*pops up from the ground* I have come to the conclusion that Mewtwo in the Pokemon anime is either trans or gender-fluid.
This conclusion is mainly based around the idea that the Mewtwo in the first movie and the Mewtwo in the 16th Pokemon movie (Genesect and the Legend Awakened) are the
same Mewtwo. This runs contrary to what is generally considered to be canon, but, please consider -- really the only piece of evidence suggesting that the Mewtwo in the 16th movie is different than the one in the first movie is the fact that new Mewtwo has a woman's voice instead of a man's (and she doesn't recognize Ash, but I'll address that bit later on).
Consider the principle of Occam's Razor. The more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation is. The two possible explanations for the differences between the Mewtwos in these movies is that it's either a different Mewtwo, or, it's the same Mewtwo but she identifies as female now. In other words, the "assumptions" we have to make are:
- A team of scientists, completely unrelated to the ones who created "the original" Mewtwo, found a sample of Mew's DNA, decided to clone it, but then decided to alter its DNA to make it more powerful, and decided to make the exact same changes to its DNA that the original team of scientists did (despite not having any connection with those scientists or any knowledge that they even existed -- or if they did know about the original scientists, then they should know that attempting to create Mewtwo is a bad idea), and then, when "new Mewtwo" came into existence, it went into the same sort of blind rage as old Mewtwo, killing all the scientists and destroying the lab, and flew off wondering what its place in life was until it eventually went through the same character arc as the first Mewtwo and realized "it's what you do with the gift of life that determines who you are" and all that good stuff. OR
- The same Mewtwo from the first movie eventually realized it identifies as a woman and was able to change its voice accordingly.
And, no, I'm not just assuming that new Mewtwo has the same backstory as old Mewtwo when their origins could actually be completely different. Because the 16th movie
addresses Mewtwo's backstory, and, yes, it's pretty much exactly the same as what the first one went through. And I know that Pokemon lore is generally really inconsistent about how many of each legendary pokemon are supposed to exist (with many of them being built up like there's only one, until we eventually see more of them for... some reason), but with Mewtwo
in particular, it makes absolutely no sense that there could possibly be two of them,
especially when the 16th movie directly states that this Mewtwo has the exact same origin story as the first.
Now, as for Mewtwo being able to change his/her voice: this makes a lot of sense when we consider the fact that the only reason Mewtwo can "talk" at all is because it's
telepathic. There are no actual vocal cords involved here. And we don't know
exactly how this telepathy works in relation to gender, but, I have a few possible explanations:
- Mewtwo is in complete control of how it wants its mind-voice to sound, and can therefore change its voice to whatever it wants to sound like.
- The "sound" of the telepathic voice is dependent on one's inner voice -- in other words, what Mewtwo sounds like in its own head. And if Mewtwo started seeing itself as a woman, then it makes sense that its inner voice would change accordingly -- and, consequently, so would its "outer voice".
The second explanation is more likely I think, but, really, both would explain the change.
And really the most fascinating thing about this to me is that, if they simply gave Mewtwo a different
male voice actor, no one would've cared. Even if the new VA sounded nothing like the old one, people would still be perfectly willing to assume that this is the same Mewtwo. But because it sounds like a woman now, that means it
must be a different Mewtwo. As I've established, though, Occam's Razor disagrees.
Lastly, there's the fact that new Mewtwo doesn't recognize Ash. I admit I don't have a perfect explanation for this, but, a few possibilities include:
- Mewtwo simply pretends to not recognize Ash in order to not make it awkward. (After all, Ash certainly wouldn't recognize Mewtwo, as Mewtwo would know.)
- Mewtwo actually doesn't recognize Ash because most of the human characters did fuck-all during the 3rd act of the first movie, and perhaps the identities of the trainers involved really weren't important enough to Mewtwo to stick in its memory. (Yes, Ash's self-sacrifice at the end was... kind of a big deal, but it's possible that Mewtwo's perspective on it was more along the lines of "a human sacrificed his life so that we would stop fighting" rather than "this specific human whose name and face I'll remember sacrificed his life". Maybe Ash's name and face really just weren't important enough for Mewtwo to realize that this is the same human who was involved in that whole thing way back when.
Or maybe the concept of Pokemon tears bringing someone back to life was so stupid that Mewtwo subconsciously suppressed the memory of it, consequently blocking out everything about Ash's self-sacrifice, therefore making Ash's identity even less memorable or important.)
Yeah, ok, maybe I'm tossing a lot of assumptions out there in order to make this all fit together -- but I
still think it requires fewer assumptions than saying that this Mewtwo is completely different from the other Mewtwo.
"But what about the fact that new Mewtwo can mega-evolve??"
Mewtwo wandered around doing whatever for 15 years and eventually found a mega-stone. Makes sense to me.
"What happened to the clone army?"
Mewtwo made sure they all found good trainers to take care of them? Mewtwo found them a good home in the wild? Mewtwo still keeps in touch with the clone-army but still goes off to do her own thing most of the time, which is how she wound up in the events of the 16th movie? I dunno, basically anything could've happened to them. I still don't think the existence of the clone army really does much to negate the idea that these Mewtwos are the same creature.
And at this point, I don't even care if Gamefreak officially says that these are different Mewtwos, because that makes no goddamn sense. I'm going to stick to my Mewtwo-is-trans theory, thank you.