Detective Pikachu Reimagined
- SJ Williamson
- Jun 9, 2024
- 7 min read
*the image above was generated using AI and the prompt "8-bit detective pikachu & human fusion." Obviously, it leaves us with more to be desired, but this image is good enough to get my point across.
If you didn't already know based on my work-in-progress Pokemon tattoo sleeve on my leg, my Pokemon-themed apartment, or my inability to shut up when it comes to Pokemon, I am a ~huge~ Pokemon fan. I recently finished Detective Pikachu Returns, the sequel to the 3DS game Detective Pikachu, which came out in 2018. Like the cover image for this blogpost, it left more to be desired of it but I had some thoughts that I wanted to share before this game turns into the weird fever dream of the past that it will surely become. Reader beware, there will be spoilers. If you plan to play the extremely easy game (it was created for 10-year-olds, after all) yourself, you may want to hold off on reading this.
Plot Holes
During the new Switch game, I was caught off-guard as Pikachu has flashbacks from his time with the now missing father, Detective Harry Goodman, of the main character, Tim, One of the major flashbacks that Pikachu centers on when Pikachu first met Harry and they became partners. According to Pikachu's flashbacks, he and Harry met in a bamboo forest while Harry was investigating berserk pokemon incidents involving R. According to this timeline, Harry would have met Pikachu within a year before he went missing. This just doesn't line up with the first game's timeline.
The first game takes place 2 months after Harry has been missing; Tim has come to Ryme City in hopes of finding his father. During the investigation, Detective Baker says Harry was investigating the berserk pokemon incidents that recurred for the last 6 months. Players also find out that an incident involving R happened at Fine Park about a year ago. However, Harry's family knew and had interacted with Pikachu beforehand. In the original 3DS game, Tim describes Pikachu's original personality as "more docile" when he first meets Detective Pikachu in Ryme City. It seemed as if in the 3DS game, Harry and Pikachu were partners long before investigating R. But in the Switch game, the R timeline would suggest Harry and Pikachu didn't even know each other long before Pikachu sacrificed his body to save Harry after the accident.
It also bothers me that people, including Tim, couldn't tell the difference between different pikachus. Pikachu before the accident had a very high-pitched "pika pika" while Detective Pikachu has the voice of an old man, just like Harry's. How could characters who knew both Pikachu and Harry not realize Pikachu had Harry's tone even if all they heard was the deep-voiced "pika pika?" This is also obvious in the 3DS trailer, where Detective Pikachu sounds like an old pikachu as a car threatens him to "get out of the way!"
These plot holes weren't the only thing about the new Switch game that bothered me. I also have some issues with character designs and the overall concept that created the mystery in Detective Pikachu.
Cringey Inclusion
Inclusion can feel ironically racially insensitive to me sometimes. These complex feelings remind me of a short summer job I once had to interview graduated students in different programs at our college to write success stories to include on the program websites. Of course many different success stories existed and I was tasked with ensuring that different perspectives were included on the program websites. I had no problem with that. For me, the uneasy feeling came with the method used to find potential alumni to interview. I was provided with a list of graduates that included their full names, addresses, emails, and phone numbers; that is how I was to find interviewees. For me, this meant ensuring I interviewed diverse graduates based only on their names and contact information.
The process itself made me feel awkward. It felt as if I was racially profiling people in order to provide a sense of diversity on the program websites. Was I to assume who was Native American, Black, White, Latino, or Asian solely on names? It didn't feel right. Instead, I reached out to people I knew from groups like the International Student Organization and programs who had specific student success stories in mind. This, too, felt biased to me as not all students of color were international students. I wondered if there wasn't a better way to do this work. Regardless, I was able to finish the interviews and program websites. I just wondered if it was normal for me to feel like a racial profiler in order to help our organization be perceived as inclusive and diverse.
If you're wondering how this story relates to Detective Pikachu Returns, then you probably haven't played the game. Our first incident in the game takes place during an awards ceremony hosted by the mayor of Ryme City. Mayor Howard Myers and his disapproving daughter Rachel Myers are introduced in this chapter. During the ceremony, we hear Mayor Myers's heavy Latino accent. Mayor Myers is coded as Latino with his accent and dark skin tone, which could be funny as Latino countries don't exist in the fictional Pokemon World. I'm all for inclusivity; I'm part Cuban myself. However, I have some problems with how the mayor is portrayed. If I'm judging people's ethnicity based on name, like I was tasked with doing for that summer job, the mayor doesn't come off as such. Howard Myers is a pretty gringo name if I'm being honest. A quick Google search shows the first name of Howard being Norse for "guardian" and last name of Myers coming from English origins (meaning mayor, how original) or German origins (meaning bailiff). The name is easily connected to the character's profession, but it doesn't have Latino origins. While it is inclusive to have a mayor of color in the game, it is also alarming as the mayor turns out to be one of the game's misunderstood villains, although he does redeem himself in the last chapter of the game.
Additionally, Mayor Myers's daughter, Rachel, would be part Latina unless adopted. We have no record of her status as biological or adopted daughter. Rachel presents as a white female in the game. Her name is of Hebrew origin meaning lamb or sheep. Of course, her last name has the same origins as her father's. It could make sense for her character to line up with the name's origins as well as her father's; her mother died in a pokemon attack and her father does everything to "guard" his precious "lamb" of a daughter from ending up with the same fate. Still, the names don't feel Latino in origin and Rachel exhibits no real connection to those roots as she bears no accent like her father's and is just as pale-skinned as the other white-coded characters in the game. I'm not sure if how she calls her father as "papa" is supposed to aid in making her more Latina or not; I'm glad that there wasn't heavy-handed code-switching in the game otherwise. The making of Rachel and Mayor Myers, overall, just seems like afterthoughts of inclusivity from the game's designers.
Another character design that bothered me is Trevor Gordon's. Trevor Gordon is a professor at Ryme University who gets trapped in some ruins during the game. Trevor is an overall kind character. Dangerous pokemon attack him, thinking he is part of the evil organization Unitas. After being rescued, he feels empathy for the pokemon that attacked him and promises to find out where the pokemon were kidnapped from in order to return them to their home.
What bothers me about Trevor's character design is his facial expressions. Each character in the game has various images to show their emotions (serious, happy, upset, etc.). Trevor, for some reason, always looks angry. In both of the images below, Trevor is tracing his steps with Tim and Rachel in order to figure out how to escape from the collapsed ruins. In both images, he has furrowed eyebrows, suggesting an angry or upset emotion. In the image where he is speaking, his mouth is also set to look upset.
Even in his neutral image, his lips are pursed to express negative emotions and his eyebrows are still furrowed. It's definitely giving me (undeserved) angry Black man stereotype vibes. His expressions just don't seem to match his character. He's kind, understanding of pokemon, and a smart professor. But his character art is all unnecessarily angry. Even when he smiles, he still doesn't look happy.
I feel sympathy for the character being poorly portrayed in the art. Personality-wise, he was one of the characters I liked. He is overly kind to even the pokemon who trapped him. Slowpoke, Trevor's partner, is strongly dedicated to him, and Trevor has even given him a cute explorer hat. His art is just disappointing.
Lastly, I do wonder about Sanjeev's character and any issues in representation there, but I feel a bit less knowledgable on any of his character's ties to real-world culture. This might be something I can explore later on.
Reimagination
Lastly, I want to focus on reimagining how the game says two can become one. The statement "two becomes one" is repeated by the main antagonist Mr. Merloch. He transfers his consciousness into the pokemon body of Deoxys. This, to me, is not representative of "two becomes one." This is just an utter takeover of Deoxys's body. One is transferred to the other. For it to be a true "two becomes one," the fusion should mix consciouses and bodies, much like the Pokemon fusion website does. I would have imagined Detective Harry Goodman and his Pikachu combined as something like the Pokemon fusion website instead of just Pikachu being able to walk, talk, and eat like a human in the game.
While I attempted to portray such using AI, the AI images left more to be desired. So, I decided to do some pikachu fusions with humanoid pokemon like Mr. Mime, Jynx, Sawk, and Audino (pictured above). Overall, I felt the "two becomes one" illogical. The research trying to get pokemon and humans to understand each other made a lot more sense related to the outcome of two battling consciouses in one pokemon's body.
Comments