Pokémon Champions Has An Unexpected Trans Icon

Pokémon has a lot of weird gender stuff in its game design, both for things like breeding Pokémon and in the way that it is obviously leaning into some pretty heavily gendered character design for its monsters. Tinkaton is pink and has pigtails, so it’s obviously a girl, right? Sometimes this plays into some gender dimorphism in which certain species have different traits depending on if they’re male or female. In other cases, it can affect their evolutionary line, and that’s what happens with Gallade, a Pokémon introduced back in Diamond and Pearl. 

Normally, this psychic/fighting-type Pokémon can only be male, but that seems to have randomly changed in Pokémon Champions. Fans have stumbled upon a Gallade in Champions’ tutorial segments that is, somehow, female, despite that not being possible in the past. To get a Gallade, you had to have a male Kirlia and use a Dawn Stone on it to evolve. Female Kirlias are only able to evolve into Gardevoir, the very feminine version of that final form. 

Gardevoir was originally the only final form the monster had when it debuted in Ruby and Sapphire, which means that even male versions would evolve into the more feminine Pokémon. As such, Gallade feels like it was added to make a more masculine version of the evolutionary line. That’s obviously a loaded sentiment that we can unpack another day, but whether it was an oversight that will get patched out or a new development in the Gallade lore, trainer Cordy’s Gallade’s pronouns are she/her, which means that fans are calling her a trans icon who must have transitioned at some point after evolving into the third form. Good for her.

Pokémon Champions has been raked through the coals on launch day thanks to its limitations on competitive play and strange bugs that are interfering with battles and transferring Pokémon from the Home storage app. Maybe updates and patches will get it back on track, but for now, at least it gave us Trans Gallade.