The recent Pokémon leaks may not have ruined Typhlosion after all

Pokemon developer Game Freak’s recent mega-leak has revealed some pretty wild insights into the studio’s development process and plans, potentially revealing details about Gen 10 and Pokemon Legends: ZA. It was torture going through it all, but the most bizarre part of the entire fiasco were several stories supposedly written by team members at Game Freak that involved people giving birth to Pokémon children.

One particular story about Typhlosion went more viral than others and apparently involved Typhlosion kidnapping a young girl, erasing her memories of her family and friends, and then having a child with her. This story has ensured that every Typhlosion fan out there will never look at their favorite Pokémon again, but recently new details have come to light that seem to clear the Fire Starter of any wrongdoing.

Earlier this week, a Twitter user named Roltas01 claimed that the story about Typhlosion that went viral contained an alarming number of inaccuracies because it was machine translated. With the help of several other Twitter users, they claim to have seen the original story and translated it themselves, giving us a much more accurate version of the same events.

The recent Pokémon leaks may not have ruined Typhlosion after all

Instead, the story appears to tell the tale of a Typhlosion who disguised himself as a hermit and rescued a young woman who had become lost in the forest at night by bringing her back to his home. Roltas01 claims that many parts of the story bear similarities to Japanese folklore and that the women commonly depicted in these stories are between 16 and 20 years old. It’s still pretty shady, but far better than most people assuming this woman was underage, and Roltas01 even mentions that the story isn’t too dissimilar to something like Beauty and the Beast.

Roltas01 then goes on to explain that the Typhlosion in this story is likely a replacement for a Mujina, a large shape-shifting yokai whose original form is a badger. They also claim that this explains the part of the story where Typhlosion erases the girl’s memory, as it is a common image in Japanese folklore that people lose their memory when they come into contact with Yokai.

Then we come to the topic of the girl having Typhlosion’s child, and Roltas01 also believes that this is more of a metaphor than something to be taken literally. They explain that Japanese mythology often uses birth as a metaphor for new life and that marriage is most likely “an allegory for the union of two souls.” Therefore, the whole marriage and birth is just a metaphorical way of saying that this woman now has a new life because she is spiritually connected to a Yokai.

Roltas01 goes into a bit more detail about the rest of the story, but these are the comments that exonerate Typhlosion of serious wrongdoing. From the rest of the stories that have leaked over the last week and the way they are written, it seems likely that they were originally folklore-inspired stories and not someone at Game Freak doing their weird Fanfic leak had. With this in mind, all Typhlosion fans can enjoy their boy again.

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