Stupid Pokémon

Aniforce, a Dutch artist, decided that Pokémon designs—already plenty ridiculous if you actually look at them—could be improved by one simple change: make them look profoundly stupid. Not mocking stupid, just vacant. Derpy. Brain completely missing.

He’s worked through the first 151, which means Pikachu is there with this genuinely bewildered expression, Charizard looks permanently confused, and Blastoise is just… gone. The joke’s obvious once you see it. There’s maybe half a millimeter between cute creature design and complete idiot, and he found exactly where that line is.

What I like about this is how it exposes something real about these designs. Pokémon work because they’re iconic, carefully crafted, clever. But they’re also fundamentally strange. A tortoise with mounted weapons. A rat that electrocutes itself. A sentient psychic puddle. Once you see them as genuinely dumb, not in some mean way, just dumb, you can’t really unsee it. It becomes funny in this almost tender way.

The drawings have this perfect poker-face quality. Nothing’s exaggerated or vicious. He just shifted the eyes or softened the jaw and suddenly Venusaur looks like it’s wondering if it’s real. That’s not cruelty. That’s affection mixed with permission to laugh at something you actually care about.