Bulbasaur, just another grass-type, another small invocation of human creativity, a little vaguely frog-like dinosaur speckled cyan with a big green plant bulb on its back, its squat, happy features stylized in accordance to the hard and fast laws of Anime; Bulbasaur, a couple minutes’ worth of clever code laser-welded in electroscopic cursive onto plastic; Bulbasaur, in the real inevitable true end little more than an impression left on the neurologies of a thousand million unnamed Nintendo handheld owners and borrowers and fiddlers-with, all of whom will have ultimately died and left every name of every thing to which their souls had ever born acquaintance in each their own little cubby at the entrance to the vast labyrinth they called death. Bulbasaur, you random little cretin.





[Not my work. Source uncertain.]

A wild Bulbasaur has no idea what it means to be listed “Number Zero-Zero-One in the National Pokédex,” nor much less does it care that it happens, itself, to be #001. A domesticated Bulbasaur, on the other hand, given time enough with a passionate trainer to acculturate to the gladiatorial combat-type infrastructure we humans have built around it, given time enough to cave to Stockholm and to hone a genuine affection for its Pokéball, then almost certainly knows how surreal it is to be #001 of six hundred and forty-something (the actual total being subject to official announcement), as this ordinal primacy has been dictated by the Bulbasaur’s true and loving master’s masters, by practically the Gods, and gives the little saurian an aura of cardinal importance with which only it, of all the beasts of the realm, gets to gleam.

It is awkward, then, when Bulbasaur must finally battle. Granted, in its final form–an evolution of an evolution called, “Ivysaur,” called, “Venusaur,”–it can hold its own in battle, and is a fine specimen of its Type (Grass); but pitted against any of its many weaknesses (Fire-breathing Pokémon, Flying Pokémon, Bug Pokémon, Ice-wielding Pokémon, to name a few) it is not liable to endure more than a few devastating, Special-Type-Attack-Bonus-augmented blows. A true #1 would not buckle so easily, so swiftly, so uncomplexly. His permanent type-handicap is for him living, highly personal proof that his master’s masters’ so-called “Pokédex” is not a product of mankind’s having carefully considered the thousand beautiful truths of Pokémon, but rather was and still is being assembled, and by all kinds of folks young and old, professional and amateur, fictional and non-, as some sort of purely functional, patchwork group effort, on no particular deadline.

Even ignoring Type-weakenesses, what has Bulbasaur to say to, say, the likes of Mewtwo? Mewtwo, who on a bad day goes down only after having KO'ed no fewer than two or three equilevel Vensaurs; Mewtwo, who is for no particular reason #‘ed 150; Mewtwo, who, himself, has, one can be sure, very little to say to anyone whose claim to existence can be as so effortlessly trivialized as Bulbasaur’s.

Furthermore, but what few, delicately chosen words might Bulbasaur make as though to speak before Mew, Eve of Pokémon? Mew, from whose rib was Mewtwo given forme, whose lineage begat lineage, Mew, who lets only the pure of heart even so much as glimpse her, surely has no obligation beyond her own perfect so-choosing to appear before someone as random and uninteresting and encumbered-looking as poor Bulbasaur, much less endure whatever noises he might make toward her.

Need we even turn our thoughts to Arceus almighty, then, the silent and immortal, the ringed and ungulate, the known physical creator of all existence? You can’t even get him in the game without cheating. A whole harem of Mews for Arceus, chance he to will it. A whole chorus of Mewtwos, with incredible voices and sick choreo, chance he again. Bulbasaur on the battlefield against Arceus, when that Bulbasaur exists at all is just one more infinitesimal item on Arceus’ incomparable CV, is a biblical shaming waiting to happen. No, we needn’t mention Arceus. Nor the myriad other Legendaries who could spank Bulbasaur silly. You could shoot two hundred Bulbasaurs out of cannons straight at the great green dragon Rayquaza and only just hope to stir it awake. But now we won’t go on like this.

Bulbasaur is #001 in the Pokédex because it is one of the three pokemon–Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle–that players can can choose to start with in the opening hour of the first Pokémon game ever released. Being the first choice listed of the three, it’s also the very first Pokémon anyone in the world ever had the chance to “own” back in 1996-7; this merits it the #001 slot in the Dex.

The actual first pokemon ever was not Bulbasaur. Satoshi Tajiri, creator of the series, has officially stated that Mew, not Bulbasaur, was the very first Pokémon ever devised, and that this was back in primordial 1990, back before Tajiri’s programming genius finally got him commissioned (hesitantly) to produce, over the next six years, one of the last titles that would ever debut on the basically already-dead Gameboy, the sleeper of the decade, Pocket Monsters: Red and *Green.

Now, Bulbasaur was sketched up probably somewhere toward the beginning of the overall design process, one could imagine, sure, around the same time as Charmander and Squirtle; but Tajiri has made it clear that in no way was Bulbasaur ever intended any degree of first- or foremostness. From the player’s perspective, Bulbasaur was meant to seem equal to Charmander and Squirtle. Its being #001 was as likely as its being #004 or #007.

And yet he is #001, and will be to the day we forget.

* On the cover of the final product of which was featured, solely and prominently, Venusaur; who was then swapped out with the objectively more bad-ass-looking Blastoise for the cover of Pokémon Blue as a way of better catering to North American, European, and Australian 10yo gamers’ tastes. This, too, surely bothers the domesticated Bulbasaur, at least a little, at least every now and again.