Pokémon Is Crossing Over With Hatsune Miku

Pokemon Miku crossover

In today’s episode of “I can’t believe Pokémon is doing that”, The Pokémon Company has announced a new crossover with Hatsune Miku. You know, the virtual singer/corporate mascot for Yamaha’s Vocaloid vocal synthesis software. It’s absolutely wild.

The new project, dubbed Project Voltage, was announced on Twitter, with an accompanying website shedding light on all the details. Basically, starting from September 4 and running until September 18, a new illustration will be released every day showing Hatsune Miku as a trainer for each type of Pokémon. There will be 18 illustrations in total, one for every type in Pokémon.

After that, from September 29, there will be regular releases of new songs and music videos, with 18 in store for that half of the project too. It seems like other Vocaloid personas will be getting in on the action too, not just Hatsune Miku, but who’s involved won’t be announced until the day before, September 28.

Pokémon has been on a roll lately with its side projects, with a whole host of new and interesting projects announced over the past few weeks and months. Pokémon Sleep, an actual sleep tracking app, releasing a couple months back was the start of seemingly a new era, and it’s only gotten weirder since then.

Just yesterday we got the announcement of a very meta live-action Pokémon drama series for Japan, which sees a young woman who recently moved to Tokyo rediscovering her love for the Pokémon franchise. Not long before that we had Pokémon: Path to the Peak, which told the story of a young Pokémon TCG player.

With the upcoming Pokémon Scarlet and Violet DLC coming out in just a couple weeks, and Detective Pikachu Returns not long after it feels like we’re seeing a big push for Pokémon to be in the public’s eyes and minds ahead of the holiday season. There’s no new main series game being released for at least another year yet, so The Pokémon Company is likely trying to do whatever it can to boost sales in the meantime.

With projects like this, it seems like it’s working — all eyes are on Pokémon to see what comes next.