#nyasu

Okay, let me use this as an excuse to ramble. I've wanted to make a post about this for ages

The answer is: sort of. Because in SM114, he had a crush on Pheromosa.

The thing is, Pheromosa is "gender-unknown". While it was probably not the intent of the showmakers to make Meowth canonically queer with this, I still believe that this is quite compelling evidence. I guess you could say they made him "accidentally canonically queer".

But while this is the most head-on evidence, its not even my favorite.

In episode BW044, Meowth has an intense crush on a male Purrloin, only to quickly retract his feelings when Purrloin tells him he is male in the end of the episode. While this episode is clearly just homophobic in nature, I still call bullshit. You really want to convince me that pokémon determine another pokémon's gender by looks alone? And not like, by smell or instinct? I firmly believe that the thing that actually made Meowth retract his feelings was the peer-pressure of the twerps starting to laugh and point at him during the gender-reveal.

Next, we have his insinuated crush on the boss. I am not going to say much on this, you know the images. James' words here confirm that it is always Meowth's imagination that we are seeing. Also, they had to cut a boss fantasy scene in DP030 in the english dub because it was too suggestive.

And I just have to add this because I ship them, sorry, but his interactions with Pikachu sometimes seem a little on the queer side as well.

So much for actual somewhat queer material. But don't get me even started on the queercoding.

The whole story of him being trapped in between the worlds of pokémon and humans feels like a very trans metaphor to me. Also the discrimination he sometimes faces, people calling him disgusting or a freak just for the way that he is. His trans voice actress Maddie Blaustein read his story as him being a human trapped inside a pokémon body, and it was the reason she decided to come out to her co-workers! If that is not transcoding, I don't know what is.

The way he sometimes has crushes on humans also feels like queercoding / bicoding to me. He literally is queer on every side of the spectrum. Can't get any queerer than that.

Meowth cheering him on at the end “if you listen, you can understand…” making that old man so happy, though it were a lie and Meowth was capable of human speech anyone could understand… ;O;

Misty being disappointed by meeting her idol, who wrote a beautiful book about Water type conservation, but cannot bear to touch them directly due to a traumatic incident in her childhood… which she never recovers from, but she continues her family’s work to help them anyway, even if she cannot bear to touch them without a barrier, and pushing through that fear out of necessity has consequences (she faints and falls sick)... meet people where they're at. Their baseline is different after trauma, their normal won't be the same as yours or even theirs before it.

"The song of every Pokemon is sweet if you can hear it."

I think Lillie wearing a full body suit to handle Water type Pokemon, back when she also was averse to touching them, was a reference to this Joy. ;3;

Johto also gave us the bittersweet tale of Jessie’s Pokemon nursing school days and her enduring friendship with Blissey (who I sincerely think only evolved with the help of Jessie’s friendship.)

Artwork by Ken Sugimori for the Team Rocket Rubber Playmat released on April 2019, as part of the "Sky Legend" TCG release in Pokémon Center stores in Japan.