Artist spends 9 months combining all 152 original Pokemon into a horribly beautiful abomination

Fusing Pokémon into unlikely mash-ups is a fantasy for many a trainer - judging by how popular the idea is in fan games and legally distinct monster-tamers - but what if you fused all 152 original Pokémon into one contorted mass? Well, one artist spent nine months doing exactly that. And the result is horribly beautiful.

Redditor T.B. Grote originally took to the series’ main subreddit to share his pitch with the community. "I want to fuse every Gen One Pokémon into one," they wrote, before asking the community to choose a starting Pokémon, as is tradition. The artist, who originally had the idea "in class in like fall 2022," then spent the next 152 days returning to the community to glue different creatures onto the growing abomination. 

The Reddit post above shows us the finished monster, which would be the most fearsome in all of series canon, except I'm not sure this thing would be functional. Look closely enough and you'll see Beedrill's stingers latched onto Mewtwo. Golem is ominously holding Eevee's tail (what happened to the rest of her?) Snorlax's round torso is equipped with what appears to be Blastoise's water canons, which in this case look like weaponized nipples. Heck, even MissingNo is hiding somewhere on the beast. 

Needless to say, the project is a stunning effort and a really fun way to disturb Pokémon's cutesy exterior without just equipping them with guns. Talking to Gamesradar+, the artist says that bolting on a new Pokémon would take them about an hour daily. "I was able to download the Pokémon models and backgrounds from The Model Resource," they explained. "It's a great site for models from a bunch of different games. I imported them and fused them in Blender."

The artist doesn't have plans to replicate this wild challenge with other Pokémon generations for now, mostly due to the time it takes up, but they still "really want to make art for all the other Pokémon since they are pretty love-starved in comparison."

As I mentioned earlier, combining Pokémon isn't a new phenomenon, though the above example is definitely the most ambitious version of the idea that I’ve ever seen. Pokémon Fusion is a cool website that lets you merge any two creatures. And indie RPG Cassette Beasts similarly lets you fuse two of your caught creatures for the edge in battle. It's well worth checking out if you’re itching for a good monster tamer.

For more unlikely amalgamations, check out the unlikely pairing of Halo 2 and Pokemon Snap.