About

"Squirtle Is Proud of What He Is" is a humorous expression poking fun at an ambiguously phrased quote said by the Pokémon character Squirtle in the children's book Pokemon Tales, Volume 2: Come Out Squirtle!. In the page in question, Squirtle is shown looking up towards a rainbow while exclaiming "Wow! I'm so glad I came out!" Due to the colloquial use of the phrase "coming out" as a public acknowledgment of one's homosexuality, compounded by the presence of a rainbow, a popular symbol embraced by the LGBTQ community, Squirtle's quote quickly became a subject of mockeries upon its submission online in December 2011.

Origin

The image stems from the book "Pokémon Tales, Volume 2: Come out, Squirtle!" written by Akihito Toda ^[3], the Japanese author of most of the Pokémon Tales books and several songs for the Pokémon anime series, illustrated by Kagemaru Himeno, the illustrator of Pokémon since the early days of Pokémon.^[4] The second volume of the Pokémon Tales series was originally published for Japanese readers in June 1997, followed by the release of the English-language adaptation on October 6th, 1999. The second edition of the English edition was published on September 19th, 2006.^[5]

According to Bulbapedia ^[2]:

A shy Squirtle is relaxing in a field, safely tucked into his shell. He refuses to leave his shell for any reason. A Charmander and a Poliwhirl try to convince it to come out of its shell, but Squirtle continually refuses. It rains, which Squirtle considers further proof that it should not leave its shell. Finally, the rain stops. Charmander and Poliwhirl are staring in wonder at something, and although Squirtle is curious, it is still hesitant to leave its shell. Eventually, it does, and before it and the others is a beautiful rainbow which appeared after the rainstorm. Squirtle decides it is glad that it left its shell after all._

Spread

On December 18th, 2011, Redditor [Deleted] submitted a photograph of the quote^[1] to Imgur via Reddit, which was subsequently re-posted on Tumblr by user named lgbtgivesmehope. By October 2015, the photograph had received more than 136,000 views on Imgur^[6] and over 98,500 notes on Tumblr.^[7]

Examples

Search Interest

External References