-
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.
-
Congrats to the winners of the 2023 Smog Awards!
SPOILERS! Mysteries and Conspiracies of Pokemon
- Thread starter stage7_4
- Start date
Dusk Mage Necrozma
formerly XenonHero126
Obviously it’s something along these lines, but I’m curious why these bizarre stats are the default.
(and what does English Max even mean?)
Honestly, physical Pokedexes just be doing shit sometimes. I have one where Luxio's movepool is just replaced with Roserade's. Another describes every move in the index in purely mechanical terms, except for Heat Wave with has a flavor description. They're utter nonsense and I love them for it.
"English Max" sounds like they predicted Sword and Shield.
Dusk Mage Necrozma
formerly XenonHero126
Can somebody that has an USUM dex check if it’s a universal error?
Yung Dramps
awesome gaming
What's the deal with Toxicroak's anime colors?
It's the only Pokemon that's experienced something like this and it's never been fixed. At this point I'm left to assume it's somehow deliberate but like... why?
Update: PLA "fixed" Toxicroak to have the lighter shade of blue it uses in the anime. Yeah I have no clue anymore lmao
That's still closer to the "normal" shade than it is the anime's shade.
Update: PLA "fixed" Toxicroak to have the lighter shade of blue it uses in the anime. Yeah I have no clue anymore lmao
Also doesnt feel as light as that in the game proper, personally.
A lot of Pokémon are coloured differently in the anime, like how the male Nidos, Ditto, and Gligar are sometimes pink and sometimes purple. My headcanon is that every off-model or inconsistently-coloured version of a Pokémon species exists in-universe as a rare variant.
gligar has this problem in the official games
GSC Artwork: Purple
GSC Sprites: Pink
RSE/DP Sprites: Purple
PT Sprites: Dark Purple
HGSS artwork: Pink
HGSS Sprites: notably darker Pink
Gen 5 Sprites: Pink
3D Model: Pink
I was watching a playthrough of Pokemon Stars, a meme hack of USUM, when I noticed a shooting star/Minior in the sky. Was that always in-game as an easter egg, or was it hacked in?
Looks to be hacked, can't really find anything about it.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
Not to sound rude so I apologise if that's how this comes across, but could you not have just done one long post containing your entire theory? I hate suspense.
Dusk Mage Necrozma
formerly XenonHero126
I don’t believe in that theory, but I do have some speculation of my own. I think the “all special types” coincidence was caused because Game Freak wanted “magical” seeming types for them and pretty much all the magicy types are special types. So I don’t see anything stopping GF from making physical type Eeveelutions; however, these are much more likely to be something like Ghost or Flying than Fighting or Steel.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
In pre-release media prior to Emerald's release, I recall sites such as Psypoke and PKMN.net talking about how you could travel to World's Edge Island and have the chance to obtain a Mew.
Obviously, there's no such place. The location in Emerald is, as we know, named Faraway Island in English. That's obviously a translation, so what is the original? The original name in Japanese translates as Utmost Island, which, while similar, isn't the same thing as "world's edge". Most other translations continue the "distant" theme, with the French and German titles being "Île Lointaine" and "Ferneiland" respectively (Distant Island in both cases), and the Brazilian Portuguese being "Isla Remota" (Remote Island, duh). The only languages in which it has a name resembling WEI are Cantonese (Zuì Biānyuán Gūdǎo, meaning "island on the edge"), and Vietnamese ("Đảo Tận Cùng", meaning "island of the end"), but the former is used only in the Adventures manga so came after the games - Faraway Island is first mentioned in the FRLG chapter, but the volume it appears in wasn't released until 2007.
And yet the name "World's Edge Island" has stuck, and it's not clear why. Google that phrase and you'll find several people using it as if it's the official name, even though - to the best of my knowledge - it never was. It's so ubiquitous that sites like Bulbapedia and Serebii even use it as a redirect for their Faraway Island pages.
Don't get me wrong, it's a cool name. Just curious as to where it originated. As far as I'm aware, none of Gen III's other secret islands have alternate names in this vein.
Obviously, there's no such place. The location in Emerald is, as we know, named Faraway Island in English. That's obviously a translation, so what is the original? The original name in Japanese translates as Utmost Island, which, while similar, isn't the same thing as "world's edge". Most other translations continue the "distant" theme, with the French and German titles being "Île Lointaine" and "Ferneiland" respectively (Distant Island in both cases), and the Brazilian Portuguese being "Isla Remota" (Remote Island, duh). The only languages in which it has a name resembling WEI are Cantonese (Zuì Biānyuán Gūdǎo, meaning "island on the edge"), and Vietnamese ("Đảo Tận Cùng", meaning "island of the end"), but the former is used only in the Adventures manga so came after the games - Faraway Island is first mentioned in the FRLG chapter, but the volume it appears in wasn't released until 2007.
And yet the name "World's Edge Island" has stuck, and it's not clear why. Google that phrase and you'll find several people using it as if it's the official name, even though - to the best of my knowledge - it never was. It's so ubiquitous that sites like Bulbapedia and Serebii even use it as a redirect for their Faraway Island pages.
Don't get me wrong, it's a cool name. Just curious as to where it originated. As far as I'm aware, none of Gen III's other secret islands have alternate names in this vein.
The relevant part is さいはて / saihate which basing on Google results is apparently along the lines of furthest/extreme/utmost (ends/edge), and someone on Bulbapedia chose to use Utmost for the same term. This change happened in 2012, and before that it was "Furthest-away Island" (and before that: "World's Edge", "island at the ends of the earth", "Furthest Away", "World's End"... ). So I guess there's an extreme aspect to it that was lost in translation in favour for its relative distance, and the other translations based it off that.
As for the origin, I would assume serebii was the one who came up with or at least popularized that specific translation, since it's still on his website today in some places (like this link: https://www.serebii.net/emerald/worldsedgeisland.shtml), and it seems like people generally learned about its existence in the first place from his website at the time. Some other translations I found were "Farthest Isle", "world's FAR EDGE ISLAND", and "Far Edge Island", though the latter sources are kind of random and obscure corners of the internet.
Along this route I did manage to find some other names for the other islands from past serebii during FRLG times. If you search for them you can still see a few references to them being used back then, though I guess they didn't stick around as much as the Mew news.
Sevii Islands: First called the "Mystery Islands" with an image of the first 3 and later amended to the "Rainbow Islands", probably because of the Rainbow Pass. (https://www.serebii.net/archive/January-2004.shtml) (https://www.serebii.net/archive/July-2004.shtml)
Navel Rock: "Navel Cavern"/Island 8, continuing from the Sevii 7. (https://www.serebii.net/potw/249.shtml)
Birth Island: "Tri Island"/Island 9 (https://web.archive.org/web/20040406034612/http://serebii.net/red_green/island8.shtml, admitted as a mistranslation at the top of January 2004)
Last edited:
Yeah agreed. I'd go a step further and say that Ghost or Flying would be more likely Eeveelution types than Dragon. I don't think we've really seen any mammalian Dragon-types except Noibat/Noivern (no, Zydog doesn't count lol), and I'd argue that bats and bat-like creatures rarely get treated as mammals in fiction anyway. Obviously all they'd need to do is draw something purple and vaguely scaly and they could just say 'look it's the Dragon Eeveelution you've been waiting for,
The whole 'missing Dragon Eeveelution' thing is really confusing to me in general because I always thought it was just a mnemonic for remembering the special/physical types in Gens 1-3, not an actual Secret Gamer Theory (TM)
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
Oh this is fantastically informative, thanks (and really good work finding all those links)!
You just reminded me that I used to have an old magazine that contained a preview for FRLG, and they did indeed mention that you would "travel to the Mystery Islands after defeating the Elite Four"; I haven't thought about that in a while but I didn't realise it was ever an official term, I assumed it was just what the magazine's writer came up with. I don't think I've ever heard the alternate names for Navel Rock and Birth Island though they fit.
Yeah, there's no major conspiracy here. Why Sylveon is on its own comes down to two (maybe three) factors:
- After Gen IV they really pulled back from making cross gen evolutions, likely due to how Gen IV went overload on them plus many of them were not well received. It wasn't until Legends: Arceus we saw the return of actual cross gen evos (compared to Regional Variants exclusive evos) though who knows if that's just a special case or some design philosophy has changed and we'll be seeing more, but I digress.
- As R_N said, Eevee/Sylveon was given special exception due to its gimmick making it a prime candidate to showcase the Fairy-type aside from simply re-Typing it like it did for a batch of other pre-Gen VI Pokemon which we made part Fairy. Also the Eevee family are a major fan favorite to boot.
- A third possible factor is that look at the Types the Eeveelutions are, they're fairly nebulous in terms of making a creature based on that Type.
How do you represent Water? Make Vaporeon look like an aquatic creature with a fish tail & fins (possibly some mermaid & sealion motifs too).
Fire? Make Flareon very fluffy so it looks like its covered in flames.
Electric? Cover Jolteon in Spikes, like it got struck by lightning and itself a living lightning rod.
Psychic? Base Espeon on a Nekomata (also seems to take inspiration from the depiction of the mythical Carbuncle being fox/feline/general cute mammalian animal).
Dark? Make Umbreon's design really simple, making it look sleek and stealthy. Give it yellow rings and red eyes that glow in the dark, something that would look frightening if seen in the dark back alley at night.
Grass? Taking a note from nature, there are several animals (mainly bugs and lizards) which have evolved to mimic the appearance of plants (mainly having parts of their bodies look like leaves). So do the same with Leafeon, making its tail and ears look like leafs and also having green fur sticking out.
Ice? Instead of covering it with ice, they once again looked to nature and gave Glaceon camouflage that would have it blend in with snow, think like arctic foxes or wolves. They also did lean into some ice aesthetics with crystal shapes in/on its tail, back, ears, and hair.
Fairy was possibly the hardest Eeveelution design to do as "fairy" is a bit more defined than the above Types. When people think "fairy", they probably imagine a small humanoid with bug wings like Tinkerbell. Obviously that body shape wouldn't work with Sylveon, so they had to get creative. Luckily Pokemon has done well depicting a range of fairy creatures, getting the idea that "Fairy" more or less "Magic" or "Mystical".
So, on the surface the issue is that they only did Sylveon because it was a special exception to them no longer doing cross gen evos to advertise the Fairy-type using a popular Pokemon which gimmick involved evolving to different forms representing different Types.
But possibly on a level below you may see a problem with a Dragon-type Eevee: You're going to have to make Eevee look like a dragon. Now, much like they did with Sylveon and Espeon, they could base it on a non-lizard dragon like say a Nian from Chinese mythology, and I don't think anyone would complain. Still, "dragon" is still a more defined image than all previous Eeveelutions so would be a real challenge if they were ever to do one.
And this could be a possible reason why the "Physical" Types also haven't been touched. Sure, there are a few Physical Types that I could see them easily basing a Eeveelution on such as Flying and Ghost. And they could probably do some nature research to think of a Ground and Rock (maybe also Poison). But what would a Fighting, Steel, and especially BUG one look like?
"Pfft, you lack imagination, I can easily think of a few designs for each Type that still needs to be done". So can I. Infact EVERYBODY can probably think of design for each if they cared enough. Some would be more direct, some more clever, but the issue remains the same. It's not that there aren't design options, Arceus no, but remember that by now Eevee and the Eeveelutions are a MASCOT for Pokemon. Meaning it sells a BUTTLOAD of merchandise. They need to be really, REALLY careful with a creation of a new Eeveelution because it needs it needs to both look like something Eevee would believably evolve into and also have mass appeal. They could make a Dragon Eevee that's scaly, has bat-like wings, and covered in spikes and look all bada**, but that would probably not go well with people who like the Eevee family being cutesy/graceful/charming. Even my suggestion of making it look like a Nian could rub people the wrong way as it may still look draconic or have too much of an Asian aesthetic (while Espeon and to a point Sylveon are also based on Asian mythical creatures, its subtle enough where you'd only know if you looked into its design origins).
So, yeah, even if they're doing cross gen evolutions again, if we do see a new Eeveelution, no matter what Type it is, know that more time and resources went into designing it than likely half the new com mons they made. And in GF's perspective, it's this exact reason why I can understand they wouldn't want to unless there was something they REALLY wanted to push Type-wise, like a new Type.
So why are Hisuian Zorua/Zoroark Normal-type? The Ghost part is obvious, but they're also themed around ice, with their markings that look like frostbite sores and their signature move that inflicts it. Is it because Normal and Ghost are opposites, and they're supposed to be liminal beings?
I think it's a combination of them being non-aquatic light-colored mammals, Normal/Ghost being a popularly requested type, and Zoroark being probably the best choice mechanically to use that type. Though I'm with you in wondering why Ice is so absent from its mechanics. They could have at least swapped out Flamethrower in its tutor movepool for Ice Beam.
QuentinQuonce
formerly green_typhlosion
It's interesting, because only the Ghost aspect is emphasised in their lore ("...their lingering souls were reborn in this Ghost-type form through the power of their malice toward humans and Pokémon"). This is pretty standard for Normal dual-types, for whom their second type is generally considered to be what defines them (Girafarig and Oranguru's Psychic powers are what are of note about them, Diggersby's Ground abilities are what is highlighted about it, etc).
If I had to guess, I'd say it's because they lost their Dark aspect. The characteristics of Dark-types reflect the original Japanese designation (evil type): they're sneaky, crafty, vindictive, brutal, savage, rude. Zorua and Zoroark don't actually conform to those stereotypes in a lot of ways, but what makes them Dark is their tendency to torment and fool people.
Being shunned and persecuted would likely have caused them to question this aspect of themselves. They likely became directionless and perhaps, in the manner of many fictional characters with superpowers experiencing internal strife, may even have found their powers waning. I suspect that those Zorua and Zoroark driven out of other lands would have wandered and found themselves without purpose - with no real purpose or specialty. That Dark quality would have faded - and what do typeless Pokemon become? Normal, as observed with moves like Burn Up.
Then they all died, and came back in Ghost form. But still directionless, and still without any sense of identity or belonging.
That got unexpectedly poetic but I've been dying for a chance to write about these two mons, I'm absolutely in love with them both. Someone traded me a shiny H-Zoroark on Pokemon Home the other day and I'm never letting go of it. Absolutely gorgeous mon, in visuals and lore and typing.
There's an interpretation I like that Girafarig's head is Normal and its tail is Psychic.