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SPOILERS! Mysteries and Conspiracies of Pokemon
- Thread starter stage7_4
- Start date
That's really shocking, I also always assumed Clefairy was the og mascot. While doing my own research, I found some good articles as to why Pikachu was chosen to represent the Franchise, which seem to back up the idea that Clefairy was never really considered the mascot, at least by the developers.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2040095,00.html
"When they did the anime, they wanted a specific character to focus on. Pikachu was relatively popular compared with the others and potentially both boys and girls would like it. They heard a lot of opinions about this. It wasn't my idea."
- Satoshi Tajiri
https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/4/17425162/pikachu-design-interview-creation
“In the game you choose one of Squirtle, Charmander, and Bulbasaur, but if Satoshi chose one of those three as his partner [in the anime] it would’ve created a gap with the kids who didn’t pick that Pokémon,”
-Ken Sugimori
"When they did the anime, they wanted a specific character to focus on. Pikachu was relatively popular compared with the others and potentially both boys and girls would like it. They heard a lot of opinions about this. It wasn't my idea."
- Satoshi Tajiri
https://www.polygon.com/2018/6/4/17425162/pikachu-design-interview-creation
“In the game you choose one of Squirtle, Charmander, and Bulbasaur, but if Satoshi chose one of those three as his partner [in the anime] it would’ve created a gap with the kids who didn’t pick that Pokémon,”
-Ken Sugimori
http://www.mtv.com/news/2462735/pokemon-dev-on-the-birth-of-pikachu-concerns-about-failing-overseas/
"I wasn't too worried about Japan. Role-playing games were popular back then. I was primarily worried about the overseas market. At the time they were making the game, Japanese RPGs still hadn't found a lot of traction overseas, so we were worried whether it would be successful over there, as well."
"In the beginning, we had a few graphic designers working on drawing designs, coming up with ideas. We also had a few programmers who also came up with design ideas. Within the company, we would vote and decide which one everyone likes. One of the planners saw Pikachu and was like, 'This is a really cute Pokemon. Maybe it's not a good idea to have it be a really common Pokemon in the game.' It was a Pokemon he just wanted to catch, just for himself. [The fact that Pikachu] is a rare Pokemon that doesn't show up very often in the wild was another reason [he was popular]. When people actually encountered it, it was a really big impact. It was like, 'Wow, this is a cool Pokemon.' At the same time, in the animation, Ash had Pikachu as his Pokemon, so those two things combined helped the popularity of Pikachu rise."
-Junichi Masuda
"I wasn't too worried about Japan. Role-playing games were popular back then. I was primarily worried about the overseas market. At the time they were making the game, Japanese RPGs still hadn't found a lot of traction overseas, so we were worried whether it would be successful over there, as well."
"In the beginning, we had a few graphic designers working on drawing designs, coming up with ideas. We also had a few programmers who also came up with design ideas. Within the company, we would vote and decide which one everyone likes. One of the planners saw Pikachu and was like, 'This is a really cute Pokemon. Maybe it's not a good idea to have it be a really common Pokemon in the game.' It was a Pokemon he just wanted to catch, just for himself. [The fact that Pikachu] is a rare Pokemon that doesn't show up very often in the wild was another reason [he was popular]. When people actually encountered it, it was a really big impact. It was like, 'Wow, this is a cool Pokemon.' At the same time, in the animation, Ash had Pikachu as his Pokemon, so those two things combined helped the popularity of Pikachu rise."
-Junichi Masuda
Unsurprisingly, it seems that Pikachu was chosen to appeal to as many people as possible, but its apparent rarity in RBG may've actually helped it become mascot. However, I notably find it telling that Clefairy isn't mentioned here at all. If Clefairy was seriously in the running or the de facto mascot for a while, I highly doubt any one of these men would omit such a crucial detail.
With all this said, I have one big question myself: Why was Clefairy chosen as the Mascot of the Pocket Monsters Manga? I heard theories that it was cuddly and looked like Kirby, but nothing from the Author or The Pokemon Company.
Yeah this is definitely seeming like Pikachu was the forerunner here. Good job tracking those down.
As for the Pocket Monsters Manga....well....the mangas really do whatever they want. It could be as simple as "The author of the manga liked clefairy and thought it leant itself well to gags". There may not have been an especially strong reason. Especially since the manga started like 2 months after the games came out; that was stil early days for the franchise and probably didn't have any real guidelines in place. The idea of even having an actual mascot may not have been on their minds at all.
As for the Pocket Monsters Manga....well....the mangas really do whatever they want. It could be as simple as "The author of the manga liked clefairy and thought it leant itself well to gags". There may not have been an especially strong reason. Especially since the manga started like 2 months after the games came out; that was stil early days for the franchise and probably didn't have any real guidelines in place. The idea of even having an actual mascot may not have been on their minds at all.
Sneasel's GS color scheme. Just... what?
Sneasel's design was basically being worked on constantly up to release.
For all we know the brown scheme could've been a brief remnant where they went "what if we went with normal/ice...?" before deciding against it, but not before comitting to the brown color. Or hell maybe they just wanted to call back to the 97 design where Brown was its primary color despite being pure dark.
I read somewhere (can’t remember where) that it actually had to do with the way some version of the GameBoy displayed certain colors or something; it’s the reason Spinarak’s sprite is purple in GS.Sneasel's design was basically being worked on constantly up to release.
For all we know the brown scheme could've been a brief remnant where they went "what if we went with normal/ice...?" before deciding against it, but not before comitting to the brown color. Or hell maybe they just wanted to call back to the 97 design where Brown was its primary color despite being pure dark.
I remember something about that, but I think it was actually Sugimori drawing the art based on the gameboy display? I think it's somewhere on the helix chamber twitter I can try to track it down.
A lot of it and the front sprite are refined & different aside from the color:
-eyes
-added the chest jewel
-changed the forehead spot to a jewel
-the ear feather has more definition to it
-ear feather also has more shading dithering
-back sprite normal ear straightened out
-right arm is refined to have an elbow
-back sprite has more shading dithering on all the feathers
Incidentally here's a reminder that while everyone probably remembers Smoochum & Raikou being in a similar boat, so is skarmory!
(god why does bulbapedia use animated pngs, who does that)
Skarmory's colors probably are due to limits in what can be on there, but check out the beak and the fact it has 2 tails. They also refined the body and the tail design.
So Hoenn has 4 evil team admins, right? Courtney and Tabitha for Team Magma, and Shelly and Matt for Team Aqua. Look for official artwork for any of their GBA incarnations, however...
and you'll find only Shelly.
This art does not appear on Bulbapedia, which makes me suspect that it might just be fan art emulating Sugimori's style, but the earliest instance of this art that I could find on the web is a series of images from early January 2015 comparing the designs of RSE characters to their ORAS counterparts, which can't be the source because it uses sprites for the other three admins and the creator complains in an annotation about how they can't find any art online for the other three (the images were also all reposts so it's likely the originals were posted in late December 2014).
I could also swear I remember seeing this art in some official material, but I've looked through both my Emerald guidebook and an online scan of the instruction booklet, and neither contain this art, so it might be a false memory.
This has been eating at me for years.
It's definitely fanart, if you compare it to other trainer artwork of the era you can tell there's some subtle differences in styles.
It's also directly mimicking her pose, something a lot of Sugimori's artwork didn't do (compare the Aqua Grunts & Archie as an example)
The real mystery is how the original artist is just not known. Googling all I'm seeing are endless repostings (presumably under the impression it's official) and pintrist
It's also directly mimicking her pose, something a lot of Sugimori's artwork didn't do (compare the Aqua Grunts & Archie as an example)
The real mystery is how the original artist is just not known. Googling all I'm seeing are endless repostings (presumably under the impression it's official) and pintrist
I just flipped through the little booklet that comes with the Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire Music Super Complete soundtrack, and the Magma/Aqua admins are the ONLY major-ish NPCs that aren't included in ANY way.
That IS kinda weird, isn't it...?
That IS kinda weird, isn't it...?
the first 3 gens were a little weird when it came to official art in general, even on important(-ish) characters.
In gens 1 & 2 most of them only had headshots, and if they got full body art it was in totally different designs to go with stuff like the TCG or anime or whatever. And a bunch of NPCs didnt even get that; Rocket Executives (despite ostensibly being the main antagonists of gen 2) only had a trainer card original art.
Gen 4-on they were much better about this, though there's still some gaps here & there. Gen 5 where the Goddesses and Shadow Triad just...never got them despite their relative importance in both games. Even though they clearly have finalized full body art from their concept art pages it was just never "properly" release. Also, Yancy & Curtis. Gen 7 never had one for Anabel's new design or Mohn. Gen 8 doesnt have one for Honey or Peonia (though they have the excuse of being modified off of Beauty & Lass, I suppose).
Shout out to gen 6 for having full art of every single battleable NPC on the back of needing them for battle intros.
After searching the dark corners of internet art, I believe I may've actually have found the original. The author goes by the name shigino sohuzi. I don't think I can link anything or say the site's name as it is pretty nsfw in some places (though I don't believe the author has posted anything with nudity).
This is the original version according to the site. Note that I am taking the publisher's word that this is original, but it was uploaded 9 years ago.
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That would explain the weird white triangle.
Whoever cut out the background with the color picker forgot to get that one bit.
As I lie awake at 5:45 AM, I ponder Regigigas.
Regigigas created inorganic automotons in its image, using stone, ice, metal and/or magma, electricity, and crystalized dragon energy. But what are Regigigas's origins? Is it organic? It's still got that weird seven-dot robot face. What are those colored things? Are they also eyes? Why do they flash with the seven dots in its intro animation? Why are its seven dots so vertical, like seriously what kind of a face is that?
Regigigas created inorganic automotons in its image, using stone, ice, metal and/or magma, electricity, and crystalized dragon energy. But what are Regigigas's origins? Is it organic? It's still got that weird seven-dot robot face. What are those colored things? Are they also eyes? Why do they flash with the seven dots in its intro animation? Why are its seven dots so vertical, like seriously what kind of a face is that?
As I lie awake at 5:45 AM, I ponder Regigigas.
Regigigas created inorganic automotons in its image, using stone, ice, metal and/or magma, electricity, and crystalized dragon energy. But what are Regigigas's origins? Is it organic? It's still got that weird seven-dot robot face. What are those colored things? Are they also eyes? Why do they flash with the seven dots in its intro animation? Why are its seven dots so vertical, like seriously what kind of a face is that?
This is a good question. I... kind of think it has to be organic? It's Normal-type, and almost all of those are (Porygon is a notable exception, and for the other questionable cases like Castform and Type:Null, despite explicitly being manmade, they're still organic lifeforms). The dots are kind of problematic, because the consensus seemed to be that they represented the three Hoenn Regis... which makes one question why it doesn't have dots representing the other two. I've never taken the dots on the centre yellow piece of its body to be its face but I suppose they could be, or at least the top four are the eyes and the bottom three are (the equivalent of) its mouth and nose, but with such deliberately non-human biology it's probably not meant to be that clear.
I don't think it's ever clarified if Regigigas came into existence before or after humans (Bulbapedia seems to think the former, probably because IRL humans did not exist until long after Pangaea broke apart) but the evidence points to before. So if it wasn't created by humans, that's another point in favour of it being organic. It moving the continents into place (I've always taken it as read that there were multiple Regigigas doing that together) is interesting. Why did it do that exactly? To what end?
Well, most if not all of the legendary Pokemon in Sinnoh seem to serve some sort of function. Cresselia mitigates Darkrai's nightmare powers, Shaymin is the physical manifestation of gratitude, the lake trio embody knowledge, emotion, and willpower. Heatran controls volcanoes.
So what does Regigigas do? Its appearance in the movie has it preventing a glacier from crashing into a town, and in the manga it only stirs itself when there's an impending disaster. Might it have been created by Arceus to serve as a sort of warden or ranger, preventing or mitigating the effect of natural disasters, and created the other Regi species in turn to act as aids to humanity? That's the vibe I've always sort of gotten from Regigigas. It wasn't created by people, it was created for them.
So in GSC, Professor Elm is super surprised that they found an egg or whatever, because they hadn't ever found one, right?
Well, eggs are explicitly mentioned several times in RBY:
-chansey dumbass lol
-Ekans's dex entry mentions that it eats bird eggs whole.
-I think a Japanese guidebook mentions Nidoqueen's weird menopause thing (yes this was canon before GSC)
Is Elm just an idiot? Even if this was in captivity, what about Pokemon on farms? I feel like they'd be at least farming Miltank.
EDIT: Seaking's entry also mentions spawning season, but not eggs specifically.
Well, eggs are explicitly mentioned several times in RBY:
-chansey dumbass lol
-Ekans's dex entry mentions that it eats bird eggs whole.
-I think a Japanese guidebook mentions Nidoqueen's weird menopause thing (yes this was canon before GSC)
Is Elm just an idiot? Even if this was in captivity, what about Pokemon on farms? I feel like they'd be at least farming Miltank.
EDIT: Seaking's entry also mentions spawning season, but not eggs specifically.
At the very least, in HGSS, they patch it up a bit by saying it's a rare Egg. And that Mr. Pokémon is just oddly fascinated by Eggs.
"Huh? This is an... Egg, isn't it? This Egg may be something I've never seen...still it's just an Egg."
But, even if we disregard RBY, with the Day Care in Route 34, you'd think an Egg obtained in captivity wouldn't be so amazing.
XY's treatment of the Fairy Type is so funny, I get they needed to make sure old fans new what was up with the big new thing but c'mon ya'll we already went through this stupid rodeo! You can't be doing that!
Not fertilised eggs though. As far as RBY implied, those were just sterile eggs that could be eaten normally. They weren't ever stated to be literal Chansey eggs.
Bird eggs. Not Pokemon eggs. EDIT: Oh no, its RB dex entry does mention Pidgey and Spearow. But my final point down the post still stands. The early games and anime had animals explicitly existing alongside Pokemon. This has gradually been filtered out as we get more Pokemon.
Yeah I don't know what the fuck that was about.
Given that Mew is referenced as having "[given] birth", it might have been that initially all Pokemon just gave birth like animals do. Going off that, we can assume fish and bird Pokemon probably did lay eggs but that wouldn't have been so miraculous because that's just how those species do it. But then it was clearly decided that all Pokemon, regardless of species, would lay eggs and developed this whole concept of them being mysterious and unknown.
"You fool, I was only pretending to be knocked out before. Now enjoy a moonblast to the face."
hey you guys wanna talk about pokemon based on real people
There's a few i've heard have this basis:
Snorlax (Koji Nishino)
Kadabra (Uri Geller)
Wobuffet (Sanpei Hayashiya, or at least thought to be, and what made me interested in this topic)
Are there more than that? I kinda wanna know now...
EDIT: the hitmon twins
There's a few i've heard have this basis:
Snorlax (Koji Nishino)
Kadabra (Uri Geller)
Wobuffet (Sanpei Hayashiya, or at least thought to be, and what made me interested in this topic)
Are there more than that? I kinda wanna know now...
EDIT: the hitmon twins