Irony / Infinity Train: Blossomverse

A lot of events take an unexpected turn in Infinity Train: Blossomverse.

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The Main Trilogy

Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail

In General

• In Chapter 2, Chloe's dinner back at her house was a chicken and egg rice bowl, otherwise known as the parent-and-child bowl. Professor Cerise would laugh at the irony if it wasn't for the fact that he's just seen his daughter run away from the lab.
• Chloe is constantly stuck at her father's lab after school preventing her from entering clubs...which could've probably helped her find herself if her father actually allowed her to go.
• Serena Delis bitterly notes that she has a Pokémon based on a witch (Delphox) yet can't do anything against UnChloe which is essentially a dark witch version of Chloe.
• As Grace points out, The Cat is a hoarder and will do all she can to get what she wants. Except when it came to Simon, apparently.
• Akemi Tsutsuji is one of the nicest, if not the nicest, girls in Chloe's school, and honestly wanted to become her friend. And yet she's the one who ultimately begins the chain reaction that would send Chloe on the train.
• Miss Jenny April did nothing to help out Chloe yet it's her suicide attempt that actually gets Chloe to help reach out to Parker before he did something he'd regret.
• Turns out for all his actions, Zeno was the one that was preventing the Infinity Train from picking Goh and Parker up. So when he's gone and no one is looking...

The Cage of Flauros

• Walter was part of a cult in his game. In this story, he's trying to destroy one.
• Both Henry Townsend (The Receiver) and Walter Sullivan (Salvation) are Denizens, who typically do everything they can to help passengers, but in order to do just that, they torture and corrupt fellow passengers in order to stop The Apex once and for all.
• Alex Shepherd / The Bogeyman part of a ritual that sacrifices others. In his home game, he was oblivious for the most part that he was supposed to be the sacrifice and not his little brother Joshua.
  • In comparison to Walter and Henry, Alex actually has more combat experience than they and yet he acts like a doormat to them.
• Alex Shepherd / The Bogeyman represents Desire for the Cage of Flauros, but he can't act on his own desires but Walter and Henry's instead.
• Finally, Alex Shepherd / The Bogeyman's backstory in his canon game had him kill Josh (albeit accidentally) via drowning. He intentionally drowns himself, and Henry.
• Hop Hyacin/Hoppy's ritual designation is the youngest member of the original Endless, yet Hop is the most powerful one out of them all. Moreover, he always felt overshadowed by Leon, the world's best trainer whereas here, he has no equal. Moreover, he felt like a nobody compared to his older brother; in the ritual he's actually the keystone that holds it together.
  • For someone with a cheery designation, the color that fits him is black.
• Out of all the components for the Cage of Flauros outside of Death and Desire, Simon (aka the guy who refuses to listen to reason and will change things to fit his narrative) is the one fully committed to the role.
• Simon became the embodiment of Destrution, or "The True Apex" as he calls it. His actions lead to the destruction of the Apex.

Chloe Cerise

Chloe Cerise is shown to be quite the opposite of what is expected of her.

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• Her starting number is 151. Why is it ironic? Because this is the National Pokédex number of Mew, the very reason her and Goh's friendship deteriorated.
• Chloe's favorite book is Alice in Wonderland, about a girl who enters a world where logic and order is out the window. She herself is afraid of trying anything new and would rather like it if things were always the same.
• She has very dark interests, but wears a white dress. Of course there's even more irony since white in Asian cultures means death.
• She drew the seal of Marchosias onto the scabbard for Cheshire. Marchosias is a wolf demon; Cheshire was named after the Cheshire Cat. Speaking of which, Alice herself is associated with cats, Chloe is associated with canines.
• Her name gives off a Spring motif (her name can be translated to "Cherry Blossom" and her Japanese name (Koharu) could mean "Little Spring"). The author notes establish that she's a Libra, meaning she's born in Autumn.
• She's into monsters, but not Pokémon (aka Pocket Monsters).
• She has the role of Heather Mason in Part 2's Silent Hill arc. Thing is, Heather was a Daddy's Girl, and Chloe just cut off ties with her own father.
• Was essentially ignored and belittled while in Vermillion City, but when she gets on the Infinity Train and is gone for a few weeks everyone starts pouring the support and love for her. Upon learning about this, Chloe bitterly notes that it's only when she's missing that people actually begin to care about her.
• Her second outfit is that of Fran Bow who entered a dark world to save her cat Mr. Midnight. Again, Chloe's associated with canines.
• The bullying and lack of support she got in Vermillion City convinced her that she wasn't loved. Initially it turns out she really was loved, but after Parker's rampage, the Vermillion City citizens have come to hate her for being responsible for so much chaos and mayhem.
• She wanted Goh out of her life one way or another, and told him as such. Hearing what Parker did to him, however, horrifies her.
• She wanted her family to pay for neglecting and not loving her. Parker made sure of that, and he did such a good job at it that their lives have been turned upside down, possibly forever.
• Chloe utterly Hates Being Alone, and only wanted someone to be her friend and support her back home. However, her anger issues and inability to speak up caused her to act in a way that drove people away from her, and after it's discovered Parker's rampage can be traced back to her, absolutely nobody wants anything to do with her, effectively ensuring that she will be alone.
• Her designation in the Cage of Flauros is "Lady Destiny", but what she decides to do is screw it.
• In Voyage of Wisteria, Akemi notes that for a girl who was ignored by the school and never given a second thought, her return to save an entire class from a madman with a gun somehow made her the most talked about student in the school.

Goh

You have to wonder if the world hates Goh for all the irony it gives him.

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• One of the things that Goh chews Chloe out for is that she has no drive to chase her dreams. Thing is, after Chloe gets sucked on the train, while he's worried about her and feeling just what she felt when he went after Mew, Chloe is free to chase her own dreams of discovering herself on the Infinity Train and doesn't even look back at Goh at all...like how he essentially ignored her for the past four years.

  • One of the things that Goh constantly did to Chloe was apologize for replying late. Chloe does the same tactic to im replying more than 2 weeks after her disappearance as a way to spite him.

• His last name, Fujihachi, is based on "Wisteria". Wisterias are symbols of patience...but his patience — which was great in his pursuit for Mew — is now wearing thin when he's trying to find any signs of Chloe (who he essentially abandoned to the side).
  • Another meaning of the wisteria flower is a long life. After the hell he goes through Act 1 and 2, both from his own and other people's doing, it wouldn't be surprising if he died young from sheer stress alone.
  • Goh wasn't there when Chloe needed him; now that she's gone, Goh wants to become the center of her world.
• After all but replacing Chloe with Ash without thinking about how she felt, Goh develops an almost obsessive complex with refusing to let Ash replace him as a friend, or any kind of replacement, even just trading Pokémon.
• After Chloe tells him outright to leave her be, Goh stews over her selfish inability to consider how he or anyone else feels... while spiraling into his own self-absorbed delusions about being betrayed by everyone around him.
  • He actively looked for the Train at the start of the story. After Parker's failed Nightmare Therapy and his own subsequent breakdown, Ash, Trip, and Serena take him to Saffron City with the silent understanding that there's now a high — if not guaranteed — possibility that he'll end up as a passenger.
• Goh devolves into It's All My Fault after the "therapy" is over, but at that point, he's being taken around by Ash and Co. with the hopes of cheering him up so he doesn't end up on the train. The irony comes from the fact that earlier in the story, everybody blamed Goh for Chloe's disappearance, a fact that he couldn't accept or refused to. The one time Goh sees he's at fault is when people aren't pointing fingers at him.
  • This one's particularly cruel: Goh spent several years with mental issues that only worsened as nobody did anything about them, despite how obvious the issues actually were. After the Unown incident, people not only finally notice something's wrong with him, but are trying to fix it...when he's all but unsalvageable as a sane person.
  • After going through so much pain and torture in Arc 2, Goh is doing all he can to not obsess with Mew and live anormal life. Cut to Arc 3 having him meet up with one of the Legendary Hunters he met in an online forum revealing an injured Mew...
• And finally after having Mew in his hands, he can't accept it or how Chloe, who is now more mature and confident and focused on a goal, is being there for him and it ultimately leads him to the Train.
• What made Goh think that Tokio no longer wanted to be his friend? Tokio not showing up for them to search for Celebi (albeit this is justified; Tokio was sick). What was the thing that he kept doing to Chloe that made her hate him? Never showing up on time and constantly making excuses why he'd be late.
• One of his biggest problems is that he doesn't properly listen to what people are telling him and doesn't account for anyone else's feelings...but after the upteenth speech about how wrong he is about everything, before and after he breaks, he's genuinely surprised when Warbler simply listens to him and validates his own feelings.

Delia Ketchum

• The fact that Delia Ketchum's apologizing to Chloe for inadvertedly leaving Goh alone for the Infinity Train to pick him up when she really didn't accept Chloe's own apology for messing things up isn't lost on Chloe herself.
  • The better parent between her, the Cerise and the Fujihachis let her emotions over Chloe realizing that Goh's "Shiny Espurr" was really Mew get in the way of making sure Goh is safe and got him sent onto a long, long therapy session on the Infinity Train.

Mew

• Goh is searching far and wide for it; Episode 20 of Journeys reveals that Goh rode on it when it was shapeshifted as Lugia.
• Goh has been obsessed with finding it since he was 6; he has no idea that Ash has actually met a Mew three times already (First Movie, Lucario and the Mystery Mew and Mastermind of Mirage Pokémon).
• Goh was trying to get away from Mew after his epiphany. But with Ms. Roycewood having Mew right in front of his face, he has no choice but to confront the childhood dream that made him lose everything.
• Goh's search for Mew is the reason for Chloe and Goh's falling friendship and Chloe getting on the Infinity Train. Goh having Mew after he felt like he didn't deserve it is what got him to enter the Train.

Professor Cerise

• When he goes to search through his daughter's social media, he compares it to a film where a similar father does that. He apparently didn't get the message from that film at how the father was also emotionally distant from his daughter...
• Speaking of which, he claims to love her, but he never attempted to contact her. Even Goh tried messaging her. (Though some dialogue later hints that he simply didn't know he could call or text his daughter until he was told it was possible)
• Moreover, it was his idea to keep Chloe in the Institute yet he never even looks at her to talk or asks how she's doing.

Talia Cerise

• Talia has a very clear distaste for horror, while her daughter has a clear love for it.
• Talia is an Open-Minded Parent who doesn't react with as much shock as her husband when they find out what Chloe's into. And yet she's the one who forces Chloe to take a sabbatical from it once she calls her out on her crap.
• Talia and Chloe share the most distant relationship out of the whole family, and yet Talia's the one who finally gets Chloe to listen to reason and learn to grow up.

Class 5-E

• Were led around by Sara to see Chloe as a bully. They learn too late that Sara was the true bully.
• Chloe Cerise, the same girl they bullied, humiliated and caused to run away from home emerges to save their lives from Ms. Turner even though they felt like they didn't deserve it and no one, except their families, would've mourned them if someone died. Moreover, she wouldn't have arrived were it not for her little brother messaging her — the same little brother whom they gloated about their bullying to.
• All of them want to get lives with Pokémon. Well, they get their wish just after they lost practically everything else.

UnChloe

• Chloe dislikes being seen as a princess; however, the Unown's version of her adopts the appearance of a princess to reflect how much her brother adores her.
• She wears an onyx broach; onyx are usually about protecting those from evil. That's not the case here...
• UnChloe tried to block Chloe from texting Parker as a way to distance the siblings. Too bad she forgot about email and when Chloe confesses what was going on, all this does is Parker distancing himself from her.

Infinity Train: Knight of the Orange Lily

In General

• Kisaragi's a reference to the friendliest Kamen Rider in the franchise. But his actions to befriend Tokio makes him more of a villain...

Gladion Montblanc

• His favorite character from Alice in Wonderland is the White Knight. Gladion himself initially wears black.
• For someone associated with darkness, you think he'd like nightmarish things. Turns out he's squeamish to them.
• While he's associated with orange lilies, he hates the flower because of what it represents in the language of flowers (hatred). And yet, by the time of Blossoming Trail, the Denizens use said flowers as tributes to him.

Lillie Montblanc

• Got angry at how Gladion left her behind, but her gift of orange lilies would've ensured he could've been gone for good on the Infinity Train.
• Her name being Lillie and being associated with white brings to mind the white lily, which is a flower commonly used to show someone that you care and appreciate them. While this fits with her friends, it doesn't fit with Gladion, who she hates with a passion.

Specter

• The reason he became loyal to Ryoken is due to being electrocuted in the Lost Incident and believing he was being tested. Upon entering the Infinity Train and learning he has a Split Personality / Denizen of a lightning bolt that only gets stronger if fed enough electricity, he's now afraid of the idea of being electrocuted.

Infinity Train: Voyage of Wisteria

• Despite Parker being the one with psychic powers, Chloe repeatedly anticipates what sort of arguments he's going to make in his own defense and cuts him off before he gets a chance to say anything.
• Akemi muses that for a girl who was once bullied at school and picked on for being weird and different, after her return Chloe became the gossip amongst former students of Vermillion International School with people wondering what she did to get blue hair and a pipe.
• When Goh first enters the Train, his friends attempt to reassure each other that there was just no way that Goh's journey could be as dangerous as Chloe's was. However, if Chloe's Train trip was more dangerous than the average, it largely came down to the way she made a conscious decision to track down and end the Apex- partially because of the stories she had heard about the group, and partially to secure her role as a "hero". Even her role as "Lady Destiny," which gets singled out as a danger that Goh can avoid, largely came into play because Chloe's group made a plan to trap the Apex in the Fog Car without considering the dangers. Goh, on the other hand, is confronted with an immortal Serial Killer on his first day- and not only does he fit said killer's target criteria exactly, but the killer saw him as a way to get to Chloe of the Vermillion, who was integral to their plans. Said plans involved basically taking over the entire Infinity Train, leaving nowhere for Goh to run. So by the numbers, Goh's journey was likely more dangerous than Chloe's was- Ogami is a far greater threat than the Apex ever were, Goh never received the sort of power-ups that Chloe did, and there was simply no way that Goh could avoid Ogami's plans forever.
• Dahlia, the smug liar who makes everyone fall for her looks, is the one who is terrified when "Maya" has a pistol pointed at her, which Jane reveals was never loaded.
• Chloe can't help but note that she's going to the Alola region, the same region where Ash is the champion and what started her trip onto the Train in the first place.
• Tokio finds it amusing that for all of Gladion noting how knight quests are horrible, his house is essentially a castle.
• When Trip first arrived in Vermillion City in Blossoming Trail, he had a very definite plan for what needed to be done to bring Chloe back. One of the key aspects to that plan was to leave Goh out of the plan entirely. From everything he had heard about Goh, he was certain that the boy’s obsessive, selfish efforts could do nothing to help rescue his friend. Thus, the best thing to do would be to leave Goh to continue his normal life, so that he at least wouldn’t make things worse. In reality, Goh was so frantic about Chloe’s safety that he made himself sick looking for her, and kept bombarding her phone with apologies and frantic inquiries of her status. Trip, in the meantime, kept vital information to himself and prioritized telling people that they were wrong without actually doing much else to improve the situation himself.
  • Meanwhile, Trip and the others set off on a quest to prove to Chloe that they cared about her and that things would be better when she returned. To that end, they created the #CallingChloe campaign to present Chloe’s entire story to the Internet at large. Through that hashtag, they publicly exposed Chloe’s bullies and apathetic teachers, had her parents confess to the Internet how they had wronged her, and basically made Chloe the face of outcasts the world over, especially those that felt excluded for not being into Pokemon. But with the benefit of hindsight, Chloe was able to inform everyone in Voyage of Wisteria that Goh’s approach was actually the more helpful one: She was too angry to accept either method of reaching out at the time, but once she had calmed down, she found open, heartfelt conversation with her loved ones more helpful than hundreds of faceless, online fans in what was functionally another world at the time.
  • In addition, while the #Calling Chloe movement did certainly do some good, it also caused a lot of collateral damage in the process, and ultimately did more harm than it solved. For extra irony, by the time Chloe had calmed down enough to talk, Goh had already received Parker’s personal attention. Thus, Goh did not actually get much benefit out of his attempts to reach out to Chloe himself.
• The events of Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail were triggered when Chloe Cerise reached her Rage Breaking Point and lashed out at her Childhood Friend, Goh Fujihachi. Goh had drifted apart from her while focusing on his own interest in Pokemon, especially Mew, and thus she had come to resent him and believe that their friendship should come to an end. After getting on the Infinity Train, she wasn’t shy about expressing her disdain for Goh’s main hobbies. She saw Pokemon in general as a symbol of everything she wasn’t; she felt trapped because people kept expecting her to be a huge fan of Pokemon, and she felt like the people who should have cared for her instead devoted all their time to the “creatures.” Thus, to Chloe, people who liked Pokemon were basically incompatible with her. Not only were they incapable of relating to people who weren’t also into Pokemon, but they acted as “Black Holes,” drawing all the attention and admiration of the public and leaving her with nothing. Whenever Chloe explained all this to the people on the Infinity Train, she used Ash Ketchum as an example of the latter type of Trainer, and Goh as an example of the former. In particular, the sheer amount of time Goh spent online researching Pokemon was held against him. In Chloe’s view, it showed that he didn’t care about interacting with people, that he had a lot of privileges that Chloe didn’t because of his interests, and generally that he only cared about Chloe on a superficial level, since his “obsession” would always come first. Come Infinity Train: Voyage of Wisteria, and Chloe finds herself in a position where she has to make up with Goh- but the only way she can think to do so is by playing into his interests. Thus, Chloe Cerise, the girl who pointedly wanted nothing to do with Pokemon on her own adventure, ends up capturing a Pokemon as a peace offering for her friend who made it his goal to catch every Pokemon in the world before Parker's rampage broke him. Moreover, the Pokemon (Porygon) is meant to keep Goh safe online, when she had earlier expressed her hatred of the fact that he spent so much time on his computer.
• After all the encounters with Pokémon trainers, Grace was defeated by the sole girl who didn't want to be defined by them.
• Lexi was told to sit out the literal trip down memory lane so his anger and spite against Grace wouldn't cause him to try call her out over stuff people already know about. Once inside memory lane, this happens anyway... By Amelia, who was all about pragmatism and keeping the idea on the backburner to focus on more important things.
• Grace denied the idea of Passengers who die become denizens to avoid feeling pain. Once it finally sinks in what she's done, not only did she feel immense pain, but it also brought about her own death.

Spin-Offs

Infinity Train: Melancholy Afterlife

• Specter was one of the few people who treated Chloe nicely without a hint of insensitivity, and yet he's the one who ultimately causes the Spearow incident to happen, since he not only gave Chloe a Trainer kit without a Pokémon to protect her, but then convinced her to keep quiet about his existence, making Chloe come across as an idiot who tried to fight an entire pack of Spearows by herself.

Infinity Train: Cherry Bloodlines

• For all of Renji's fear of horror, Chloe suspects that his own collection of V.H.S tapes introduced her to the concept.
• It is an trip that Chloe herself wants and gets arranged that ultimately screws her over and gets her onto the Infinity Train.
• Once again Akemi is an Unwitting Instigator of Doom. Even more so this time, as they have a longer period to become friends than in the original story and she ultimately only fuels Chloe's biases than accidentally starts a conversation that leads to her battling Ash.
• Chloe has 'trainer genes'', genes that are able to absorb Infinity Energy and are frequently found in those with natural affinity for Pokemon. This is despite Chloe's hatred of them, and in fact she naturally possesses them, while Goh gained an affinity through sheer exposure and doesn't naturally have them. Even more so, it is implied that Chloe inherited these genes from her mother, not Professor Cerise.