Dark Side of the Internet: Moemon, the Creepiest Pokemon ROM Hack
(Vaguely NSFW)
I was just going for my typical wiki walks and Reddit strolls, and I found something I wish I hadn't. That would be Moemon, where hundreds of sprites from the first 3 generations of Pokemon are changed to resemble little girls (as in the Japanese term/trope/fetish Moe). Essentially, it lays bare the essential weirdness and discomfort of the enslavement themes of Pokemon by humanizing them far too much. You are literally enslaving a team of small girls and using them to battle for you.
What the actual fuck?
Okay... the game is based on a ROM hack of Pokemon FireRed, and was later expanded to Emerald. The mod is mostly a straight substitution of original sprites for the redesigned ones, and a large number of people obviously put a massive amount of effort into the pixel art. In fact, there is even an aborted wiki on the topic, a variety of posters on Tumblr, and, of course, a group on DeviantArt. And apparently there are many more Japanese titles than English translations, which follows as the moe complex is a Japanese one.
I am not going to say that at least some of the creators of these games were attempting to point out the awkwardness of the Pokemon enslavement mechanic and address it in a provocative way. It is just that I can't credit the majority of them with that more high-minded attempt at talking about Pokemon's inherent problems. Instead, I get videos like this (which, if you can avoid the train-wreck-fascination, is something that no one needs exposure to).
This all ties into a number of other Pokemon weirdness fandoms, from the (relatively) benign rule34 communities around it to the large number of Pokegirls fanfic writers (whose stories often have worse implications than moemon). It is interesting to note how many people got kinked by a game about a derpy kid and his electric attack rat, but I think my foray into the strange side of the Pokemon fandom is over.
TL;DR: Creepy ROM hack called Moemon lays bare the awkward dynamics of Pokemon by turning all Pokemon into sexualized little girls, mostly so its fandom can get their jollies from digital child slave soldiers.