How the Pokémon Came Into Our Pokeballs
How the Pokémon Came Into Our PokéBalls. 10/30/99 (Intro.)
For my English class in late September of this year, I had to write my own myth. So, I figured "Why not make a myth about how Pokémon came to be."
My English teacher thought that it was a great story. So did my mom and a few other people. Since it was so good, I thought I'd feature it on this website. Click Here to read my story. Enjoy. :)
9/22/99 Page 1. Some people say that the Pokémon came from the sky in a giant rock known as the Moon Stone. Others say that they originated from the depths of nature's elements. But, they are all not true... this is the true story.
A long, long time ago in the heavens above, there were such powerful gods as Zeus, Maheo, and many more. But, it all started with a rookie god, known as...Mewchu. He had thepower to help provide for the animals, plants, minerals, and to keep track of the seven natural powers of the universe: Fire, Grass, Lightning, Water, Fighting, Psychic, and the power of the Colorless Star.
Mewchu made sure that the animals and plants were fed from natures natures good foods. He made sure that nature's minerals, such as rocks, dirt from the ground, and the mucky messes were used for their purpose.
One day, Mewchu said to himself, "There must be a way to allow the animals, small and big, to do these tough chores, so that I may be able to be a little clean." Then, he thought, "Why not give some of the natural powers to a new type of creature." So, he went down to earth with the power to absorb the natural powers of earth, and share it. So, he stood... in the middle of the Pacific, surrounded by islands of seven and water.
He decided to start with making a powerful animal to assist him in his great task. Then, he found a weird creature on an island. It was mostly white, blue eyes, short arms, big feet, and a long tail with a pink fpsy tip. Mewchu has never seen such an animal, so he absorbed the power of Psychic from the stars, gave the creature a gentle rub on its back, and picked it up. And Mewchu said to the creature, "You, rare creature, have received the supernatural power of the Psychics from the stars above us. But you would need a name for you will be my assistant to make a new type of elemental creatures. I shall call you...Mew." And the Mew jumped for joy, then set him down with some wise words. "Mew," Mewchu said, "I want you to pick some animals that are here now, and share with them the Psychic power. For I would not be able to, because I may only share each elemental power only one time for one creature or more. I trust that you can share this power, while I handle the other six elemental powers." Then he set the Mew down, on its island and it went on its way.
Mewchu decided to start with the power of grass, so he rubbed the grass of another island's ground, and he waved his hand over the trees. A triceratops began to lose its horns, and it turned into a creature called Bulbasaur. A caterpillar lost its fuzz; it grew a little bigger; it turned green, and it got the name of Caterpie. Another caterpillar's fur only shortened; it grew a small horn; it grew a little, like the Caterpie did; it turned orange, and it became a Weedle. A rattlesnake turned purple, and grew a single yellow stripe; it became an Ekans. A rat grew small horns, turned blue, and became a Nidoran (female). And, another rat grew bigger horns, turned pink, and became a Nidoran (male). A bat's legs turned to two tails as thin as a blade of grass, its ears grew bigger, and it became a Zubat. A tiny bush sprouted out of the ground, grew eyes,and became an Oddish. A fuzzy bush grew two teeth like a vampire; it became a Venonat. A bell-shaped palm shrunk; it became a Bellsprout. A mud puddle grew into a Grimer. Six eggs bounced and said, "Exeggcute." A puff of smoke became solid, and mentioned, "Koffing." A bunch of vines gathered around another Oddish, it was Tangela. A dragonfly grew, and said, "Scyther." The rocks got a body of armor, and said, "Pinser."
Then Mewchu dipped his hand into the firey volcano of another island, pulled it out, and waved his hand over the volcano. Many animals were below. A baby tyrannosaurus got fire on its tail, and yelled, "Charrrrmander!" A fox's tail split into six. Maybe, it's now a Vulpix. A dog turned orange, and growled, "Growwwllithe!" A pony got burned, and neighed. A chunk of ash was revived and turned into a Magmar. And, a big bird flew out the volcano, it was a Moltres.
Mewchu then dipped his hand in the ocean's waters, and gave another wave over another island with a big lake in the middle. A baby turtle and a squirrel on an island joined together to make a Squirtle. A fat duck turned yellow with a headache; it became a Psyduck. A tadpole got bigger with a swirl on its belly, a Poliwag came to be. A jellyfish's arms shrunk into two. It was then a Tentacool. A Slowpoke was formed when a baby hippopotamus grew a tail. A seal turned white, and grew a horn on its head; it was Seel. A shell opened up, and stuck out a tongue, hello Shellder. A Krabby came when a crab got crowned. A seahorse started to spit oil, a fish grew a horn on its head, and starfish grew a jewel. Here were a Horsea, a Goldeen, and a Staryu. A crown from a treasure grew onto a hard-shell fish; here was a Magikarp. A rare lochness monster grew a spiked shell on its back; it became a Lapras. A fossil was revived; it was an Omanyte. Out of an arctic ice berg, an Articuno broke out.
Meanwhile, Mew shared its Psychic power with a Psyduck, and a Slowpoke. When Mew shared it with a rat, it fell asleep, and grew into an Abra. When Mew came across the body of a dead lizard, it summoned its spirit, and shared some "Gastly" secrets with it. Later, Mew met an anteater; Mew put it to sleep, and the anteater became a Drowzee. Mew found two monkeys, with an evolution. One turned into a Mr. Mime, and the other became a Jynx. Later in the night, Mew gave birth, and the baby Mew looked different. The new Mew gave its mother a psychic attack, and thrown it up a tree. Suddenly, the new Mew grew to the size that of a man with many years, It was a Mewtwo.
Meanwhile, Mewchu found a barren island with sand and rocks. He punched it, and out of the ground came the fighting and ground type creatures: Sandshrew, Diglett, Mankey, Machop, Geodude, Onix, Cubone, Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan, Rhyhorn, and a Kabuto.
Then Mewchu summoned a thunderstorm, and lightning struck another island. The lightning hit a little mouse, and the mouse grew into a Pikachu. Metallic minerals rose out of the ground of a small area of the island, and it formed to make a Magnemite. A coconut was struck with a piece of the metallic material carrying some of the electric power; the coconut turned metallic; it became a Voltorb. A wild cat was struck, and it became an Electabuzz. And out of the thunderous clouds came a Zapdos.
And finally, Mewchu planted a transparent star in the middle of the other island. And from the star came the Colorless creatures: Pidgey, Rattata, Spearow, Clefairy, Jigglypuff, Meowth, Farfetch'd, Doduo, Lickitung, Chansey, Tauros, Eevee, Porygon, and Dratini. Before Mewchu bid farewell, he waved his hand over all seven islands, and most of the creatures evolved into more powerful creatures. And, then He shouted out, "May these creatures be helpful to the earth, and may they use their abilities wisely." Then, he said with a tear of joy, "Farewell,... Pokémon." And Mewchu flew back into the heavens.
This piece of prose was written by Chris during September of 1999, as an assignment for his twelfth grade English class, and is believed to be the earliest surviving piece of prose (though Bionic the character predates this by three years, his prose story wasn’t written until 2000). Tasked to come up with his own myth for his own mythology, Chris created an origin legend for the original 151 Pokemon. Apparently it got a solid grade (to be fair, its juvenile premise aside, this is one of Chris’s most grammatically correct works I’ve seen.) It was quickly uploaded to CWC’s Pokesite 2, where the Christorical community found it, and can be found here if you’re interested in reading it against a bright yellow backdrop. Despite the title, the story is not a history on the origin of Pokeballs, nor is it an explanation about how any specific Pokemon entered any specific Balls.
The cover, shown above, is an uncentered collage of pictures of Pokemon surrounding Chris’s name and title. I believe these pictures are from the N64 spinoff Pokemon Snap, where your job was to take photos of Pokemon in their natural habitats (this explains why they’re strangely, often poorly, framed - Chris took these himself.) From left to right, top to bottom, they are Charizard, Dragonite, two Starmies, Scyther, two Bulbasaurs, a flock of Charmanders, two Pikachus, Mew, Moltres, Zapdos, Articuno, two Dratinis, Magmar, three Jigglypuffs, Porygon, two more pictures of Mew, and one last Pikachu for the road. For some reason, those Starmies have a weird purple, yellow, and green color scheme that they never have anywhere in the game (normally they’re purple, gold, and red, and the at this point unreleased in the west shiny form is blue, red, and dark blue). Maybe Chris’s printer was running low on ink?
Chris’s first sentence seems to refer to one episode of the anime wherein Clefairys and Clefables are seen worshiping a giant Moon Stone, which in the games is what they use to evolve, and a scientist travelling with Ash and team theorizes that all Clefairy and their evolutionary relatives came on the giant Moon Stone meteorite from space. This is apparently the case for the Clefairy family (at least in the anime, the games are a bit more coy about stating whether or not they’re actually from space), as later they are shown operating spacecrafts. But never is it suggested that all Pokemon came from space at one point, especially not on the giant Moon Stone, at the time only the Clefairy family, Staryu and Starmie, and sometimes Mew had been said to be extraterrestrial in origin.
Chris invokes Zeus, the Greek thunder and sky god who also served as head god, and Maheo, the Cheyenne creator deity responsible for the earth. I imagine that these were the examples Chris’s English teacher gave him for creator gods, though Zeus really wasn’t much of a creator god so much as its current ruler (he was of the third generation of Greek gods).
Chris sets out an OC as the creator of the Pokemon universe - Mewchu. Obviously this is meant to tie in to what was at the time considered the highest of Pokemon Mew, but the -chu suffix implies some sort of close connection to the Pikachu family that’s never really expanded upon. Notably, about eight years after Chris made this, Mew’s role as top Pokemon was superseded by Arceus, who has something of a similar origin story to this Mewchu - at the beginning, Arceus was the only being in the void of nothingness, until he decided to create Dialga, thus creating time, and Palkia, thus creating space, and Giratina, thus creating antimatter. After creating the Lake Trio of Uxie, Azelf, and Mesprit, knowledge, willpower, and emotion respectively, Arceus disappeared, his job for the time completed. Notably, Mewchu’s design is never explained, so Chris’s creativity is limited to the name alone.
The elemental division in this story seems to draw solely on the elemental system of the TCG game, which uses an abridged system of types, which at the time consisted of just seven, Fire, Grass, Water, Lightning (or Electric), Fighting, Psychic, and Colorless (their term for Normal), while the reference to the Clefairy story and the Pokemon saying their names (which they don’t do in the video games or the card game) would imply that there are some anime influences in this story as well.
Apparently Mewchu did not create the earth, all he was in charge of was watching a bunch of animals that some other god created. In fact, in this story, Pokemon were created from real world animals. It is, of course, delightfully in character for Chris to have Mewchu create the 151 original species of Pokemon purely to help him do chores. These seven islands Chris mentions seem to be Chris’s inventions; it’s tempting to compare these islands to the Seven Grapefruit Islands from the Orange Islands arc of the anime but the episode that took place there had been released in Japan but not in the US so unless Chris was really paying attention to the Japanese releases of the anime it couldn’t have been an inspiration.
Mewchu’s first creation is Mew, the Pokemon considered the genetic predecessor of all other Pokemon, at least the original 151. While Mewchu is the master of all seven elements, Mew is only competent at one by Chris’s standards and is apparently only responsible for the Psychic-Type (by the standards of the TCG, which also includes the video games’s Ghost-Types) Pokemon.
The first Pokemon to be created are the Grass-Types (and Bug-Types and Poison-Types since those count as Grass-Types in the TCG), possibly referring to the first Pokemon in the Pokedex being Bulbasaur, who is the first listed here. Mewchu rubs the plant life of one of the seven islands and everything on the island begins mutating. Unlike God, Jesus, and The Bear, who tasked Adam and Eve to name the animals of the Garden of Eden, Mewchu makes the animals name themselves. Scyther is supposed to be a mantis, by the way, not a dragonfly.
To create Fire-Type Pokemon, Mewchu drenches animals in lava and sets them on fire. I guess that’s one way to make Fire-Type animals.
Another island is drowned underneath a tidal wave by Mewchu and the only survivors are those beasts that can instantly adapt (or Chris’s worded the first sentence poorly). Apparently Mewchu also caused some sort of oil spill because it says that Horsea began spitting oil (Horsea’s Pokedex entries mention it shooting ink like a squid, but ink is not oil.)
Next, Mew takes care of its singular duty, creating the Psychic- (and Ghost-) Types. Let it be known that despite the name Psyduck is in fact not Psychic-Type. After creating all the other Psychic-Types, Mew has a random baby (omitted is the sequence where Mew was on Maury trying to figure out who the father was. It was probably Slowpoke.) Said baby attacks its mother immediately after birth, and one of the two ends up getting thrown up a tree (easily this is the most confusing sentence in the piece). If we were to assume that this was Mew attempting to destroy her violent son Mewtwo, it might have been a reference to the birth of Hephaestus, who was deemed so hideous by his mother Hera that she threw him off Mount Olympus, crippling him, but this deep mythological cut is unlikely. Either way this child instantly grows into the canonically man-made Mewtwo. For whatever reason, Chris attributes all of the canonically man-made Pokemon, Mewtwo, Porygon, and the fossils revived by man Kabuto, Omanyte, and Aerodactyl to Mewchu and its little helper.
The Fighting- (and Ground- and Rock-) Types are passed over in a handwave, not even getting specific origins. It’s possible that since many of the Gen I Fighting-Types were humanoid (the Machop line, the Hitmons), Chris didn’t want to imply that any Pokemon were once humans.
In a similarly violent fashion as the Fire-Types, the Electric-Types are electrocuted to transform them into magical beings. Chris also offers an alternate take on the origins of the Voltorb - instead of being a Pokeball that somehow came to life, it was instead a coconut that came to life. Why then it sports the colors and patterns of a Pokeball is left unclear.
Lastly, Mewchu creates the Colorless (read: Normal-Type plus Dratini) Pokemon similarly to the Fighting-Types - in a long list. After giving some Pokemon a crash course on evolving, presumably finishing the complete 151, Mewchu scurried off. Whatever happened to Mewchu in the millennia afterward is left unknown. Did Mewchu create the rest of the Pokemon, the ones that didn’t exist when Chris wrote this? Did Mewchu cease to be? We’ll never know. I’d love it if Chris revisited this story this fall around its twentieth anniversary, have it be fifteen pages full of Pokemon origins. “And then, Mewchu and Mew got super high and said ‘you know what would be super cool? Flying Nazca Lines.’ and then they created Sigilyph.”
