"Who will I be if I forget the things that make me, me?"
I haven't played many of the games, but it seems like a common trope in PMD stories is the protagonist waking up with some degree of amnesia. It makes an author's job easy, since they have a blank slate of a protagonist they can mold to fit any scenario. Occasionally you come across a story where the protagonist has forgotten very little, if any, of the human world or his/her past life, so you end up with a protagonist with a pre-set personality. I was playing around with ideas about this general amnesia, and the fact that, if it occurs, it always happens in the very beginning of the story. What if it happened later? Say you have a character than remembers everything about his past life before getting isekai'd, but loses these human memories during the course of the story, either in one fell swoop or gradually over time.
The character I had in mind is exactly that: one that happens to retain all memories after getting isekai'd. Two of the most prominent aspects of this character are 1. his love of family/tradition/etc and the importance he places on them, and 2. a strong moral compass with a drive to always to the right thing. Just the type of guy you'd want to save the world, right? When he hears about the world-ending threat he was called to defeat, he jumps right on it. It's the right thing to do, his purpose there; plus the sooner he does it the sooner he can return home to his family. Pretty barebones at the moment, but that's his core. So of course the story conflict has to challenge that in some way. Him losing his human memories slowly over time would make for an interesting story and character development.
I'm not sure what the antagonist would be (some pokemon related to memories or some other primal force), or even what the "world-ending threat" would be, but the big conflict in the story would revolve around how the antagonist protects itself. It can defend itself in many different ways, depending on what it sees as the largest threat to itself, and what would be the most effective way of dealing with it. Someone coming at it with an axe, it grows an impenetrable shell to block it; someone tries to psychically destroy it, it counterattacks while the assailant is vulnerable, etc. Things like that (I haven't put much thought into that aspect). But the important thing is what it sees as the most effective way to thwart our protagonist is by undermining his desire to act against it. How? By removing his human memories. Slowly, over time, for the extra points of psychic and emotional damage.
The idea is that the protagonist gets the generic PMD awakening, meets a partner, learns the ropes relatively stress-free. He didn't exactly take to becoming a pokemon very well, what with being so far removed from the familiar and family and all. As cool as all this pokemon stuff is, he doesn't want to forget that he's still human. One thing he does is participate in "human" activities that were part of his day-to-day that pokemon wouldn't normally do, i.e brushing his teeth; just these little "traditions," but over time he stops participating in them, deeming them not necessary. Eventually, not terribly long after the character has been established, he learns about the other game protagonists and their stories, as well as the threat to the world that must be his purpose to stop it. This gives him a new drive: Once he defeats this threat, he can return home. Whether in the events of learning about the world threat, or some point after, he has a run-in of some length with the antagonist, which is where it decides that this guy is the biggest threat to its existence and infects him with the slow-burn amnesia.
So this guy continues on his journey to defeat the big bad, but eventually he starts realizing he's been forgetting things about the human world, or his past life. But whatever, these are small details that are being forgotten and can be chalked up to simply the amount of time he's been away from home. A breakthrough comes in his journey against the big bad, and then he starts forgetting bigger things, things that can't be attributed to the mere passage of time away from home; things like the name of his school or workplace, or what his job was. Only things from before his PMD arrival, however; his memory after is completely unaffected. He realizes that maybe his prior forgetfulness isn't due to mundane means, but he's still not sure the source. This memory loss is, of course, a cause of ever-increasing distress. He starts writing a list major things he still remembers, which he shares with his partner and every now and then has him quiz him on. He begins partaking in those little human habits again.
At one point, his efforts in reaching the goal of defeating the antagonist get frustrated, and his team isn't sure how to proceed, and can't really see a way forward for a while. During this time, which lasts a few weeks/months, the memory loss stops. The protagonist begins to wonder if maybe the antagonist is actually involved in some way with his memory loss; suspicions which are confirmed when another major breakthrough is made and he starts forgetting again, this time slightly more important things as well. He begins wondering about not just what he's forgotten so far, but what he's forgotten that he's forgotten.
Things continue on, but every new thing he forgets reduced his willingness to continue. He still does, because he knows he must, but doubt starts to creep in. He begins to realize that defeating the enemy for good will likely mean the complete annihilation of his human memories. He truly doubts if it's worth it to continue when he gets closest to his goal and begins forgetting even the most major things from his list (like family members), and the meaning behind some of those human habits he's kept up. By this point his mental state has deteriorated to the point where the partner's taken the lead in the group from him and is basically dragging him along for the ride. Those two parts of him, that which places great importance on his family/traditions (which has morphed into meaning his "humanity" in general), and that which knows he must put an end to the antagonist, are fighting for dominance within him, and the half that doesn't want to forget is gaining the upper hand; the desire to not forget grows proportionally to how much has been forgotten.
By the time the final conflict is nigh, the protagonist has forgotten basically everything about his human life except for the fact that he was human, and has a family that he wants to return to. At some point, he started nearly incessantly humming random songs; music forms the strongest bonds in the mind, and memories of melodies are some of the last to be lost. He's begun fighting his partner to stop progress from being made, and it really looks like the antagonist will win in the end. Due to [plot events yet undecided], the protagonist ultimately has the moral compass side win out and strikes down the enemy. This results in a sort of ego death for the protagonist, completely forgetting that he ever was human in the first place and lives happily ever after as a pokemon, yadda yadda. You can even throw in a bit of "terminal lucidity" at the climax, where right before the Enemy is struck with a killing blow, the protagonist regains all of his lost memories before losing them for good, just to drive home the dementia parallels. Even though he's forgotten that he was human, something like that can't be completely excised without some sort of damage, and the protagonist is left with a terminal feeling of having forgotten something important. Potential sequel in which the protagonist journeys to uncover what it was he forgot.
Aaaaand this is basically just the One Ring of LotR, isn't it? Fuck. Unoriginal? Yes. Edgy as fuck? You know it. Whatever, the idea is very raw and can be iterated on. Perhaps the antagonist has greater influence over certain areas, and the protagonist thinks that by removing its influence his memories would come back, and when they don't is when he believes that they're gone forever. Something like that, idk, there's a lot of work to do on this.
Below is a selection of messages from the first couple guild threads where I brought this up, for reference.
become a selective dementia patient before the age of 30
no thanks. I've got a good life here I've worked hard for, wouldn't want to lose it. But that's an ideaguy idea I had for a PMD story - protag who's very big on tradition/family/etc doesn't have any memory loss when isekai'd, but every step he takes towards defeating the big bad he loses more and more human memories. Climax is protag refusing to stop the big bad, despite the disastrous outcomes, because he doesn't want to forget what little he has left. "who will I be if I forget the things that make me me", etc.
Climax is protag refusing to stop the big bad, despite the disastrous outcomes, because he doesn't want to forget what little he has left. "who will I be if I forget the things that make me me", etc.
True, there is also the whole angle of self-sacrifice to consider and all that too. I do like the idea of a noble and selfless act, even if its an outdated notion these days.
I could see a potential resolution to that if, at the last moment the character in question discovered that whatever was going on would also present a threat to the human world, his family even, if he doesn't do something.
Ideally, by that point in the story, he'd have forgotten everything except that he was human and had a family whom he loved very much, and would very much like to return to. I've imagined the conflict would be more along the lines of letting go of what isn't there anymore, which one would think would be easier at that point, vs. his personality requiring him to hold on to what little remains, even to the death. I like the idea that the "switch" comes when he realizes he can no longer remember his mother's face.