The Poke-Lid mania in Japan keeps growing, and it’s especially strong today that marks the 25th anniversary of the popular Pokemon franchise.
As a consequence, another town installed a few unique Pokemon-themed manholes.
This time around it’s Ogasawara village’s turn to install the unique pieces of urban art. The village is formally part of Tokyo but is actually 1,000 km south of the capital, in the Bonin archipelago.
Usually, cities install manholes portraying the same Pokemon, that is also associated with the city itself, but this is a special occasion, so the Poke-lid portray four very special critters, Mew, Charizard, Blastoise, and Venusaur.
In the pictures below coming straight from the press release you can see what they look like.
Interestingly, the Poke-lids will mark locations for PokeStops compatible with Pokemon GO.
Each Poke-lid is one-of-a-kind, sporting its own original design that doesn’t appear anywhere else. Of course, this comes with the benefit of encouraging many fans to visit local communities to snap collectible pictures, boosting tourism and business.
The trend started with the installation of the first Poke-lid portraying Eevee in Ibusuki, Kagoshima prefecture, back in December 2018. As of now, 152 of the colorful manholes have been installed in thirteen prefectures including the four mentioned here.
If you want to see more, you can check out those installed in Tottori prefecture featuring Sandshrew and Sandslash, the lids portraying Chansey in Fukushima prefecture, the batch in Hokkaido, featuring Vulpix, the group in Niigata prefecture starring Magikarp, another in Nara prefecture portraying a bunch of different Pokemon, and a video from earlier today showing how the Poke-lid are made.
