Huh: There’s No Convention Or Anything In Town So This Guy Dressed Like Poliwhirl Must Just Dress Like This All The Time

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Man, have we got a head-scratcher for you, gamers. A few reporters here at Onion Gamers Network recently caught wind of this man dressed as Poliwhirl standing at the corner of Elm and 4th Street, which made us think there must be some kind of Pokémon convention in town. Here’s the thing though: We checked everywhere, and there isn’t even a meet-up in the general vicinity. That means that, as far as we know, this guy must dress like the Stage 1 Water Pokémon all the time, or at least thinks this is an entirely normal thing to do.

Let’s just say we’re all pretty confused over here at OGN.

It would make sense if this man was with a bunch of other people who were also dressed as Pokémon. Then maybe you could presume he was going to some kind of Pokémon LARPing session with his friends. But that’s just not the case. Frankly, he’s just standing around in a less-trafficked area of town and staring into space. He isn’t even waving at anyone or, even more strangely, speaking at all.

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Weird, right?

Consider the facts: On the one hand, the mysterious man’s costume—and, to be perfectly clear, we’re only assuming it’s a man—does a fairly impressive job of depicting the creature, so he presumably spent a decent amount of money and effort turning these materials into a clear representation of the lesser-known Pokémon. It’s strange, though, since we failed to find any information about scheduled gatherings of Pokémon fans or cosplayers nearby. In fact, the closest one was over 500 miles away in Denver. Further to the point, this guy was simply milling around in the costume outside a bodega without any clear objective except to represent the first evolution of this Nintendo character.

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Maybe he just, uh, really likes Poliwhirl? Honestly, readers, your guesses are as good as ours.

After an exhaustive search online, we also discovered that the local comic book store does not have any collectible card-based events planned in the foreseeable future, which rules out the most likely possibility: That the Poliwhirl costume-wearing man had misread a calendar and accidentally dressed himself in the guise of a blue Pokémon after designing a full papier-mâché-based costume for himself. This would be embarrassing but understandable, though that’s not what happened. It seems this was exactly what this man wanted to spend his day doing.

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Huh. Well, that’s all we know for now. We’ll keep you posted if we get any more updates on the situation, but until then, color us dumbfounded.