Mr. Mime - Design and Characteristics

Design and Characteristics

Mr. Mime was one of several different designs conceived by Game Freak's character development team and finalized by Ken Sugimori for the first generation of Pocket Monsters games Red and Green, which were localized outside of Japan as Pokémon Red and Blue. Originally called "Barriered" in Japanese, Nintendo decided to give the various Pokémon species "clever and descriptive names" related to their appearance or features when translating the game for western audiences as a means to make the characters more relatable to American children. As a result they were renamed "Mr. Mime", based on their masculine appearance and behavior; The name has persisted despite the introduction of female members of the species in later games.

Appearing as an anthropomorphic creature, it has a pink head with red cheeks and blue, frizzy hair, a round, white body with a red spot in the middle, light-pink arms and legs are connected to its body by red spheres, white, five-fingered hands, and blue feet that curl upward at the tips. Their hands are depicted with four fingers and an opposable thumb, with larger fingertips and red dots on their underside. However, game representations of the character featured only three fingers on each hand until the release of Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire.

Mr. Mime are gifted with the art of miming at a young age, but as they mature, they gain the ability to make invisible objects by emitting energy from their fingers and minutely vibrating their fingertips to harden the air around them and form a wall. Barriers generated this way can repel harsh attacks, and its gestures and motions can convince watchers that something unseeable actually exists; once this is achieved, the perceived item will materialize. Mr. Mime are very prideful of their pantomime acts, and will heavily slap anyone that interrupts them while miming. Mr. Mime has a pre-evolution, Mime Jr., which evolves when mimicking other Pokémon.