Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: detective pikachu, Detective Pikachu Movie, Pikachu, pokemon

Detective Pikachu gives us Old-Man Pikachu for the Sake of Variety

Published Mon, 05 Mar 2018 18:45:22 -0600

For the sake of fitting in with its hardboiled roots, Detective Pikachu gives us a much older, much more jaded version of the Pokemon mascot. Now, this isn't a film noir, but Detective Pikachu is very clearly modeled after the classic black and white detective stories from the deerstalker hat to the gritty, cynical protagonist. Yes, that's right. We have grumpy old-man Pikachu coming our way in the new film.

In an interview with IGN, director Naoki Miyashita and producer Hiroyuki Jinnai discussed the change.

"We kind of felt the opposite of cute is really this middle-aged man type of character," Miyashita said.

Jinnai added that since it's been 22 years since Pikachu's debut, kids who played then are now adults themselves.

"It might be interesting, we felt, for a lot of these people to come back and see this, their best friend Pikachu from when they were a kid, is now this older middle-aged gruff man. We thought this would just be an interesting kind of experience," Jinnai said.

Seeing an older version of the mascot will definitely be a change for most Pokemon fans who are used to seeing the titular character as an adorable sidekick to a young boy. That said, having an older Pikachu will definitely be an interesting experience that is the opposite of cute. You just have to find it a bit funny that the reason we're getting this version of the character is just to differentiate him from the usual version of the character.

It could work well, after all, Logan did an incredible job of presenting a grumpy older version of a favorite character as a relatable protagonist. Then again, this is Pikachu we're talking about, and not Wolverine. We'll just have to wait for the movie to release to figure out which way things will fall.

In the meantime, you can pick up the 3DS version of Detective Pikachu when it releases later this month.

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