The Mew Hunter
This section applies to the ILCOE.
The Mew Hunter, known as Rob to his Pokémon though he otherwise introduces himself with the Mew Hunter alias, owns an unofficial Gym in Alumine. He is also the original trainer of Mark's Scyther.
Appearance
- Age (current)
- 42
- Stature
- Tall and bulky.
- Eyes
- Small but intense and light blue.
- Hair
- Black. He also has a black full beard.
- Clothes
- Usually wears a long, brown trench coat and a matching brown fedora outside. Underneath that, various.
- Handedness
- Right-handed.
- Images
- None.
Pre-Story Biography
As a boy, Rob lived in the Johto region and picked a Totodile as a starter Pokémon, having always loved dangerous-looking Pokémon like Feraligatr with sharp fangs or claws. He caught more Pokémon in a similar vein - Kabutops, Sandslash and Sneasel - and, having always been a social outcast among humans, he looked to his Pokémon for friendship, treated them as equals and established close bonds of trust with them. He had also, however, developed a fascination with the one Pokémon to supposedly possess the genes of them all, Mew, and this took the form of an irrational obsession with capturing it and establishing the same bond with it. Though he knew that Mew would not consent to being captured, he was convinced that eventually even Mew would learn to appreciate him, and therefore he studied Pokéballs to earn the Pokéball modification know-how to devise a special one that would prevent the Pokémon captured in it from escaping more than a certain distance away from the ball itself, which he intended to use to force Mew to stay with him long enough for it to begin to trust him.
He still needed to buy a Master Ball to make those modifications to in order to be sure of a successful capture, and as Master Balls were extremely expensive in those days, this required him to get a job. He founded an unofficial Gym in Alumine as a means of earning this money, using the natural weapons of his Pokémon as a theme, and ran it with a profit for a couple of years. Then, once he had obtained a Master Ball and modified it, he closed his Gym and headed out to find Mew.
After years of searching, he eventually did find it, but not before Rick had found it too. They both threw their Pokéballs at the same time, but Mew chose to be captured by Rick's ball instead of the Mew Hunter's. This caused him much anguish as he could not understand why Mew would choose Rick rather than him, but eventually he accepted that Mew was lost to him and decided to reopen his Gym. He caught a Fangcat, and a while later while traveling in the woods he found a hurt, bleeding Scyther that he took in to complete his team. After this he concentrated on his Gym to make a living and tried his best to forget about Mew.
Character Rambles
Ah, the Mew Hunter.
His origins are a bit of a patchwork. First, there was the Gym contest at Mew's Hangout, where my entry was a Gym that had these six Pokémon, Scyther, Kabutops, Sandslash, Sneasel, Feraligatr and my then recently-created fake Pokémon Fangcat. The character of the Gym leader himself, however, was different if I remember correctly; I think it was supposed to be some old guy, and his favorite Pokémon was Fangcat.
The rest of him originated as a generic villain to carry out my "brilliant" idea of a villain threatening the hero with death for some information that nobody but the hero has and therefore he is actually too valuable to the villain to die. I eventually fused these two ideas together by giving this generic villain character these Pokémon. Then it was just a reason for him to want to threaten Mark, and the Mew thing seemed great for the purpose, so I made him obsessed with Mew.
Later, of course, as with so many of my characters, I began to find the Mew Hunter very interesting as I started to wonder what sort of a psychological background could explain his actions in the story. There is a fascinating contradiction in the way he loves and respects his Pokémon on the one hand and the way he forcibly held Scyther and planned to hold Mew until they liked and trusted him on the other hand; much as his Pokémon do eventually come to love and trust him and stay with him willingly, it always starts with coercion. He is really unable to form friendships in a natural way; to him it always starts with picking out somebody and then making them stay with him while he tries to prove himself to them. This general sort of thing is of course easier to do with Pokémon than humans, thanks to the general convention of capturing and training Pokémon, hence why he ends up with exclusively Pokémon friends.
Thus, even though they're genuine once the bonds have formed, his friendships with his Pokémon are kind of disturbing in origin. And when I came to this conclusion, I immediately liked the Mew Hunter so much more, because I just love messed-up characters that much.