Pokemon Is Hiding A Huge Clue To Sinnoh Remakes On Its Official Japanese YouTube Channel

An absolutely enormous hint regarding upcoming remakes of Pokemon’s fourth generation games, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, was released on Pokemon’s official Japanese YouTube channel two weeks ago. Due to it being excluded from the English YouTube channel, though, the huge clue – a video highlighting various Sinnoh Pokemon – has pretty much flown under the radar of all non-Japanese Pokemon fans.

Ever since Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green, remakes of Pokemon’s first generation titles, were released in 2004, remastered replicates of the main series games have become a tradition. Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver were released in 2009 as rehashes of the second generation games, and Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, remakes of the generation three games, were released in 2o14.

It makes sense that remakes of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, the series’ fourth generation games, would be due up sometime in the next few years (most likely in 2019, judging by the timeline of past remakes). Accordingly, Pokemon fans all over the world have been scouring every Pokemon-related news release, promotional video, and gameplay element in search of clues that might indicate the imminence of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl remakes.

Countless articles and posts recounting the hints can be found on gaming news sites and Pokemon forums across the internet. However, they seem to glaze over what is possibly the most persuasive hint out there: a video uploaded to Pokemon’s Japanese YouTube channel on November 14. It may very well be a different story for Japanese-language Pokemon news sources, but the fact that the video is not available in English seems to have made it practically invisible to the Western world.

The video is a rather strange choice for Pokemon’s YouTube channel, as it is presented in a different way than any of the other content on the channel. Instead of the typical movie-style video, this one is more of an eStorybook. The first few seconds of the video actually show the cover of a Pokemon picture book. Over the next few minutes, the video, which could just as easily be made into a Powerpoint presentation, displays the various pages within the book. For each page, an illustration is shown along with some Japanese text describing what is going on, and a man’s voice reads the words. At the end of the video is the back cover of the book, complete with a bar code and copyright date.

What is really interesting about the video, though, is the Pokemon chosen as characters: almost exclusively Sinnoh Pokemon.

The three main characters are Turtwig, Piplup, and Chimchar, the Sinnoh starters. Before the end of the story, they run into Buneary, Pachirisu, Munchlax, Buizel, and Ambipom, all Pokemon introduced in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. Why would The Pokemon Company want to specifically feature Sinnoh starters and other Pokemon from the region now? “Because the Sinnoh games are being hyped in preparation for remakes” seems to be the obvious answer.

The actual plot of the story revolves around Chimchar kicking a ball into a clock tower and accidentally stopping time. The fire Pokemon and his friends then spend some time learning how to set time back in motion. It is interesting to note how the plot has a definite relation to the generation four legendary Pokemon Dialga, who controls time. There is also express reference to Dialga in Pokemon Sun and Moon, which were just released on November 18.

More than anything else Pokemon fans have seen, the “Sinnoh storybook” seems to indicate generation four remake games. What’s more, it seems to indicate Dialga will be integral in connecting the remakes to the existing series, especially when considered alongside the Dialga-related clue found in Pokemon Sun and Moon.

[Featured Image by Junko Kimura/Getty Images]