Spirit Pokémon

About

Spirit Pokémon is a series of multi-pane comics featuring a Pokemon fan who finds him or herself in some sort of predicament and conjures up the "spirit Pokémon" for help.

Origin

The first Spirit Pokemon comic was created by Tumblr user Secretcat^[1] and posted to his blog on November 22nd, 2010. The comic featured a geeky boy calling upon the power of his "spirit pokemon," in this case Porygon, to help him smooth his way through an awkward social situation. As of February 2014, the Tumblr post has over 1,800 notes.

Spread

Secretcat's original comic spread quickly through Tumblr after it was reblogged by popular comics blog Meredomo^[3] and popular Pokemon blog Fuckyeahpokememe.^[3] On December 23rd, 2013, gaming site Kotaku^[4] published a post that explained the concept of a Spirit Pokemon and collected some of the most popular Spirit Pokemon comics.

In addition, there are nearly 20,000 artworks tagged under "Spirit Pokemon" on DeviantART^[5], and a number of Spirit Pokemon questionnaires were created on quiz generator sites such as QuoteV^[7] and QuizFarm^[8]. On January 19th, 2013, Reddit user Redditor49 started a thread titled "How to Find Your Pokemon Spirit Animal" on the r/Pokemon subreddit. The idea of a Spirit Pokemon remerged in February 2014, when Pokemon players gathered online to play a massive crowd sourced game on Twitch.TV.

Notable Examples

Helix Fossil

Due to the large volume of chat commands being input at once during Twitch Plays Pokemon, random selection of items quickly became a common occurrence during battles, especially the second item in the player's bag, the Helix Fossil. This item appeared on screen so frequently that it came to be viewed as an object of worship and guidance by TwitchTV users. Other items treated this way were the Moon Stone, Nugget, and S.S. Ticket.

Search Interest

External References