Why is Pokemon physiology so terrifying? Why are these Game Freaks injecting tragedy and body horror into so many Pokemon they create? Is Clive Barker ghost writing all of the Pokedex entries? I have so many questions about Farigiraf, the recently-announced evolution of Girafarig, but they’re not fun questions. They're the kind of questions that give me existential dread. I’m not even sure I want to know the answer, they may just make me more confused and upset.
Here’s a perfectly normal Pokedex entry: ‘Pikachu, the Mouse Pokémon. It can generate electric attacks from the electric pouches located in both of its cheeks.’ It’s perfect. It tells of what kind of Pokemon Pikachu is and offers a fun fact about what makes it unique. There are plenty of Pokedex entries that look just like this, but there are plenty more that don’t. Just read this description of Farigiraf:
“As a result of its Evolution, the head of its main body and the head from its tail have become one. Both of Farigiraf’s brains are connected through thick nerves, increasing its psychic energy, and it can emit psychic waves from the antennae on its head. It’s always mindful of its surroundings, and while it can detect danger in an instant, there are times when its body cannot react as fast as its two brains can think.”
Like Girafarig, Farigiraf is two separate beings that share one body, only this time, one of the heads is inside of the other. The black head has moved from the tail to the head and now functions like a hood over the giraffe head. It has to open its mouth like a xenomorph to expose the second head. Apparently this configuration gives it increased physic energy, but all it gives me is nightmares.
Is the smaller head just lodged in the bigger one’s throat? Is the smaller head the only one that eats and breathes? Who controls the body, and how much of the day does the smaller head sit in the dark until the bigger one opens up? Do they talk to each other like Venom and Eddie? I can’t decide which head is more upsetting but I’m positive both of them are suffering.
We all know about the Pokemon with dark backstories, like Cubone wearing it’s mom’s skull and Phantump being the spirit of a child that got lost in the woods and died, but don’t we talk about the body horror in Pokemon enough. The ones with multiple heads always wig me out the most because they call the personhood of a Pokemon into question. Take Doduo for example. When it evolves into Dodrio it grows another head. Suddenly, it has a third consciousness that it wasn’t born with that is now competing with the other two for control. It’s also said that its heads represent joy, sorrow, and anger. Take a moment to think about what it would be like to suddenly sprout another head right now that embodies the essence of sorrow. Pikachu has pouches that store electricity in its cheeks, Dodrio has a full Apex Legends squad of raw emotion that pecks each other’s eyes out all day.
Exeggcute loses two heads when it evolves into Exeggutor. Did they die? Magnemite and Diglett are both one Pokemon that evolve into three, but they’re not three individuals. According to Dugtrio’s Pokedex entry, all three share the same thoughts like a hive mind, but also, they occasionally fight over which head gets to eat first. So which is it Pokemon? Are they one being, or three? And why are there so many Johto Pokemon that evolve into multiples when that doesn’t really seem to happen anywhere else? I just can’t wrap my head around all these extra heads.
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