The baffling trend of official Nintendo ASMR videos is continuing unabated, only this time it's Charmander and Chespin from the Pokémon franchise who are creating weird noises for the people wearing headphones.
ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, and it refers to the sensation that people feel on their skin in response to certain sounds - such as whispering or tapping on a hollow surface. These sensations are often best experienced while wearing headphones. The ASMR genre is still quite popular on YouTube, as there is a seemingly endless need for videos of beautiful women whispering directly into the camera.
It seems that the official Pokémon YouTube accounts in Japan are getting in on the ASMR trend, except these videos are aimed at children. The first video comes from the Pokémon Kids TV YouTube channel, showing Chespin eating some Poké Puffs and making exaggerated munching sounds.
The second video shows Charmander sleeping next to a roaring fire, with the crackling of the flames being the most prominent sounds in the video.
Nintendo has previously tried to enter the ASMR field with videos involving a guy playing Super Mario Maker 2 at the beach, the construction of a Labo fishing kit, and someone playing their Nintendo Switch Lite next to a fireplace. It's a bizarre direction for such a huge gaming company to go in. Is it possible that Nintendo is jealous of all of the existing ASMR videos of attractive ladies running their fingers across the rivets of a Nintendo 64 console and it wanted to crush them like they did Sega? Is The Pokémon Company so hard up for money that it needs to resort to pimping out starter Pokémon in strange noise-making videos?
It's clear that ASMR videos have a genuine effect on people, otherwise, the genre wouldn't be as popular as it is. Does Nintendo have what it takes to take over the ASMR world with its line-up of first-party characters? Yes. Yes it does, so long as Byleth is heavily featured in the next ASMR video.
Source: Pokemon Kids TV/YouTube, Pokemon/YouTube