Pokémon to cut ‘trans’ character from Champions game after glitch showed impossible bug
A female Gallade appears in Pokemon Champions (The Pokemon Company)
The Pokémon Company has said it will fix a Pokémon Champions bug that showed Gallade as female, a glitch some fans embraced as a trans-affirming moment.
The free-to-play title Pokémon Champions launched on Wednesday for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2. Players quickly spotted an easily missed detail in the tutorial: the opposing Gallade was displayed as female, despite Gallade being a Pokémon that can only be male under the series’ usual mechanics.
The moment spread across social media the same day, with fans celebrating the “female Gallade” and sharing posts and fan art. One popular refrain was: “FEMALE GALLADE IS REAL,” as the reaction gathered pace online.
READ MORE: Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen: The ultimate queer-coded team for your playthrough
In a Pokémon Company bug statement (Japanese) issued on Thursday, representatives said they knew of at least six bugs, including “an error of some genders of Pokémon in the tutorial and in released teams.” They added that the bugs will be fixed in an update patch coming soon.
Why can’t Gallade be female?
Gallade’s gender rules are unusually strict in the mainline games. It is tied to a specific evolution method: it evolves from a male Kirlia when exposed to a Dawn Stone, while either a male or female Kirlie will naturally evolve to camp queen Gardevoir at level 30.
That is why the tutorial’s “female” Gallade stood out so sharply to long-time players.
Players can export their teams to Pokémon Home, but it is reportedly not clear what would happen if a Pokémon with usually impossible gender data was sent to other games.
Why fans latched on to ‘female Gallade’
Pokémon is one of the world’s biggest entertainment franchises, spanning games, anime, films, trading cards and merchandise.
Its games have used binary gender markers for many species and mechanics since Generation II’s Gold and Silver, which can become a point of debate among players.
Online Pokémon fandom is also highly active on social platforms, where meme culture and fan art shape how moments are discussed, including queer readings of the series such as the receipts that prove Ditto is an LGBTQ+ icon.
The wider series has also included at least one explicitly trans character in Japanese dialogue. In Pokémon X/Y, Beauty Nova says she “was a Karate King just half a year ago,” adding: “[T]he power of medical science is awesome, wouldn’t you say?!”
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