Pokemon’s Heartbreaking Lavender Town Story Is Still The Franchise’s Best

Warning: This publish comprises reference to suicide.

Pokemon Pink and Blue provided aspiring trainers an 8-bit Kanto area crammed with charismatic cities catering to the weather. A majority of those nostalgic areas adorning Sport Freak and Nintendo’s 1996 Sport Boy Colour launch had been light-hearted, aside from the eerie Mt. Moon. Subsequently, within the title of stability and so as to add a chilling edge to gameplay, Lavender City offered the JRPG with a horror component designed to hang-out millennials for years to return – together with myself.

Located in northeast Kanto simply south of Rock Tunnel, Lavender City (Shion City in Japan) was residence to Ghost-type Pokemon, together with Gastly, Haunter, and Gengar. Showing in franchise entries Inexperienced, Pink and Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, and Crystal in addition to season 1 episode 22 of the animated collection titled “The Tower of Terror”, this spooky city packed emotional weight on prime of a primary premise: buying spectral monsters by means of the Silph Scope.

Because the city’s nature suggests, this “Dwelling of Spirits” was a burial floor for deceased Pokemon, and these apparitions ceaselessly spooked the residents. Nevertheless, there was one Pokemon on the middle of a heartbreaking story that held the city in a jail of gloom.

The Eldritch Makings Of A Masterpiece

On the epicenter of this cursed district lay an injustice orchestrated by none aside from Group Rocket. The crime syndicate trio, made up of Jessie, James, and Meowth, turned out to be the murderers behind a slew of perished Pokemon, together with a Marowak that roamed the highest ground of Pokemon Tower and held the city in darkness. Gamers discovered that Marowak died defending her Cubone from the villains, who had been in search of to realize the Floor-type’s signature cranium to promote. The mom Marowak’s ghost continued to hang-out Pokemon Tower – which later obtained a reputation change to Kanto Radio Tower in Gold and Silver – till the coach confronted her spirit with the orphaned Cubone permitting her to cross into the afterlife.

The Marowak’s homicide not solely added a sinister layer to the baddies’ persona, however this narrative was additionally the primary time sullen themes surrounding the idea of Pokemon dying had been launched. For a children’ recreation, dying on this context was a tough tablet to swallow, which is why Lavender City was so impactful and lived on within the psyche of youthful gamers. Much like the near-traumatizing deaths of Bambi’s mom and Simba’s father in Disney’s Bambi and The Lion King, Cubone’s agonizing loneliness with out its mom and grief from letting her go was an actual tear-jerker and nonetheless is for the now grownup Pokemon gamers.

If the Marowak/Cubone heartbreak and burial floor atmosphere weren’t sufficient emotional injury to grapple with, Lavender City additionally carried a chiptune theme that turned iconic for a number of causes. Firstly, composer Junichi Masuda managed to completely stability emotions of terror and disappointment in a single unforgettable loop. Bloody Disgusting rated this theme because the second-most scary online game monitor of all time, noting the melody as “deceptively calm”, nearly like a youngsters’s lullaby, however its minor chords added an unsettling vibe. A concoction of the atonal nature and jarring chords even impressed the Lavender City Syndrome city legend/creepypasta, a narrative which claimed a whole bunch of Japanese youngsters had taken their very own lives after listening to the discorded tones.

Remembering The Seven-Ground Graveyard

For my part, no different plot nor setting got here near the impact Lavender City had on me – though I could also be somewhat biased as a horror fan. Not solely did Satoshi Tajiri and his workforce nail the darker aspect of Pokemon Pink and Blue by this one location, however every sinister element collectively enhanced the unshakable feeling of dread to be remembered endlessly in online game historical past, proper all the way down to the purple hue of the city’s map. Who knew {that a} small pocket in Kanto, comprised of some homes, a few marts, and a seven-floor graveyard would ship a uncooked dose of hard-hitting realism inside a franchise primarily filled with lighter themes.

The Pokemon franchise has now expanded into an empire, producing extra video games than ever earlier than, alongside a booming buying and selling card enterprise and an ongoing animated collection. Despite the fact that the anime plucked our childhood heartstrings by Misty’s uncalled-for rejection of Caterpie and Ash’s dying within the Mewtwo Strikes Again film, Lavender City had an emotional and aesthetic efficiency that hasn’t been replicated within the IP since, rendering this haunted story Pokemon’s most interesting work.