Detective Pikachu: 7 Reasons To Be Excited

This isn’t live action in the sense of Roger Rabbit or Space Jam. There’s no anime Pokémon walking down the streets with their human trainers. The Pokémon shown are all rendered to be totally lifelike. Charizard, for one, looks absolutely amazing with scales.

There might be a little more fur than people were expecting, but that really shouldn’t be a surprise. Pikachu is an electric mouse, it makes sense he’d have fur. Jigglypuff, to be fair, is described as the balloon Pokémon, but fur definitely feels like the right direction over cheap, squeaky plastic.

It’s a real labour of love too, with one of the core designers RJ Palmer only discovered when the production team searched ‘realistic Pokémon’ online. So impressed were they that they not only based their designs on Palmer’s concepts, they offered him a job on the movie itself.

Overall, it’s a bit of a shock to see these beloved characters stylised in a way so different than the games or the anime. But realistically, this is the way it had to be, and you get the sense the designs will grow on you over time.