This week, Warner Bros released the first trailer for Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, a live-action Pokémon film due for release in May.
This is another big source of weirdness: in this film, Pikachu talks.
Detective Pikachu is about a failed Pokémon trainer (Justice Smith) with a missing father, who meets a Pikachu in a deerstalker hat and finds that he can understand the creature, like Kanto’s own Doctor Dolittle.
The Verge proclaimed this as proof that Pokémon shouldn’t be realistic, but that begs the question: what is the alternative?