Malamar is already a monster with nefarious tendencies, and these inclinations only become worse with Pokémon Legends: Z-A’s mega evolution
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Pokémon Legends: Z-A‘s roster of souped-up mega evolutions expands today with the official reveal of mega Malamar, a psychic-type monster that already has a bad reputation within the lore. Basic Malamar, pre-evolution, is supposed to be the Pokémon with the strongest hypnotic powers. It loves to abuse these powers to influence humans, which has allowed it to play a role in historical events. Malamar also loves to force people into admiring it, which is probably a better fate than when it incapacitates prey to eat it. All of these tendencies are brought to the forefront in Malamar’s mega evolution, except this time the vibe is less squid-like and more Eldritch horror.
The new form was unveiled through a fun live-action video framed around the concept of a TV breaking news segment. Here, a newscaster informs us that Lumiose City has been experiencing a “crazy” wave of love and admiration for Malamar, but that fandom hides a darker secret. Apparently, a trainer just wanted to show off how friendly her Malamar was, but ended up unleashing a reign of terror over all the humans in the city. We’re then introduced to a few different humans whose entire personality has changed recently, suddenly becoming huge Malamar stans. One trainer is even shown neglecting her own beloved pet Pokémon in a manic Malamar episode. Yikes.
Eventually, we get a glimpse at mega Malamar, and it almost feels like peering into the abyss. It’s like a cross between the alien-like Ultra Beasts and some Lovecraftian nightmare, except with rainbows. Really, Game Freak has been on a roll with these high-production mega reveals. We also got an animated lucha libre match with mega Hawlucha as well as a found-footage horror introduction to mega Victreebel. Mega Dragonite’s release was more straightforward, yet somewhat controversial within the fandom. Curiously, every single mega shown off so far follows the purported list of Pokémon that hit the web back in May, increasingly making that leak seem legit.
