Revisiting Kanto - Pokemon Fans, We Don’t Appreciate Silence Bridge Enough
Welcome, intrepid explorers, to my ongoing adventure through Kanto. If you’ve been with me from the start, then welcome back, and if you’ve never seen me before in your life, just plain old welcome friend. I’m visiting Pokemon Blue’s Kanto region and trying to see it as a tourist rather than a trainer, taking in exactly why Kanto has stuck with me for all these years.
Kanto is one of the most recognisable settings in video game history, so anyone with even a passing knowledge of Pokemon will know all the places I’ve been to so far. SS Anne? You betcha? Lavender Town? I love that creepy place. But Silence Bridge? Uh… you lost me.
Related: Why Is Pokemon Refusing To Give Us A New Eeveelution?
Silence Bridge is not a fondly remembered piece of the Kanto mosaic. So far, with limited exceptions, I’ve skipped over the parts of my journey that have involved walking along routes in favour of the places those routes have led me to. With Silence Bridge, it was important to slow down and smell the Roselias. I know Roselia isn’t in Gen 1, but ‘stop and smell the Voltorbs’ doesn’t really make sense. In any case, Silence Bridge is the route that leads south from Lavender Town.
In most walkthroughs for the game, it will simply be called Route 12, but that doesn’t quite do it justice. Silence Bridge is one of the most fascinating stretches where nothing much happens, and if the point of this column is to understand why Kanto is so memorable, I think the small moments like Silence Bridge are far bigger factors than we think.
Some experienced Pokemon trainers might either be confused, dismayed, or nodding in chaotic glee at this point. That’s right, we’re going south, which will eventually lead us to Fuschia City. Canonically, Fuschia
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