By David T. Valentin
After a touching letter sent to Nintendo from a young child asking for a nonbinary Pokéman, Nintendo personally responded to the child saying they are “thoughtfully” considering the child’s request.
The parent of the child posted Nintendo’s response to their child on June 15th to Twitter with the caption, “my kid wrote a letter to Nintendo and they wrote back!”
Of course, many people commented on the post believing the original letter was written by the parent and sent to Nintendo, and in an effort to curb the doubters, the parent posted the letters with the caption “all you doubters saying a kid didn’t write Nintendo asking for nonbinary Pokémon, here’s the letter (obviously we helped them look up the address)
In their child’s letter, which they had written adorably in a handwritten letter written in big letters and words written across the page, their child writes, “Dear Nintendo could you please make nonbinary Pokémon? Also I want that because I think it would be cool and so nonbinary people would feel more comfortable about it.”
Considering the wide diversity of Pokémon out there, you’d think there would already be a few Pokémon considered nonbinary, right?
Interestingly, some of the legendary Pokémon are considered genderless for a number of reasons, despite being referred by specific pronouns.
In a post on reddit asking, “Why do legendaries have no gender,” Phantom_Journey responded by explaining that, because legendary Pokémon are sometimes representations of nature, practically the same as gods. Humans simply don’t know which gender the legendary are and often make assumptions based off the way they look.
Another redditor by the username metalflgon08 explained from a more scientific perspective, “Genderless in Pokémon is actually officially called ‘undiscovered’ so they may have a gender, but it’s never been found out, often due to scarcity, or the Pokémon not breeding with its own kind.” To which someone added on that because they live forever, they have no need to breed. So from a biological standpoint, they are neither male nor female. And because they’re technically gods, why would they care?
At the end of the day, because Pokémon don’t have a perception of “feminine” or “masculine” or a nonbinary identity, perhaps it would be better to include a nonbinary character in Nintendo’s next Pokémon game?