Deconstructed Character Archetype examples from the Pokémon franchise.
Video Games
- Pokémon Black and White: The Striton Triplets, Cilan, Chili and Cress, deconstruct The Dividual. In both their restaurant and battle, the three perfectly compliment each-other's weaknesses. But in a flashback in Black 2 and White 2 the group discuss how the compliment they most often get, "the three of you combined make one great trainer", doesn't reflect well on their individual strengths, but it's not an inaccurate assessment either, as proven when the Shadow Triad wipes the floor with them. This leads them to resign as Gym Leaders and train themselves individually, as the other Leaders would continue to surpass them otherwise.
- Pokémon Sun and Moon
- The villains, Team Skull, deconstruct Kid Hero. They are made up of teenagers who have failed the Island Challenge. This gives them severe self-esteem issues and means many of them have become homeless because they are ashamed to return home; they are forced to turn to crime precisely because they can not return to society.
- Lusamine deconstructs a typical Pokémon protagonist. She wants to acquire all Pokémon, much like how the protagonist may capture all Pokémon for the Pokedex. When a new, unidentified Pokémon appears, she becomes obsessed with having it. When the heroes call her cruel for treating her Pokémon like exhibits or trophies after seeing her collection of cryogenically frozen Pokémon, she counters that the heroes have likely caught a bunch of Pokémon solely for the sake of having them and have ignored said Pokémon since.
- In perhaps a grand moment of Irony, the game also introduces a feature allowing your PC Pokémon to partake in fun activities like harvest berries, train, relax, mine and so on, allowing you to subvert what Lusamine does. The guy who runs it, Mohn, is a little eccentric, but loves Pokémon. He's Lusamine's husband and Lillie and Gladion's father who ended up being sucked into a portal before arriving in Poke Pelago and losing his memories. His disappearance was what led to Lusamine's Start of Darkness in the first place.
- Mimikyu deconstructs the Pika-clone. Pika-clones are made to be a regional knock-off of Pikachu to ride off its popularity. Mimikyu does just that. It creates its own knock-off costume of Pikachu to ride off its popularity only because it's an Eldritch Abomination that wants someone to be its Trainer.
- Pokémon Sword and Shield has three.
- First, there's Hop, who deconstructs Hau before him. Sure, he's happy-go-lucky just like Hau, he starts his adventure alongside you just like Hau, and he has a relative that's a major influence in his home region, just like Haunote . However, unlike Hau who was just there for the ride, Hop genuinely wants to better himself as a Pokémon Trainer, and his constant losses actually get to him. This becomes most evident when he loses to Bede and ditches his Wooloo and Corvisquire for two battles in a row, with the second battle involving a Trevenant and a Heatmor, indicating that he's serious about beating the player. After the post-game, he decides that instead of being a Trainer, he'll work to become a Professor.
- Meanwhile, Bede can be seen as a deconstruction of the Jerkass rival, specifically Blue. Yeah, he's a cocky ass whose comeuppance you would likely enjoy giving personally, but some of it might stem from the fact that he's an orphan and had no one to care for him. Thus, when Rose took him in and sponsored him for the Gym Challenge, he gained a bit of a superiority complex unaware or unwilling to be aware of the fact that Rose sees him as expendable. After he gets disqualified, he can best be described as a shell of who he was before. When Opal takes him in, his personality does a complete 180. Sure, he's still overconfident in his skills, but it's the sort of overconfidence that might be more reminiscent of Barry than Blue.
- While Leon is probably the most active Champion in the series, he still follows the series' trend of the champions being largely hands-off when it comes to certain regional threats. He was so hyper-focused on retaining his title that he ignores Chairman Rose's pleas of the potential tragedy in Galar, which would end up being the catalyst for the latter's Face–Heel Turn.
- In Detective Pikachu, the titular Pikachu is a deconstruction of how Pikachu are portrayed, being cynical and sarcastic rather than cheerful and playful, due to being frustrated over nobody but The Hero being able to understand his Pokémon Speak.
- Pokémon Scarlet and Violet
- In the base game, Professor Sada (Scarlet Version) and Professor Turo (Violet Version) deconstruct the archetype of the Pokémon Professor, a quirky mentor figure who dedicates their life to knowing more about the world of Pokémon by showing the end results of what happens when their dedication becomes an obsession.
- First of all, the professor does not fulfill the gameplay roles of the traditional Pokémon professor, with the staff of the academy instead taking that role and the professor only contacting you when stuff directly related to their research comes up. This makes them a reclusive figure who has been neglecting their relationships, especially with their son Arven and caused the otherwise Nice Guy to develop a grudge against the Koraidon/Miraidon their parent managed to summon.
- Then things get real when the player and their friends are invited into Area Zero to solve an upcoming crisis. Through journal entries it's learnt that the professor wasn't merely dedicated to their work, they were obsessed with the mysteries of Area Zero and the Paradox Pokémon. Determining they must have come from another time period, they build a time machine to summon more, which rather than just being a neat way to explain unusual Pokémon, is treated like the ticking environmental timebomb mass the introduction of new species would be. Eventually their obsession drove out everyone in their life, even their partner, leaving them alone and paranoid.
- In the end, the professor died at the hands of one of the many Paradox Pokémon they summoned, but their obsession was so great that, via security protocols programmed into their AI replica, they posthumously end up being the final villain of the game. Previous professors dedicated their life to the study of Pokémon to sometimes unhealthy levels, but Sada/Turo shows what happens when that becomes all consuming.
- In the game's first DLC pack, The Teal Mask, Kieran and his arc deconstructs the idea of the Shrinking Violet, specifically that they'll be better socially and happier if they express themselves. He starts off shy and unable to express himself under his overbearing sister and quickly takes a shine to the protagonist. But as the story goes on, and he finds himself Locked Out of the Loop, he finds the drive to express himself, and it wasn't pleasant feelings he was keeping bottled up. Even after the protagonist apologises, Kieran's now expressing his previously bottled up Sore Loser tendencies. Turns out, being emotionally repressed can lead to some dark ways of thinking and developing.
- He also deconstructs Might Makes Right as he declares that Duels Decide Everything when he knows he's in the wrong and doesn't have the moral justification to back it up. When he finds that Ogerpon, the Legendary Pokémon he's been obsessing over has instead taken a shine to the protagonist, he demands a battle for the right to catch her with no regard to what she wants and when he loses, instead of assessing his behavior, he concludes that he wasn't strong enough and becomes obsessed with defeating the protagonist with a crazed smile.
- Kieran's character arc deconstructs the series' traditional rival tropes. Earlier rivals typically fell into one of two categories: the Friendly Rival and the Jerkass. Kieran starts as a "friendly" rival, but gradually becomes a "jerk rival" due to taking his repeated losses very badly. While other games had the "jerk rivals" focus their negative tendancies at the player, Kieran lashes out at any and everyone who he thinks is weak and has everyone concerned about how such a sweet kid turned toxic. Instead of someone who the player wants to take down a peg as Blue or Silver was, "jerk rival" Kieran is rather painful to watch and defeating him does not feel satisfying as being defeated again doesn't cause him to have any big revelation, only to go from agressive and obsessed back to depressed. He only turns things around when after the Area Zero Underdepths incident does he finally realise that his obsession is making things worse for everyone, and casts aside the idea of rivallry altogether, asking the progatonist if they can start over again as friends.
- As a parallel to Kieran, Carmine deconstructs the Big Sister Bully. Said overbearing nature is shown to be particularly forceful - telling him to do things that oppose his intentions and ordering him to leave when she's conducting affairs with you - and is implied to be abusive, with one instance having her defend her actions by comparing them to actually hitting him. A lack of challenge from her family, and implied lack of consequences from her community, has also led to her toxic behavior towards outsiders such as attacking foreign visitors and bossing them around. Yet by the end, she hypocritically becomes like her brother in fixating upon Ogerpon's feelings rather than Kieran's and not once considers why he became the way he is, oblivious to the fact he became the obsessed, power-hungry freak he is at narrative's end almost entirely because of her. Kieran's clearly messed up, but it takes two to tango.
- In the base game, Professor Sada (Scarlet Version) and Professor Turo (Violet Version) deconstruct the archetype of the Pokémon Professor, a quirky mentor figure who dedicates their life to knowing more about the world of Pokémon by showing the end results of what happens when their dedication becomes an obsession.
Anime and Manga
Anime
- Pokémon: The Series:
- Ash Ketchum
- Diamond and Pearl deconstructs Ash himself as the All-Loving Hero. Ash's unconditional love for all Pokémon and belief in their abilities has led him to becoming too reliant on The Power of Friendship over actually battling competently; this puts him at constant odds with his Social Darwinist rival Paul, who believes love and friendship are no match for raw power and calculated strategy. Ash's desperation to prove Paul wrong only makes things worse, as Paul is easily able to manipulate Ash's emotions and force him into even worse situations. The deconstruction hits its peak in their full battle at Lake Acuity; Ash expects to win with little more than a burning sense of justice on his side, while Paul has spent 10 whole days specifically preparing his team to counter Ash's, and Ash gets absolutely destroyed at an overwhelming 6-2 loss.
- Ash himself goes through his own deconstruction, involving his Bond Phenomenon with Greninja. When it first manifests, it seems like a tremendous asset for winning battles (as it allows them to tap a Super Mode similar to Mega Evolution without requiring a Mega Stone), but his inability to control this power and the physical strain it places on him leads to him losing two battles in a row, leaving him in an OOC funk. Fortunately, he manages to reconstruct himself by remembering his basic love for Pokémon, giving him the inner balance to properly harness this power.
- The XY series deconstructs the To Be a Master trope with Alain. His total focus on becoming the strongest causes him to neglect the people important in his life and be an Unwitting Pawn for Team Flare. He believes that beating every strong trainer would make him stronger yet finds himself helpless when actual danger arrives. He stops enjoying his wins and never considers what to do after he became the strongest, his reasons behind it constantly changing to justify his path. And despite always winning battles, Alain finds himself feeling inferior to Ash Ketchum, who encompasses the happiness and wisdom that he never got under Lysandre's guidance.
- Ash Ketchum
- Pokémon Horizons: The Series: Liko, Ash's successor, deconstructs Ash and his friends tendencies as Nice Guys. In nearly every episode, Ash and co. would always help the character of the day with their problems no matter what, but the series would rarely have this bite them in the rear for doing so. This time, Liko isn't so lucky as she forgets the one key factor that would come back to hurt Ash later: not being an Extreme Doormat. Because she's so focused on making everyone else happy, she doesn't have her own goal in life, which causes her to fall behind Roy and throws a battle against Wakaba so she could win. Neither Wakaba nor Liko's Sprigatito are pleased about this, and Kabu has to tell Liko that she's stunting her own growth by trying too hard to please everyone.
Manga
- Lance from the Pokémon Adventures manga is a deconstruction of Friend to All Living Things. Like Yellow, he can sense the thoughts and feelings of Pokémon, considers them his closest friends, and is able to heal them after battles. However, due to seeing how much Pokémon have suffered under human-made pollution and destruction of their habitats, unlike Yellow, he gains a massive grudge against humankind. He believes humans and Pokémon to be near-incapable of coexistence, from what his Pokémon friends have been hurt by, and aims to take revenge. Yellow herself reconstructs this, though, as she notes that yes, humans have negatively impacted Pokémon populations through their development and pollution (such as causing a pack of Mankey to starve), but she also recognizes that several people do genuinely care for Pokémon and vice versa (after her first battle with Lance, she asks Red's Pikachu, Pika, if he really would be happy in a world without humans), and she asserts that to slaughter the human race, as Lance intends to, is an extreme position whose ends aren't as utopian as they seem.
