If Nintendo ever wants to “reboot” the franchise to be grittier, we hope it looks like this.

Now that we’ve all had a chance to play around with Pokémon Sun and Moon, we’ve had the opportunity to take a closer look at some of the classic Pokémon in their Alola versions. These curious variations are a sort of “natural selection” take on the wild pocket monsters had they developed in a totally different environment than the Kanto or Johto regions.

But as interesting as the new ones are, nothing gets long-time Pokémon fans going like the original starters from the first generation. Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle make up standard by which all starters are judged against.

No matter what new Pokémon species Nintendo comes up with, long-time fans will always have a special place in their hearts for these three and their evolutionary trees, especially when they look like this.

▼ “I returned to my mind as a child to make these, and I hope
they make others want to go on an adventure with Pokémon again.”

Twitter user @kizakura184cm shared some amazing fan-art that show off Blastoise, Venusaur and Charizard in a slightly scarier-than-usual way. If Nintendo was ever searching for the “right” look of a live-action Pokemon project that doesn’t star Detective Pikachu, they should know fans would probably be pretty happy if they looked  like @kizakura184cm’s creations.

▼ A bit of a peak into the process.

Maybe it’s the details in the facial expressions, or the texture of the skin, but something about these pictures really makes the Pokémon come alive.

We’ve featured plenty of other realistic-looking Pokémon before, so if Nintendo doesn’t like this look, there’s lots of others to choose from. And we have the perfect story for them to feature too: the love-struck Gyarados and Milotic.

Source: Net Lab
Images: Twitter/@kizakura184cm