-
Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!
-
Welcome to Smogon! Take a moment to read the Introduction to Smogon for a run-down on everything Smogon, and make sure you take some time to read the global rules.
(Little) Things that annoy you in Pokémon
- Thread starter BriarRose
- Start date
This feels like an early-installment translation error that's become part of the franchise bible. I do not speak Japanese even a little, but I know there's a lot of pronouns with very specific use cases. My complete guess is that whatever the Japanese pronoun is for an animal is gender-neutral*, someone decided that "it" is the english equivalent of that, and now that's just how it's done.
*not actually a bad idea given how hard it is to determine the sex of many animal species
second and third person pronouns are not commonly* used in japanese. pokémon are simply reffered by repeating their name in a conversation or just not mentioning anything and letting context infer who you're talking to, so they just dont have this problem in the first place
*some sources will say theyre never used but thats a lie. they are more common in art (literature, shows, etc) than real life so you may see them there, and they are still sometimes used in conversation too, though often with other meanings (彼 and 彼女 mean him and her, but in modern japanese they almost always mean boyfriend and girlfriend, for example)
Then yeah, I'm guessing that early translators had to deal with a bunch of dialogue about random mons who won't show up again, realized there was no canon gender for those mons, and didn't want to have to ask about it. So they just chose to say anything that isn't human is "it" and moved on, and now we're stuck with that.
probably! and while its weird for us, I think its a bit of fun unintentional worldbuilding. Pokémon may have sex markers and dimorphism but its more common for humans to treat them with a universal pokémon pronoun (it)
Yes, that really does seem like the legacy of early translations. Many of these little details later become part of the canon, even if they were originally inaccuracies.
Last edited:
I was always kind of under the impression that the lack of gender specificity was more about the whole "Pokemon are still such a mystery to us" vibe (like, even after several of Ash's Pokemon have their sex confirmed in the anime, they're mostly still referred to as "it")
Which kind of makes sense? Like, there's a lot to support the idea of "we call them male and female but that's our human framing, we don't really know if Pokemon are divided into sexes in any way that's within our understanding, they're so complicated and we're learning more about them everyday", etc etc. This also ties in to the whole suspension of disbelief around breeding (which is obviously presented that way for the IRL reason of keeping the concept mostly desexualised) - like, you put a male and female Pokemon together in the same enclosure and an egg turns up and people are like WHAT NO WAY, HOW ON EARTH DID THIS HAPPEN, NO ONE HAS ANY IDEA
...some people have headcanoned that this is all just adults intentionally playing dumb so as not to have to explain the facts of life to the mostly quite young protagonist characters and y'know what, maybe that's the better explanation.
But I was unaware about the nuances of pronouns in the Japanese language, that's incredibly interesting and explains a lot
____
side note: I could have sworn there was an interview with one of the anime writers where they said something to the effect of "oh we don't really want to canonise Ash's Pikachu as male or female" but I cannot for the life of me find it - anyone remember anything like this or am I just making this up? Quite possibly, because they obviously DID eventually canonise it in the DP series by showing Pikachu & others falling victim to a female Pokemon using Attract, which has happened on other occasions since then
Which kind of makes sense? Like, there's a lot to support the idea of "we call them male and female but that's our human framing, we don't really know if Pokemon are divided into sexes in any way that's within our understanding, they're so complicated and we're learning more about them everyday", etc etc. This also ties in to the whole suspension of disbelief around breeding (which is obviously presented that way for the IRL reason of keeping the concept mostly desexualised) - like, you put a male and female Pokemon together in the same enclosure and an egg turns up and people are like WHAT NO WAY, HOW ON EARTH DID THIS HAPPEN, NO ONE HAS ANY IDEA
...some people have headcanoned that this is all just adults intentionally playing dumb so as not to have to explain the facts of life to the mostly quite young protagonist characters and y'know what, maybe that's the better explanation.
But I was unaware about the nuances of pronouns in the Japanese language, that's incredibly interesting and explains a lot
____
side note: I could have sworn there was an interview with one of the anime writers where they said something to the effect of "oh we don't really want to canonise Ash's Pikachu as male or female" but I cannot for the life of me find it - anyone remember anything like this or am I just making this up? Quite possibly, because they obviously DID eventually canonise it in the DP series by showing Pikachu & others falling victim to a female Pokemon using Attract, which has happened on other occasions since then
Well I can see logic against it not counting as little, but I think it is. This gen. Hasn't been kind to me, and with my unprecedented time constraints these last few months have essentially given up(I replay old games and keep up with go, I HAVE stopped playing on sv competitive completely since I think before may lol.)
I might go back to it next gen if I can even feel I afford the new switch lol, but it's not clear either way. Still keep up here but just really oi subforum or where I think I can help a teeny bit in rmt.
Anyways, tera is worse than max. Instead of anything being temporarily better but still itself, anything can now radically change its type at the drop of a hat, and not for three turns only even. Throw in some power creep from flutter and more recently box legends(the new + oldish caly forms,) and the usual stifling of off meta mons by the big guns, and I didn't enjoy it for a while. I feel better now that I don't do it from habit.
I might go back to it next gen if I can even feel I afford the new switch lol, but it's not clear either way. Still keep up here but just really oi subforum or where I think I can help a teeny bit in rmt.
Anyways, tera is worse than max. Instead of anything being temporarily better but still itself, anything can now radically change its type at the drop of a hat, and not for three turns only even. Throw in some power creep from flutter and more recently box legends(the new + oldish caly forms,) and the usual stifling of off meta mons by the big guns, and I didn't enjoy it for a while. I feel better now that I don't do it from habit.
The Malamar silliness reminds me of the XY Anime's Malamar that was just full on a supervillain, but only appeared twice. The second time it escaped using a time machine!
it just felt like a Pokemon that should have had one more episode and it's a shame it didn't happen. I remember some genuine speculation that it would somehow show up again for the big finale after the league lmao, that would've been fun.
it just felt like a Pokemon that should have had one more episode and it's a shame it didn't happen. I remember some genuine speculation that it would somehow show up again for the big finale after the league lmao, that would've been fun.
I bought Aegislash plushies when I was in New York and I'm always reminded that the living/possessed sword line is one of the inanimate object Pokémon that has a gender for whatever reason. That's definitely pretty mysterious.
I don't know all the language rules for using pronouns in Japanese but if you ever listen to a Japanese speaker talk about (or at least regarding a topic that concerns) themselves, you can hear them use their own name in conversation pretty often. It's kinda fascinating.
Yeah that was a huge piece of wasted potential. Especially because Pokemon really holds on to their message "there are no bad Pokemon, only bad trainers".. Well yeah explain this Malamar then. I'm not even saying this as "wow this Malamar contradicts official canon, it shouldn't have existed", in fact, it's sth that could've been really interesting to explore, maybe it has a reason to have an grudge against humanity, like Mewtwo, maybe it's following the orders of a mysterious entity. They could've just retroactively reveal that it was Xerosic's Malamar, that sounds like an easy fix, instead of just never addressing the Malamar again.
XY if goated would've revealed that it was Xerosic's, then Malamar runs away after he's caught AND THEN Emma is introduced and they bond over feeling rejected by everyone.
Last edited:
Doesn't bother me, but I think it's funny that Iron Bundle doesn't have any Steel-type moves.
So Volcanion is pretty unequivocally Kalos' Biggest Loser now right? Diancie's the first Kalos Mega and Hoopa gets a whole DLC pack and then there's Heatran 2 except his content got cut so now he will be aimlessly drifting seemingly in perpetuity
Probably jumping the gun on that one a bit, since we haven’t seen how Z-A will include it. Arceus found something for all of Sinnoh’s Mythicals to do so I’d be surprised if Volcanion didn’t get some kind of event in Z-A. Hopefully though it’ll be more along the lines of Shaymin (a neat little call back to the origin story for Floaroma Town) and less along the lines of Darkrai (hi, I’m just hanging out by these cliffs, come catch me).
Last edited:
Zeraora is a Gen 7 mythical not 6. So probably not, Magearna would be more likely than anything among the Gen 7 Mythicals given it's connection to Volcanion in the anime, and even that's tenuous given how little bearing the anime has on the games.
SV's DLC plays with just a smidge. Aside from the terrarium literally housing non-unovan Pokemon including regional forms (in-universe just pokemon brought in from elsewhere), Hisuian Qwilfish's dex entry makes a very direct note that it's something that exists in colder regions.
Who knows, maybe they play with it more in Gen 10 and just has, I dunno, beaches full of Galarian Slowpokes. Mayeb one day we'll go to Pokemon Greenland and the seas will be full of Hisuian Qwilfish.
Logically there isn’t really a reason why that couldn’t happen, but contextually it’s probably because if Alolan Sandshrew start popping up in other regions naturally, then they’re not exactly “Alolan” Sandshrew so much as they are, like, “Polar” Sandshrew or something like that.
I think a lot of fans recognized this as a potential futureproofing problem early on and have proposed changing the names from “Alolan,” “Galarian,” etc. to more generic, universal designations, but I think GF have probably committed to the nomenclature too much by this point to back out. Part of me suspects that that’s why they came up with convergent species, because those accomplish a similar end result while in terms of lore only resembling the original Pokémon through sheer coincidence. You could put Toedscool anywhere, and it wouldn’t have the same nominal issue as putting “Alolan” Diglett in Unova’s Relic Passage. You can even have it coexist in the same region as Tentacool, because the two species aren’t even really related.
That's honestly funny, but a more grounded idea is that they figured it'd be too much of a hassle to keep the backporting going FOREVER.
Imagine that they kept that up for every pokemon game released, eventually every Pokemon stored in Home would have needed to keep storing dozens of titles worth of data, which probably isn't a lot on a single pokemon, but does add up on both transfer and server capacity.
Who would have guessed, it's dexit all over again lol, keeping porting all data all time becomes unsustainable, and once more they realized it after adding a feature that causes it, ending up having to take that feature away.
They never learn that game compatibilty is and was a mistake and should never have been added, there is a reason other collector series don't do it.
At this point I just feel bad for people who still try to engage with transferring. It legit feels like there's some new obstacle almost every game that releases, all while dealing with a shitty content-bereft overpriced app. Champions should make things more bearable, but still