Mew

Forty centimeters and four kilograms. That’s the size of the Pokémon that several scientists point to as the ancestor of all the others, and the figure explains half the legend: something that small can cross paths with an entire expedition without anyone writing it down in the notebook. The Pokédex entries keep coming back to two ideas. That its DNA supposedly contains the genetic blueprint of every species, and that this is why it knows every move. And that it turns invisible whenever it feels like it, exactly when someone approaches it.

The third insistence is stranger. Under a microscope, you can make out how fine and short its fur is: an observation only someone who had it standing still in front of them could make, which the entry itself declares almost impossible.

The official category, New Species Pokémon, says the opposite of what it seems to. It isn’t the latest thing to appear; it’s the start of the list. Its evolutionary chain is empty — it neither comes from anything nor leads to anything — and its habitat is listed as Rare, the label reserved for things that don’t show up along the routes. It closes the Kanto Pokédex at number 151.

Six identical figures: 100 HP, 100 Attack, 100 Defense, 100 Special Attack, 100 Special Defense and 100 Speed. Six hundred points spread out without a single preference. Nothing gets in the way and nothing stands out, and that is both the argument for it and its condemnation: any specialist beats it at their own job.

What makes up for the flat spread is the movepool. It learns almost every TM in the game, so its four slots aren’t limited by what it can learn but by what the day calls for. Two uses come up again and again. The defensive one, with Stealth Rock to wear down incoming Pokémon from the first turn, and the offensive one, with Nasty Plot —which it gets naturally at level 50— to double its Special Attack and go on a rampage with Psyshock, Earth Power against Steel types and Draining Kiss, which also heals and solves the problem of Dark types, immune to its own type.

Synchronize, its only Ability, passes back the poison, paralysis or burn the opponent inflicted on it. It works as a deterrent and little else; it’s an Ability that waits.

The drawbacks are obvious. In defense, Psychic takes double damage from Bug, Ghost and Dark, and that’s where two of the most common moves in existence come in, Knock Off and U-turn. Its 100 Speed falls below everything that actually runs fast, so the Nasty Plot turn has to be stolen, not taken for granted.

There is no breeding. It belongs to the Undiscovered Egg Group, has no assigned gender and has no Egg Moves. The 120 incubation cycles listed in the entry —about 30 855 steps by the usual count— won’t be spent by anyone, because a Mew can’t produce an Egg.

It is obtained through events, and has been that way since 1996. In Japan it was handed out at in-person events between 1996 and 1999; it later reached the West through Nintendo tours and in stores. The only time it has been placed inside a game without intermediaries was in Pokémon Emerald: with a sea chart distributed at events, Mr. Briney takes the player from Slateport City to an island that appears nowhere else. There is a level 30 Mew hiding in the grass, giving itself away through the movement of the leaves and its tail, and you have to corner it. One per save file. That chart was distributed only in Japan and Taiwan, between 2005 and 2006.

Everything else consists of distributions: the twentieth-anniversary one in 2016, the Mew that comes with the Poké Ball Plus and the one Scarlet and Violet distributed between August and September 2023.

Its catch rate is 45, that of a difficult Pokémon, although on the island there is neither a hurry nor an alternative. It is holding a Lum Berry.