How Pokopia Reimagined Classic Pokémon Music

I’ve spent the last few week completely obsessed with the Pokémon Pokopia soundtrack!

I wasn’t even planning on picking up the game, but once I started listening to the music, I couldn’t stop trying to pull it apart.

I fell down a rabbit hole trying to pluck out themes on my piano, going through the original Pokémon Red and Blue soundtracks, discovering small Easter eggs!

If you’re a Pokémon fan, there’s so much baked into the Pokopia soundtrack that can feel really rewarding once you notice it!

If you’ve seen my latest video and played Pokopia (this is a bit of a spoiler!!), you know that you’re actually exploring somewhat of a post-apocalyptic Kanto region. But the game doesn’t tell you that right away.

The music does.

Definitely watch my full video for the breakdown!

So for example, the “Withered Wasteland” is actually Fuchsia City…

• Bleak Beach → Vermillion City

• Rocky Ridges → Pewter City

• Sparkling Skylands → Saffron City

Kanto Region map via PokéClicker Wiki

But instead of the bright, upbeat tempo we remember from the 90s, the composers Hiromu Akaba and Jieun Kim stripped it down to these bare, dreamlike textures.

When you first start, the music feels empty because the world is empty.

But as you rebuild and bring life back to these different biomes, the music becomes fuller and much more recognizable as reimagined versions of those original themes!

What really blows me away is how the composers, Akaba and Kim, kind of had to work in reverse to make this happen!

They didn’t just cover the old Kanto themes; they completely reimagined them to fit this specific, cozy aesthetic.

They took the original melodies and gave them a brand-new rhythmic and harmonic feel like turning a 4/4 march into a 3/4 swing or a nursery rhyme. Then, they had to arrange those themes for four different cycles: day, night, and the rainy versions of both.

But it goes even deeper than that!

They had to strip those reimagined themes down even further. They had to find the core of the original music…a specific arpeggio or a tiny melodic motif and use only those elements to create the empty version of the biome music.

So, when you first step into the Withered Wasteland, you aren’t hearing Fuchsia City but instead you’re hearing the ghost of Fuchsia City.

By the time you’ve brought life back to the area and the music fills in with whistles and winds, kazoos and bells, light percussion and tinkering sounds, you realize you’ve been listening to a reconstruction the entire time!

You can also listen to the score here:

It’s such a masterclass in using musical memory to tell a story. They created something that is uniquely Pokopia while still honoring the foundation of what came before.

I dive into these different biome transformations (like how they hid the Mount Moon chords in Rocky Ridges) in my full video breakdown. If you love the OG Pokémon music and cozy games then definitely watch me obsess over it here:

The Way Pokopia Reimagined Classic Pokémon Music is GENIUS!

What else did you notice in the soundtrack? Did you catch any other clues in the soundtrack?!

Let me know!