Mr. Fuji: Lavender Town's Guardian and Mewtwo's Creator

Two men bear this name, and they are one and the same. In Lavender Town, an old man takes in the Pokémon nobody wants anymore. On Cinnabar Island, a vanished scientist led the team that created Mewtwo. The games never make the connection out loud: they scatter clues all over Kanto and leave it to the player to piece them together.

Contents

• The Pokémon House, at the Foot of Lavender Town's Tower
• The Clues Kanto Leaves Lying Around
• Cinnabar Island: Dr. Fuji, Mew and the Making of Mewtwo
• What the Later Games Have Him Do
• On the Big Screen: Amber, the Clones and No Way Back
• Two Retellings: Origins and the Manga
• Mr. Fuji at a Glance
• Frequently Asked Questions

The Pokémon House, at the Foot of Lavender Town's Tower

His public life fits in a single address. Fuji runs the Volunteer Pokémon House, an orphanage for abandoned Pokémon located at the foot of Lavender Town's Pokémon Tower. The locals speak very highly of him: he's described as a man who personally goes out to find orphaned and neglected Pokémon.

The storyline that features him begins with a death. Team Rocket killed a Marowak, the mother of a Cubone he had taken in; Fuji climbs the Tower alone to drive the organization out and ends up held hostage at the top. When the player clears the place out, he brushes off the rescue: he claims he came of his own free will, solely to soothe the spirit of the departed.

His gratitude takes the form of a progression item. Back home, he gives the player the Poké Flute, whose sound wakes up any sleeping Pokémon — and he takes the opportunity to warn that a Pokédex can't be completed without real affection for your Pokémon.

The Clues Kanto Leaves Lying Around

The game doesn't hide his past; it scatters it. A Lavender Town resident spreads a rumor: the old man supposedly isn't from around here. It's the first crack in the portrait of the local benefactor, and it points elsewhere, toward an island.

The second piece hangs on the wall of Cinnabar Gym: a photo shows him smiling alongside Blaine, the Gym Leader there. The two men were very close, which ties Fuji to an island he never talks about — because that's where he comes from.

The third comes from the press and from his enemies. Cinnabar Island's Pokémon Journal reports that he turned down an interview request out of shyness, while remaining much loved in Lavender Town; one Team Rocket member, meanwhile, describes his visit to the Tower as a talk between adults. A man who is loved and self-effacing, yet whom criminals still take seriously.

Cinnabar Island: Dr. Fuji, Mew and the Making of Mewtwo

Before Lavender Town, he went by Dr. Fuji, and he was famous. He's the one who founded the Cinnabar Lab, the facility where Pokémon fossils were brought back to life. The network around him is that of a regional notable, not a fringe researcher.

The main series piles up evidence that he led the team that proved Mew existed. In the Japanese version of Emerald, the sign on Faraway Island bears a signature reduced to a single character, taken from his name: the island where the Mythical Pokémon can be caught is therefore the one he brought its DNA back from.

The journals left in the Pokémon Mansion tell the rest of the story. Using that DNA, the team sets out to produce a clone more powerful than the original, named Mewtwo; no one had anticipated its power or its hostility. The Mansion is destroyed, the creature withdraws deep into Cerulean Cave, and Dr. Fuji turns his back on his research for good to open an orphanage on the other side of Kanto.

🧬 The clone has its own section: see the products Mewtwo.

What the Later Games Have Him Do

Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! give him a guide role that was absent from both the original versions and FireRed and LeafGreen. He catches up with the player before the Snorlax blocking the road to warn them: once awake, this Pokémon mistakes the first thing it sees for food and turns dangerous, so you have to defeat it before you can hope to catch it.

Those same versions move another piece, and it matters: the orphaned Cubone doesn't stay with Fuji, who entrusts it to Trace.

Three years later, he still hasn't left Lavender Town. Pokémon Tower has become the Kanto Radio Tower, and Fuji watches over the House of Memories, which now holds the graves of departed Pokémon.

On the Big Screen: Amber, the Clones and No Way Back

The anime keeps only his dark side. There, he exists only as Dr. Fuji, in the first Pokémon movie and in its CGI remake. His daughter Amber died as a child; he decides to bring her back through cloning, and his wife, crushed by grief and by the project, leaves him.

The program needs money, and that money comes at a price. The funding is granted on the condition that he delivers a clone of Mew to Team Rocket. The team goes looking for the Mythical Pokémon's DNA in a nameless jungle, then creates Mewtwo in a laboratory on New Island.

The first clones don't hold together. Mewtwo grows up alongside the clones of Amber, a Charmander, a Squirtle and a Bulbasaur, and watches every one of them die; the scientists respond to his grief with a serum that suppresses his emotions. Once fully grown, he realizes they see him as nothing more than a lab product, turns on the team and blows up the building. Fuji dies in the explosion, in a series where human deaths can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Two Retellings: Origins and the Manga

Pokémon Origins follows the games' storyline and adds a gift. Fuji tries to convince Team Rocket to leave Pokémon Tower, fails, becomes their hostage, and is then freed by Red; he hands the young Trainer the Poké Flute and two mysterious stones, without saying what they're for, assuring him he'll find out soon enough.

The revelation comes later. Red brings Professor Oak the journals found in the Pokémon Mansion; the professor explains that Dr. Fuji had discovered a never-before-seen species and then tried to create one artificially, before his work was rejected, and he states that the scientist and the old man of Lavender Town are one and the same, since Dr. Fuji had studied the stones given to Red. When Reina tells him that a formidable Psychic-type Pokémon awaits the boy in Cerulean Cave, Fuji guesses its identity: his stones will turn Charizard into Mega Charizard X, the only hope of winning.

The manga Pokémon Adventures catches him at a completely different moment. Red comes across him in the pouring rain in front of his Doduo's grave, accepts his hospitality and listens, skeptical, to the ghost legends surrounding Pokémon Tower; it's a photo of the Doduo that reveals to him that his rival Blue has been missing inside the Tower for two weeks. Red gets him out, and the pair drive back Koga, the mastermind behind the whole affair, and Fuji can finally give his Doduo a proper burial.

Mr. Fuji at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

• Is Mr. Fuji really Dr. Fuji?
  The games never spell it out in black and white, but they stack up the clues: a rumor about his origins, a photo with Blaine in Cinnabar Gym, a signature on the Faraway Island sign and the journals in the Pokémon Mansion. Pokémon Origins, on the other hand, states it outright through Professor Oak.
• What happens to Mewtwo after it's created?
  The team underestimates its power and fails to contain it. Mewtwo destroys the Pokémon Mansion on Cinnabar Island, then settles deep inside Cerulean Cave.
• Why does Mr. Fuji give the player the Poké Flute?
  To thank them for driving Team Rocket out of Lavender Town's Pokémon Tower and putting to rest the spirit of Marowak, the mother of the Cubone he had taken in. The flute wakes up sleeping Pokémon, starting with the Snorlax blocking the road.
• Does Mr. Fuji die in the first movie?
  Yes. Mewtwo, realizing that the scientists see him as nothing more than a lab creation, turns against them and destroys the building on New Island; Fuji and his team are killed in the explosion, an extremely rare fate in the anime.
• Where does Mr. Fuji appear in the manga?
  In Pokémon Adventures, he meets Red in Lavender Town while paying his respects at his Doduo's grave, and tells him that Blue has gone missing in Pokémon Tower. He later makes three cameos in subsequent arcs.

In short

Mr. Fuji is one of those rare Kanto characters whose biography is never written out in full anywhere: it has to be pieced together from a rumor, a Gym photo, a signature on a sign and journals abandoned in a ruined mansion. The games make him an old man who repairs, on the scale of an orphanage, what a laboratory had destroyed; the movie denies him that redemption and kills him in the explosion he himself brought about. The same man, two opposite endings.