front of him.
The man screamed and ran away.’
The idea of the ‘egg-face’ is one that persists in folklore, according to which the Mujina was able to transform into human form, but often with a smooth face and no distinctive features. But she could also assume other, more normal forms. The end of this story is that the man tries to tell someone else that he finds the woman, but the man’s face also turns into an egg.
So, it’s obviously different, but you can see similarities and how even the cadence of the narrative is the same. Both are disturbing in their own way, certainly.
