A queer artist made a Pokemon and RuPaul’s Drag Race crossover and the internet might have finally peaked
Pokemon Jynx and Lopunny are transformed into Drag Race judges Michelle Visage and RuPaul. (Sindre Johnsen)
A queer artist recast RuPaul’s Drag Race with a bunch of Pokemon and honestly, have you ever heard of anything more life-affirming?
If you liked Pokemon while growing up, you’re queer now. They’re the rules, we don’t make them up.
The video games and their animated series are filled with iconic LGBT+ characters, from Ditto (genderqueer legend) to Weepinbell (just a grass-type, sir), to the drag-tastic villains that are Team Rocket.
As a result, Pokemon has a legion of LGBT+ fans who meet every piece of new content with an overjoyed scream – but perhaps none quite so loud as the one that greeted Sindre Johnsen’s Pokemon–Drag Race mash-up.
*lipsyncs to «Toxic»*
I made This dumb animation, and i sure hope ya’ll enjoy it ? pic.twitter.com/UsOyXGlvMp
— Sindorman (@sindorman) November 24, 2019
Perhaps the most inevitable crossover in queer history, the 30-second animation sees Ekans and Koffing being critiqued by the judges.
“Ekans, it’s a piece of fabric with no shape to it. Why would you cover up your curves like that?” asks Jynx, as Michelle Visage.
“And Koffing honey, I wanted more body from you.”
“Ekans, Rocket, your Team Rocket failed to blast off,” says Lopunny, as RuPaul.
In their confessional, Ekans dons Raja O’Hara’s trademark glasses and warns that she’s ready to “wrap that b**** to go”.
Koffing, wearing a Valentina-style beret, is simply thanking Arceus she’s “not wearing that top hat”.
With almost 250,000 views and counting, Johnsen’s clip has been hailed by followers as “the most perfect animation ever seen”.
*Koffing used Smokescreen*
I’m not gagging. I mean I’m gagging from like *sniffs* the smell. pic.twitter.com/uRcdWzMTLw— KYUNCHI♡ DRAMAGEDDON OUT NOW? (@Kyunchix3) November 24, 2019
You’re perfect you’re a model, you look like Lugia Evangelista..
— Psycho Fingers (@psychofingers) November 24, 2019
The clip is the latest in a long line of crossovers by Johnsen, who is best known on Instagram for his Drag Queen Pokemon trainer series.
“I wanted to mix my current queer interests with the nostalgia from my childhood, making something both the six-year-old and the 27-year-old me would enjoy,” the Norwegian artist told PinkNews.
Explaining his – and the LGBT+ community’s – obsession with the franchise, he explained: “Pokemon is fun, campy, doesn’t really take itself too seriously and is pretty non-gendered.
“Also I think that the TV show characters Jessie and James were, for a lot of people my age, their first introduction to queer-coded characters who even dressed up in drag from time to time.”
Johnsen says that Pokemon Silver, released in the UK in 2001, was the most influential in terms of his design style.
Having earned a bachelor’s degree in graphic design, he has been working as a freelance designer for about two years while also serving as a full-time kindergarten worker.
Johnsen said that the idea to cross Pokemon with Drag Race came to him in early 2018.
“I’d seen a lot of these simple photo edits on Tumblr pairing looks from Drag Race with different Pokemon, and my friends and I started to do our own.
So for All Stars 3 I started making my own Drag Race pixelart, and from there it really caught on.”
Follow Sindre Johnsen @sindorman.
