Pokemon Sun and Moon Are The Darkest Pokemon Games Yet

The Pokemon franchise has always had a bit of an edge to it. After all, the game is all about imprisoning sentient and intelligent animals and forcing them to fight each other for sport, honor, and friendship.

(Yup, it isn’t the fun and frolic you’d like to think.)

There is also a secret darkness about the Pokemon themselves that are only hinted at in the games. Some Pokemon can supposedly steal souls while others delight in terrorizing and stalking their prey.

For a game franchise made for children, Pokemon games can be pretty dark when you think about it.

Pokemon Sun and Moon, the newest pair of games in the franchise, looks like it might be the darkest game yet.

Although the game is set in the sunny and colorful Alola Region, many of the new Pokemon introduced so far either look terrifying or have surprisingly dark backgrounds. If these new Pokemon are indication, Pokemon Sun and Moon might be the darkest Pokemon games yet:

Killer Sand Castle Pokemon

Sandygast is a unique Ghost/Ground Type Pokemon that’s basically a possessed pile of sand with a small shovel sticking out of its head.

According to the Pokemon Sun and Moon webpage, Sandygast are formed from the grudges of Pokemon that fall in battle. A Sandygast can actually manipulate and possess children to use their shovel to pile more sand onto its body, making it even stronger.

If hypnotising children wasn’t creepy enough, a Sandygast can also suck the lifeforce out of anything that sticks its arm into its mouth. So, it’s a sand vampire made out of bad feelings that roams the beaches of the Alola region, looking for children.

Sandygast’s evolved form is even scarier. Palossand is a full blown sandcastle, complete with two arms that serve as towers. A Palossand can actually attack and drag small Pokemon into its body, sucking its energy and using it to possibly create more Sandygasts.

While the Pokemon franchise doesn’t like to toss around the word “dead”, it’s pretty clear that the Pikachu above isn’t going to walk away after the Palossand eats its energy. 

Actual Evolution At Work

The Pokemon version of evolution is a little murky at best. Basically, when a Pokemon grows powerful enough, it can spontaneously “evolve” into a more powerful and usually larger form. Although an evolved Pokemon is technically a different species, the Pokemon universe usually treats an “evolved” Pokemon as an older version of its previous forms. 

That all changes with Pokemon Sun and Moon. The Alolan region has “Alolan variants”, which are Pokemon species that actually went through evolution due to living in a remote region away from their mainland relatives. 

For example, the Alolan Rattata became a nocturnal Pokemon living in urban settings after the residents brought Yungoos and Gumshoos to the island to curb the region’s rat population. The Rattata were driven from their natural habitat and into the city, where they basically became organized food thieves led by super chubby Alolan Raticates.

While it’s cool that Pokemon is finally using evolution the right way after all these years, there is a darker side to all these variants. Evolution means that only the strongest survived over the generations, which means that a lot of cute Pokemon died premature deaths due to the drastically different climates of the Alola region. 

Too Sweet to Help

Even the cute Pokemon from the Alolan region have a bit of heartbreak and sadness behind them.

Take the Bounsweet, a cute little Grass type Pokemon that resembles a bouncing fruit. Bounsweet has an appealing aroma, which unfortunately attracts plenty of other Pokemon looking to eat it. Because of its natural cuteness and skip-like walk, no one ever bothers to help Bounsweet as it runs away from its predators. Bounsweet is too sweet to live apparently.

Another cute Pokemon with a sad back story is Mimikyu, a ghost Pokemon that wears a Pikachu costume over its true form.

Mimikyu is terribly lonely and just wants to be loved by humans, so it started wearing a costume after seeing how popular Pikachu is. Tragically, no one knows what Mimikyu looks like because anyone who sees its true form is stricken with a mysterious illness. 

Basically, even the cute Pokemon in Pokemon Sun and Moon are waiting to break your heart. 

A Bear That Hugs Its Trainer…To Death

Stuffil and Bewear are another pair of bizarre Pokemon.

Stuffil is a cute Pokemon that resembles a red panda. Because of its looks, Stuffil is a very popular Pokemon in the Alola region. However, it hates being hugged and will often flail its arms in protest when people get too near.

Although Stuffil hates hugs, its evolved form Bewear is the opposite.

Bewear is a docile looking bear Pokemon who loves to give out hugs to its trainers. Unfortunately, evolution was bitterly cruel to Bewear and granted the Pokemon extraordinary strength to go along with its newfound good nature. Residents in the Alola region stay far away from Bewear because its hugs can literally rip things in two. 

So evolution turned a Pokemon that hate hugs but is popular with humans into a Pokemon that loves hugs but is feared by humans because of its massive strength. Someone in the Pokemon design department has a really cruel sense of humor. 

The Mysterious Chimera Pokemon

Earlier this week, a new trailer teased two mysterious new additions to Pokemon Sun and Moon.

Type: Null is an artificial Pokemon created by parties unknown to battle Legendary Pokemon.

Type: Null looks like a science experiment gone horribly wrong.

It’s a weird chimera creature that looks more like something you’d see in Fullmetal Alchemist than a Pokemon game. With more than a passing resemblance to Arceus, the Pokemon creator of the universe, some have even theorized that Type: Null was a human attempt to recreate god. 

There’s also the Ultra Beasts to worry about. The latest trailer was deliberately vague about Ultra Beasts, but they sound absolutely terrifying. These strange creatures are a threat to both humans and Pokemon and aren’t even classified as Pokemon on Pokemon Sun and Moon‘s webpage. The trailer showed the first Ultra Beast, a jellyfish like creature dubbed UB-01, coming out of what appears to be an actual tear in reality.

We don’t know what the Ultra Beasts do, but they’re possibly extra-dimensional, have tentacles, and are impossibly powerful. That’s sounds a lot like Chthulu or one of the other ancient Lovecraftian gods.