01/04/07 Serebiijoke.

Look what the cat brought home.

Making up English names for everything in D/P. Kind of brilliant, and freakishly difficult.

Of course, we have several good reasons to believe it is indeed an April Fools' joke:

  1. I first came to Serebii.net in, what, 2002 or 2003? Every year, he has written in one of his updates and in a forum announcement near the end of March to warn people about the fact that many Pokémon websites are going to be posting April Fools' jokes, revealing new Pokémon, new games, etc., telling people not to believe them but at the same time assuring us that his site would not participate in April Fools' Day and that his info would be accurate as ever on that day. Except now. He did make a forum announcement warning people not to believe anything on April Fools' Day, no matter who it comes from - but this time no statement at the end excluding Serebii.net from the warning.
  2. In the update itself, there is also no trace of a "THIS IS NOT AN APRIL FOOLS' JOKE" which anybody who is not joking would of course place at the very beginning of it.
  3. After reversing his forum joke (removing avatars and ridiculously limiting signatures), he stated that "This was not the whole joke." Hmm, what else could it be?

However, I find it to sound quite unlikely that Joe would simply bother to invent names for all that stuff, and given that he apparently had all the English names of the Pokémon already, it has led me to declare it to be a more twisted joke: those ARE the right names, and the above points were all an elaborate setup to make us THINK they are fake. This is further supported in this post of Serebii's:

They may be a joke, but not in the way you believe

Therefore, my final conclusion (or speculative theory, if you like) is that those probably are the English names and Joe is using this twisted April Fools' Day setup to make people as confused as possible. But we'll see.

Comments

(Comments are closed.)

Tina
I actually believed it for a second.

Then I realized it was April Fools Day >.<

Who knows...

(I hate the beginning of April.)
Malachite Treecko
Some names may be jokes, some may not. For example, Suzuna's/Candice's Badge is the Glacier Badge... déjà vu... What about Pryce's Badge? Repeated name?! OMG!
Metal power
I knew they weren't fake, and yea I was woundring what did Joe mean by "They may be a joke, but not in the way you believe"...
Puyi
Serebii would have never posted a prank. He's always told people he didn't like making people get annoyed, therefore confirming he actually hates April Fool in some way. The better way he could go against April Fool's pranks was making a reverse April Fool prank.

Plus, I had the very same idea. Hasta la vista.