2519: Chicken-chan x Lillie, OTP

One of the things that attracted me to try out the new Pokémon game was the amount of fanart it was generating even before its release. The Internet, it seemed, was particularly enamoured with Lillie, a major character in the story.

This animated GIF was the first time I noticed her:

Said GIF is from the Pokémon anime rather than the game — and interestingly Lillie looks considerably younger in this than she does in the game and her official artwork, perhaps to ensure she is in keeping with the perpetually young Ash — but I found her immediately striking and endearing with her distinctive outfit, cute haircut and adorable reaction to Tauros. She doesn't react at all like this when the player-protagonist encounters Tauros in the games, suggesting that her anime counterpart may be depicted as a slightly different character.

Anyway, I digress. Lillie caught my attention for some reason, initially with this GIF and subsequently with a considerable amount of fanart that started popping up around social media and suchlike.

Here Lillie is seen closer to her depiction in the game, including her bag, in which she carries "Nebby", a Cosmog Pokémon that she… "acquired" for reasons that are not yet apparent with my progress in the story. This somewhat pensive pose is also more characteristic of her depiction in the game; she's shown to be a rather sensible girl who cares for Pokémon, but dislikes the world's love of Pokémon battles because the participants often end up hurt. She's constantly down on herself for not being a "proper trainer", and attaches herself to the player-protagonist when the two develop an immediate connection by chance early in the narrative

You can play a male or female protagonist in Pokémon Sun and Moon, but with the Internet being the Internet, the fanbase of video games with Japanese origin loving a bit of yuri and the female protagonist being pretty cute in her own right, much of the fanart depicting Lillie with the game's protagonist has focused on the same-sex pairing to varying degrees.

The pairing is immediately appealing because the two characters are strong contrasts with one another. Lillie is blonde, pale and depicted as lacking in self-confidence, while "Chicken-chan" — so dubbed by a few people here and there owing to her silly hat — is dark-haired and shown to be curious, self-assured and more than willing to poke her nose into all manner of things. Even the way Chicken-chan walks in the games presents an air of confidence; she struts with great pride, while Lillie kind of saunters along, often looking like she's hoping no-one will notice her.

Naturally, there's a ton of fanart out there suggesting that Chicken-chan and Lillie are more than just friends, such as this lovely image that looks like it's straight out of a visual novel. And of course, there are plenty of images that take things… um… a little bit further, shall we say, but I'll leave you to investigate Rule 34 for yourself if you dare.

I really adore seeing the community as a whole get so wrapped up and invested in a fictional (and, one would argue, non-canonical) relationship between two characters in this way. It's touching to see everyone "rooting" for these characters, and for so much of the artwork (explicitly lewd stuff aside, obviously) to just be so good-natured, positive and accepting that you can't help but feel good when you see it.

I mean, obviously a lot of the appeal of the Chicken-chan x Lillie pairing is the simple fact that it's two cute girls being cute together, but in a world where particularly vocal critics are constantly complaining about the "toxic" culture of gaming, the sheer volume of high-quality fanart of this kind — and the keenness with which it's shared — is a reminder to us all that perhaps things aren't quite as bad as the world's perpetual whingers might want us to believe.