let me introduce you to my favorite pokémon card, trans rights pikachu
well it’s not actually called that, but it might as well be. now you might be thinking “wait isn’t that just birthday pikachu? what does it have to do with being trans?”
so part of the official lore of pokémon cards is that all the pictures in the cards are real pictures of pokémon that somebody took. you might know this from those pokémon snap cards, but there’s another much more obscure piece of pokémon media that’s about this exact topic, the 1999 manga series “how i became a pokémon card”
it was a short series, only 38 chapters, and each one is a short story about what’s going on in the pokémon card. anyway the last of these chapters explains why pikachu is having a party thrown for it, and it’s a pretty interesting story
so this is akari
akari is a trans boy. he just turned 13 and his mom is making him wear the girls uniform to school and use female pronouns because it’s time for him to start acting like a “proper lady”
anyway his best friend akira (yes their names are basically identical) gets a cool pokémon, and akari begs his mom for one, but what he gets is
a pikachu. a cute little pokémon that his mom got him in hopes it would make him act more ladylike. this is clearly upsetting to akari, his mom isn’t taking him seriously and got him a girl pokémon knowing it’s not what he likes, so he gets upset with the pikachu
eventually the pikachu defends him from some wild pokémon and he sees that even if his pokémon doesn’t look like how he wants, it can still be strong, and what really matters is caring about it and being nice to his pokémon
akari feels bad for being mean to his pikachu earlier, so he throws it a party to apologize, and that’s how birthday pikachu is really about a trans pokémon character from all the way back in 1999
Akari <3
