oh look there’s a trailer thing

all right, all right, let’s watch the fµ¢£in’

y’know, the

what time is it

JUNE!? jesus christ

okay, the, y’know, this:

So right off the bat we have the reappearance of these violet grape bunch and scarlet orange slice shield designs, which were also in the first trailer (you can see them in the “real world” segment).

Here they’re on some pillars outside the Sagrada Família-looking building that we also saw in the first trailer. I remember after that first trailer there was some speculation going around (because the player characters looked like they were wearing school uniforms) that these were the crests of rival schools, or maybe of classes or “houses” within a school, and that kinda seems plausible to me now, because in the very next shot we see…

The two hot professors, Professor Sada and Professor Turo; it looks like we get different mentors based on the version we pick. I feel like Professor hotness has been gradually escalating over Pokémon’s lifetime; like, sure, Elm has kind of a cute nerdy twink thing going on, and Birch has the dad bod, but then we get Sycamore in X and Y, Kukui‘s abs in Sun and Moon; of course Professor Magnolia in Sword and Shield is distinguished but really old, but we also get Sonia in those games, who is a full Professor by the end of the story. And then there’s Sada and Turo, who just demolish everything in sight with their combined raw sex appeal.

Their names, interestingly, seem to be abandoning the traditional Professor Tree format; instead it seems to me like they are Professor Past and Professor Future – or, in Spanish, pasada and futuro. There has already been some speculation that Scarlet and Violet would have some kind of “past vs. future” theme, based on the different lettering styles used for the titles of the two games, and there’s more hints in that direction here. Aside from their white lab coats, Sada’s costume has this fur or feather ruff, a bead necklace and a rough-looking shirt, tapping into a vaguely wilderness or “barbarian” aesthetic, while Turo is wearing some kind of futuristic body armour(?) with a neon purple inlay, and has those weirdly angular shapes in the way his facial hair is styled. So I think probably the story will involve some kind of rivalry between these two and their respective students or research assistants, and that storyline will also touch on a bunch of the other past/future or tradition/innovation theming of Scarlet and Violet.

This slightly older-looking girl with the one green lock of hair seems like she’s the “rival” character, or some sort of mentor figure, or both. Her name is Nemona, which I think first brings to mind “anemone” for me, since Sword and Shield liked flower names for significant characters; dunno if that’s going to continue to be a theme going forward, not sure whether it’s likely to be important anyway. Maybe someone just needs to carry the “vegetation name” flag since the Professors aren’t doing it.

Nemona has One of These Things, which is an electric something. So. That’s cool.

This trailer seems quite proud that you can meet up with three other players and run around doing stuff in the overworld, which is quite nice. Not clear yet what you can actually do together with other players, but it seems like a logical next step from Sword and Shield‘s multiplayer raid battles, which are definitely one of the bigger successes of those games. If Scarlet and Violet have some big flashy generational “flagship mechanic,” which I have to assume is likely, I think it’s a good bet that it’ll somehow tie into the casual multiplayer dimension of the game as well.

Also, the kiosk structure in the background of this shot, with the Pokéball logo and what looks like a video ad banner… I’m guessing is some kind of PokéMart equivalent? It reminds me a lot of a Greek períptero, a kind of collapsible one-man convenience store that you can find on street corners in any large town in Greece; I haven’t been to Spain so I don’t know what the equivalent there is, but that’s very much the vibe I’m getting.

This little green leafy dude, when I was watching the trailer at first, I actually took for a regional form of Budew, because it has the same basic body structure, but apparently not – this is a completely separate Pokémon, Smoliv, the smol olive Pokémon, a Grass/Normal dual-type. And, well, it’s a Mediterranean region – how could they not have an olive Pokémon? Kinda curious to see where this goes; it could just turn into, like, a bigger olive, but it could also develop into an olive tree, or even into something based on a flask or jar of olive oil (maybe to evolve it you have to take it to get… pressed).

And there’s a little black pig! Its name is Lechonk, and it is certainly a heckin’, as the saying goes, chonker.

So the pig is cute, the pig is clearly very cute, but don’t get too attached to it. A black pig in an Iberian Pokémon region seems like a pretty clear reference to black Ibérico pigs, which are raised free-range and fed acorns in order to produce one of Spain’s most sought-after signature culinary exports: Jamòn Ibérico, some of the finest and most expensive ham in the world. The @pokemon Twitter account even gave us this bit of Pokédex data: “It may appear fat at first glance, but in reality, the Pokémon’s body is mostly muscle built by constantly walking around in search of food.” Which is a real true fact about Ibérico pigs, they eat a lot of fatty food but also burn a lot of energy in their free-range lifestyle, and this is what produces the luxuriant marbling of fat that Ibérico ham is known for. Trainers who want to raise a Lechonk should expect to have to fight off crazed gourmands left and right (the I Chews You boys are going to have a field day with this…). The desire for delicious, edible Pokémon is clearly very powerful in Game Freak’s repressed psyche; it’s obvious that they don’t want us to eat Pokémon, because of how traumatic it might be for all the young children who play these games, but are themselves just barely holding back the desperate hunger to rip apart every Pokémon in the ‘dex with their bare teeth.

Then we have a bunch of shots to showcase some of the range of pretty environments these games are going to have, as well as several of the returning Pokémon from previous generations. The details of these aren’t super important to me, personally (I mean, really none of this is; I’m happy to wait and play the game, but the first rule of being a #content #creator is that you’re supposed to React to Things, so here I am, Reacting).

This shot looks like a gym battlefield, and we also have a windmill, so… y’know… the Don Quixote energy is intensifying. I don’t even know what it would mean to have a character or a Pokémon based on Don Quixote in this game, participating in a Pokémon story; I just know that I want it more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.

And near the end of this montage of shots we have this image of two crossed flags, which is an interesting thing to slide in at the end there with no further context. And then they put the crossed flag shot into this three-panel shot here, alongside the gym and this… sandstorm-y area with a weird tower in the background?

And I have no idea what that’s about; it kinda seems like they’re implying that all three of these images have something to do with each other, and presumably something to do with how we challenge gyms (or this region’s equivalent) and progress through the story. The flags, in the context of the possible “rival schools/classes/professors” storyline, makes me think of some kind of “capture the flag” game, which perhaps you could participate in alongside friends over the multiplayer connection. Dunno. Seems like something they want people to speculate about, though.

And here we have our first glimpse of the mascot legendary Pokémon.

And these two handsome dragons clearly have some more past/future theming going on, with the scarlet dragon being feathery, scaly and a bit more naturalistic or bestial, while the violet dragon is this sleek futuristic cyborg creature with jet engines instead of legs and glowing plasma inside its body. Their names, apparently, are Koraidon and Miraidon, presumably from Japanese 古来 (korai, ancient) and 未来 (mirai, future).

As for their designs, I have unfortunately already been exposed to this tweet that suggests they’re both motorcycles:

hey guys the gimmick is your pokemon turns into a motorcycle
all the pokemon centers are gas stations
you guys ready?????? pic.twitter.com/mZdrufalXP

— PAINE (@paine_works) June 1, 2022

…and… y’know, it’s confident, it’s bold, I hate it, but I can definitely see it? Koraidon does have this very prominent and striking tyre-shaped chest, and the last several games have strongly leaned into the idea of riding Pokémon; it reminds me a lot of using the Eon Flute in Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby to summon Latios or Latias. Of course, if that is what they’re doing, it seems like something that would come into play relatively early in the story, which would imply an interesting departure from formula in the way we meet and interact with the mascot Pokémon.

Anyway, I think that just about covers it. What do you think? Is this a game? What is time? Are gen V remakes confirmed? If Scarlet and Violet are in the future now, and will be in the past once they come out, how will we ever be able to play the future-themed one? And so on? Let me know in the comments, or don’t, because all of this is a meaningless distraction from our perpetual terror of the Endless Void.