Misty

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Misty's original design, drawn by Sugimori himself.

Misty is the Gym Leader of the Cerulean City Gym, and is one of the most popular trainers in the Pokémon franchise. She debuted in 1996 in Pokémon Red and Green, the very first two Pokémon games. Like most Gym Leaders, her name is a pun; on "mist", as she's a Water-type trainer. Her original Japanese name, 「カスミ」 Kasumi (pronounced caw-sue-me), is a pun on 「海」 umi, the Japanese word for ocean.

While her popularity has been eclipsed by other characters within the Pokémon fandom, her popularity is tremendous outside of the core fanbase. She's both one of the most recognizable anime and video game characters of all time. More than one of her many character designs have become iconic symbols of Pokémon as a whole, and she began a long tradition among the series' female leads of triggering early-onset puberty in the franchise's main demographic. The average non-Pokémon fan is more likely to be able to recognize Misty than Red.

Misty has a long history in the Pokémon TCG as well. Appearing as early as the game's fifth expansion in 1998, she has since returned to the game many times, and is present on over 40 cards in one form or another. Due to the combination of her popularity and many of her cards now being decades old, some of her cards number are among the most expensive in the game. A sealed Hanada City Gym Kasumi is quite possibly worth more than the machine you're using to read this article, and even her more modern product routinely sells in the three figure range.

Some of her cards have been hilariously weak, others were so overpowered they helped cause the biggest rule change in the history of the game, and one of her cards was even censored by Wizards of the Coast for being too lewd.

Personality

The personality of most Pokémon characters is inconsistent across their appearances; Misty is no exemption. Like most other characters in the series, her age is left intentionally vague. You are free to decide for yourself how old she is based on what makes you feel the most comfortable (or most aroused, depending on how much of a degenerate you feel like being today).

She is usually described in-series as being a tomboy, but rarely seems to act that way, at least by the 4chan definition of the word. She enjoys wearing girly clothes and doing girly things. It might be that she's considered a tomboy by the standards of the setting. That reasoning is fairly sound, as in the Pokémon world the skirts of school uniforms are barely long enough to cover the Lass's panties and maybe some of her butt, and the average twenty-something Beauty goes hiking every day in a bodycon dress and high heels.

One thing is consistent across all of her appearances, and that is that she really, really wants a boyfriend. By all logic she should have no trouble finding one given how hot and famous she is, but no matter what she always seems to find herself surrounded by women who are even hotter than her, be it her sisters, Nurse Joys, Officer Jennys, characters-who-will-never-appear-again-after-this-episode, Jessie or even James in a bikini with inflatable boobs. It's gotten to the point where it's starting to have a serious effect on her self-esteem, which she compensates for with overconfident, brash, occasionally violent, tsundere-esque behavior. If you ever get CYOA'd to Kanto and are looking to get your dick wet, Misty is fantastically positioned on the Hot/Crazy Matrix vis-à-vis her availability.

Her catchphrase is "My Steady", which she says whenever she chooses a Pokémon. Note that she calls all the Pokémon she owns her Steady, which isn't actually very steady of her at all. Then again, my expectations of Japanese-dialogue-author-greaser-slang-expertise may be too high. The implication after all is just that she feels the same deep affection towards all her Pokémon that she would feel towards a hypothetical boyfriend, not that her Pokémon are filling in for her needs until she can get an actual date. Although if you were curious how a human and a starfish the size of a bicycle would have sex, the internet has you covered.

She's affectionate towards all Pokémon and will bravely leap into action to defend any of them, even if they're a species she's scared of, and I wager you aren't even listening to me anymore because you're still imagining Misty having sex with a starfish so let's wrap this section up.

In Red/Green/Blue/Yellow

Possessing only a Level 18 Staryu and a Level 21 Starmie, Misty's team is quite weak compared to the other Kanto Gym Leaders. However she is one of the most challenging fights of the generation because of how early in the game she appears. Normally the player's Pokémon will be at teenager levels at best after leaving Mt. Moon.

Her Pokémon have no physical weaknesses and Misty will routinely buff them with X Defend, making Special moves the natural strategy, but her Pokémon have great Special and can shrug off those moves too. Offensively, her Pokémon are very fast and very strong, and her Starmie can slow down the player even more. The only good way to beat her is to pummel her with Electric-type and Grass-type moves, but as soon as you enter Cerulean City you are trapped inside until you defeat her, severely limiting your ability to rebuild your team.

Misty along with Brock are the two best reasons why Charmander is the least optimal starter in Gen 1 and why Bulbasaur is the most optimal. For many young gamers she may be the first opponent they struggle against in an RPG, and she ranks among toughest battles in all the mainline games.

In the TCG

This is a non-exhaustive list of some of Misty's most interesting cards. It's not exhaustive because there are a fuckton of Misty cards and The Pokémon Company won't stop printing them until they stop printing money.

Misty

The very first Misty Trainer card. The short version is that if you discard two cards from your hand and you're using specific Pokémon AND you meet a couple other conditions you deal 20 damage to your opponent's Pokémon.

If you've ever played the Pokémon TCG before, or really any TCG before, you will have already realized that this card is beyond terrible. Get yourself a girlfriend who sucks as hard as this card does and you'll be walking with a limp for the rest of your life.

No, I do not want to go -3 to do 20 damage to one Pokémon. Nobody should want this.

Unfortunately this card exists for a reason, and it's a bad reason. In the early days of Pokémon between Bill, Professor Oak, other Trainers like them and degenerate levels of search and recycling, you could have as much card advantage as you wanted. The situation was so bad that it got to the point where PlusPower, a Trainer card that does 10 damage situationally and nothing else, was not only played, but was a competitive staple.

The fact that PlusPower was a staple meant that a 20 damage card with a higher cost and more restrictions was inevitable. This is that card.

Old Pokémon was a fucked place.

Misty's Wrath

This card is an example of just what absurd amounts of card advantage Trainers gave you back in the day. +1, no cost, no restrictions, no stipulations, it's free real estate. It isn't even just an extra card, you get to pick which cards you get. You see a degenerate draw card, maybe another Misty's Wrath in there? Take it and just play it again.

The only thing vaguely resembling a downside is that playing four of this will rip up half your deck, but that's still nowhere near a bad enough drawback for it to not be worth putting four of these in every deck you ever make. Cards like this are the reason why the Supporter rule was added, which made it so you could only play one absurd draw power card like this a turn. Even then, Pokémon still to this day has more card advantage than Yu-gi-oh! or Magic the Gathering.

Also, Misty's chin is fucking massive in this art. She looks Gigachad with a boob job.

Misty's Duel

This is another draw power Trainer, but a bit more balanced because you probably don't want to use it if you have more than 5 cards in your hand or your opponent has less than 5 cards in their hand.

What's interesting about this card is that it's a very rare example of a card that has different rules in different languages. That's hardly ever seen not just in the Pokémon TCG, but in any TCG. The Japanese version of this card doesn't include the text about flipping a coin if you don't know how to play rock-paper-scissors at all.

Why the heck did WOTC add the rule? Did they seriously think that two people would both be old enough to read the text on this card, yet somehow neither of them would know how to play RPS? Even if that scenario happened, why would one of them have even put the card in their deck? I know this is supposed to be a kids game, but I would have found this patronizing when I was seven.

Misty's Wish

Misty's Favor

Misty's Wish & Misty's Favor

These are two very solid cards.

Misty's Wish is fun because it interacts directly with your Prizes, which is a zone that is almost never accessible. If your opponent accepts you go -1 but gained some card selection. If they decline it's an even 0 but you thinned your deck. It's clearly a strong card, but not obnoxiously strong.

Misty's Favor came out a whole 21 years later, well into the Supporter era of the game. This card simply lets you search your deck for any 3 Supporter cards and add them to your hand. This is a straight +2, and if you want you can even search another Misty's Favor to use again next turn. The disadvantage of this card compared to other Supporters is that you can't play any of the cards you draw from it the same turn because Misty's Favor is a Supporter and you just played it.

These are both very solid cards in their own right, but the reason why they're among the most expensive rares and uncommons (respectively) of their eras has very little to do with that and a whole lot to do with the fact that the art is Misty looking at you, smiling and blushing with hearts floating out of her.

I eagerly await the variant of this card that comes out in 2040 where Misty has heart-shaped pupils.

American Version

Japanese Version

Misty's Tears

This is the Misty card that got censored stateside.

The American version of the card has some very nice Sugimori art of Squirtle comforting a crying Misty.

The Japanese version of the card has some very nice Sugimori art of Misty completely naked.

Yeah.

The card itself is actually a wonderful top down design, because you throw away a card (because you are sad) and gain two Water Energy (one tear from each eye). It's a reasonable deck-thinning card because you can toss out a Water Energy and lose this card to get two new Water Energy; not really changing your hand but thinning your deck. It also has obvious applications in multi-Energy decks.

Nobody cares about that though, this is the card where you can see Misty's whooole boob.

Sabrina's Psychic Control

This isn't a Misty card, but she's certainly participating.

So this card is fucked up on two levels. First, this card lets you steal a Trainer card straight from your opponent's graveyard, which is fucked up in an awesome way. Second, this card's art depicts Sabrina mindbreaking Misty, which is also fucked up in an awesome way, come to think of it.

The practical applications seem limited because it's difficult to imagine your opponent will have a better card in their graveyard than you could have put in your deck when you were designing it, but it opens up very stylish ways to win and it's certainly not a weak card.

Man though, Misty just can't catch a fucking break today. First full frontal, then femdom love slave. It isn't even the weekend yet.

Misty's Determination

Here's a more positive note. Look at that smile, she got hypnotized by an Asian dominatrix and she isn't letting it get her down! How inspiring.

This card is a less bonkers version of Misty's Wrath. You have to discard a card to use it and you only get to choose one card, not two. You do get to choose from 8 cards instead of 7 so at least it isn't strictly worse. It isn't terrible and may be quite strong in certain decks, but even in those decks there are probably better Supporters you could be using. It has the same problem as Misty's Favor in that if you grab a Supporter you can't use it until next turn.

What's amusing about this card though is the name, which was translated very carefully. The Japanese title is 「カスミのやる気」. A literal translation of that is something like "Misty is ready to do it".「やる」is, among other definitions, slang for "to fuck" in Japanese. 「気」means a whole bunch of things, but in this context can imply "intent". Now「やる気」as a whole is a compound word that has nothing to do with sex. It does, however, mean "eager and ready". And, well, you see the art.

It appears the translator took the safe route and picked the least sexual translation they could come up with that was still accurate. Noble, but not enough to stop me. I'm not only bilingual, I'm also immature enough to find a Pokémon card where Misty is ready to pounce on my dick hilarious, among other emotions.

Gallery

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  Misty's design from the anime; undoubtedly her most well-known character design.

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  Misty's design in Dengeki! Pikachu, an official adaptation of the anime by literal porn artist Ono Toshihiro.

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  Misty's other most iconic design is this swimsuit...

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  ...specifically, the version of it drawn by Ono Toshihiro.