Sabrina scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. That creepy little doll who traps Ash and his friends in a deathtrap dollhouse haunted my dreams 🍌and had a huge impact on my taste in horror. Sabrina’s appearance in the 22nd episode of the Pokemon anime is a disturbing interruption to what had previously been the most child-friendly series imaginable. As it turns out, Sabrina’s story from the anime doesn’t even begin to compare to how twisted the manga version is.
If you only know Sabrina from the games, you’re probably confused right now. Sabrina is a powerful psychic and the leader of the Saffron City Gym in Pokemon Red & Blue, but there isn’t anything particularly spooky about her. In fact, we don’t know much about Sabrina other than the fact that she uses her psychic powers to communicate with her Pokemon in battle. We also know she’s ruthless thanks to the Fighting Dojo, which used to be Saffron City’s other gym until Sab𓃲rina defeated its leader and forced it to give up its gym status. The scar𒆙iest thing about Sabrina is her whip, which is leftover design from an early concept where people would actually fight Pokemon themselves.
As you probably know, Sabrina is quite a bit different in the anime. This version of Sabrina developed her psychic power until she eventually lost control of them and they wreaked havoc on her mind and her family. When Ash meets her in Saffron City, her mind has been split in two. Half of her personality is trapped in an eyeless doll that just wants to play (aka, murder) while the half that remains has become cold and detached in her relentless pursuit of power. Sabrina’s eerie, monotone voice is contrasted by the playfully insidious tone of her doll’s. If the description conjures memories of Angie and Donna Beneviento from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil Village, you’re not far off.
After tricking Ash into running off of a cliff, the two had their first battle in the Saffron Gym. Sabrina’s Kadabra brutalized Pikachu in a way we’d never seen before, slamming it into the ceiling o൲ver and over. Upon surrendering, Sabrina shrinks Ash and his frien♋ds and traps them in a model of a town. Doll Sabrina then tries to crush them with a ball, but Sabrina’s father teleports in and rescues them.
Ash then heads to the Tower of Terror to catch a Haunter for a rematch, and we learn more about Sabrina’s backstory. When her powers grew out of control, Sabrina destroyed her house and turned her mom into a doll. She put her mom in her play town where she’s remained trapped for years, unable to move or speak. Her father spent all that time trying to protect people from his daughter while looking for a way to save h🅰er and rescue his wife, but to no avail.
Ash challenges Sabrina again, and she turns Brock and Misty into dolls. Like the twins from The Shining, she tells them that they have to be her friends and play with her forever now. Ash and Pikachu lose another battle to Kadabra, but Haunter appears and makes Sabrina laugh, which breaks the spell and heals h🌠er mind.
Sabrina hits every ‘creepy loner girl’ trope in the book. Her split personality, flat affect, haunted doll, and psychic powers make her the scariest and most memorable gym leader in all o𝐆f Pokemon. Her story is like The Ring, Chucky, Children of the Corn, Carrie, and Persona all rolled into one. She’s so uncharacteristically dark for Pokemon that she’s left a permanent imprint on fans even after all these years, but as it turns out, the manga version of Sabrina might be even w🐬orse.
There are two manga that feature Sabrina. In Pokemon Adventures, she’s a member of Team Rocket who has🐭 little in common with her game or anime counterpart. The series, The Electric Tale of Pikachu, is where things g💟et heavy.
In the Volume 1 story, Haunting My Dreams, Sabrina suffered a completely different trauma. As a child, she encountered a giant Haunter known as the Black Fog 🐲that killed - yes, killed - all of her Pokemon. According to the manga, the Haunter could consume the souls of people and Pokemon with its Dream Eater move.
After battling Ash in the moun🔜tains near Saffron City, Sabrina gets a call that the Black Fog is back. She heads to the Pokemon Tower to fight it, but the Haunter sucks out her soul too, leaving her incapacitated in a hospital. Thanks to her psychic abilities, Sabrina is able to command her Abra to fight Haunter alongside Ash and Pikachu. They chase the Haunter into a cave and Ash tries to catch it using a giant Poke Ball, but the Haunter self-destructs, choosing to kill itself rather than be captured. In the end, Sabrina cries for the Haunter even though, as she admits, she never stopped hating it.
Sometimes Pokemon stories are so out of left field that they feel like they came here from an alternate universe, and there’s nothing that encapsulates that feeling better than Sabrina. In each interration she’s more ꩲtortured than the one that came before it. I hope there’s some version of Sabrina out there who just got to live a normal life, catching Pokemon and being a regular kid. Psychic powers sou꧟nd great, but if this is the cost, I think I’ll pass.
