Twitter Is In Love With Pokemon Home's Grand Oak

Pokemon Home finally launched yesterday. The cloud-based service, which allows players to trade their Pokemon easily between various installments in the franchise, has been hyped up for quite some time. However, nobody could have prepared for the latest and greatest addition to the Pokemon canon: Grand Oak.

Grand Oak appears to be the grandfather (or maybe just a cool uncle) of longtime series character Professor Samuel Oak and the more recently-introduced Samson Oak from the Alolan Region. And boy, does Grand Oak ever make an impression. He has a beard that wraps around to his long white head of hair. He also wears some shades over his eyes that look like something out of an '80s cartoon. Eurogamer hilariously described him on Twitter as "a mid-life crisis Professor Oak."

Grand Oak looks and behaves absurdly, is what we're saying. Naturally, this being the gaming community, the memes followed quite quickly. Let's take a look at how Twitter is greeting the newest member of the Oak dynasty.

There seems to be a bit of a debate regarding the inspirations behind Grand Oak's design. A few users have remarked upon the character's resemblance to Doc Brown from the Back to the Future films. Meanwhile, noted YouTuber Suede seems to believe Grand Oak is a reference to the rocking Grand Kai from Dragon Ball Z. Others are content to dunk on Grand Oak's attempts at looking cool, comparing him to Steve Buscemi's out-of-touch detective character from 30 Rock. 

The Pokemon fan community loves to fill their Twitter feeds with memes and hashtags poking fun at their favorite franchise. Recent months have seen a bit of that fan discourse turn sour, with #GameFreakLied trending after fans felt betrayed by Pokemon Sword and Shield's reduced Pokedex. This fan backlash led to some unfortunate review bombing. After all of that drama, it's great to see everyone on the same page about this. Grand Oak is both ridiculous and wonderful, and we're lucky to have him.