Chim Pom, an art collective from japan, have found an ingenious way of dealing with Tokyo’s rat problem while attracting the attention of Pokemon fans; they caught some street rats and turned them into real-life taxidermied Pikachus.
But how does anyone come up with such a crazy idea? Well, it was all about the concept of “super rat”. The rats of Center-gai street, in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward got the nickname “super rats”because of their alleged immunity to human-made poison. They’re a real nuisance and aren’t afraid to come out of their hiding places even when people are walking by. Apparently there are thousands of giant rats lurking around the place, and this got the six members of Chim Pom about the famous anime character Pikachu, from the hit series Pokemon. they decided to catch some of these super street rats and turn them into real-life versions of the yellow, electrically-charged cartoon rat.
Chim Pom used nets and cages to trap the super street rats, and although they put up quite a fight, they managed to catch a number of them. Then they taxidermied them, painted them yellow and stuck wires through their tales to give them that zig-zag look. The artists explained they thought the rats (and Pikachu) looked remarkably like the teenage girls who frequent the Shibuya district, famous as one of the fashion centers of Japan. “Super Rat” was created a few years ago, but it recently gained popularity outside Japan, after Pharell included the project in his Tokyo documentary for Palladium shoes.
