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No one really minds when the creators of movies and TV disregard the laws of the universe a little in the name of producing quality entertainment. Would the space battles in Star Wars have been anywhere near as fun if they had all taken place in complete silence due to the lack of air required to carry sound waves? Not a chance. Does anyone really mind that a lit cigarette doesn’t actually produce enough heat to ignite a puddle of gasoline if it results in those epic, “casually walks away from burning building” shots in action movies? Not in the slightest.

But sometimes such use of artistic licence can slip by entirely unnoticed, and it takes someone to point out a few key facts before the reality of the situation hits home. Case in point: Ash from hit anime series Pokémon seemingly possesses super-human strength, and is able to carry pokémon that weigh vastly more than he does without even breaking a sweat.

As more of a cat person, I was always surprised at how heavy my mother- and father-in-law’s dog, a very cute sheltie named Mel, was whenever I picked her up. Even though she was a fairly small pup, compared to my cat Mel felt positively enormous in my arms; as if I were carrying a newborn calf across a field. Certainly not the kind of load I’d like to have on my back while running around town challenging strangers to battles.

Thank goodness, then, that I’m not a pokémon master.

According to a handful of images shared online earlier this week, a typical bird pokémon like the Fletchinder pictured below can weigh as much as 16.0 kg. That number may not mean much to the metric-phobic, but when you consider that a typical 10-year-old Japanese boy weighs around 33.5 kg (73 pounds), the fact that Pokémon hero Ash Ketchum–himself a 10-year-old Japanese kid–is carrying more than a third of his own body weight on a single arm, and smiling while doing so, is pretty impressive.

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Japanese Twitter user @rifusato shared the images last Sunday, pointing out both the astounding weights of some of the pocket monsters that appear in the hit TV show and the fact that Ash is routinely shown carrying them around as if they weigh no more than a small bag of sugar. No wonder the tweet was shared and favourited tens of thousands of times in just a few hours.

▼ “That Ash kid is super strong.”

https://twitter.com/rifusuto/status/521224274623741953/photo/1

▼ Hipopotas here is supposed to weight 49.5kg (109 lbs). What? You couldn’t climb a rope with that kind of weight in your arms? Dude, do you even lift?

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▼ Pignite? 55.5 kilos. Again, much more than Ash himself.

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▼ Larvitar, meanwhile, clocks in at a whopping 72 kg. That’s 158 pounds, or roughly the weight of an average human male measuring six feet tall. Not that Ash cares.

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Ash, you’re a beast.

Still, considering that he spends his days hunting monsters twice his bodyweight and teaching them to fight, it’s probably good that Ash is able to handle himself…

Source: Twitter – rifusato h/t Kotaku US
Images: Twitter- rifusato