Last page I linked a video with "Pokemon Ondo" on it to emphasize that pokemon are not only japanese but
designed to appeal to a japanese audience first and foremost; now you might argue that, but considering what we'll uncover about many pokemon designs further down the line (not to mention certain decisions about gen VII in response to Yokai Watch that shall go unmentioned) I think this'll prove to be quite accurate
(and after this post you might want to play Pokemon Ondo again)
so first the good news, many design choices by Gamefreak that seem bizarre not only do make sense but are actually quite nice when taken into cultural context, now this isn't true about every pokemon some designs are actually underappreciated
because they're well researched and fairly clever and, well let's just say the Gamefreak staff is fairly well educated as well
an example of one of these designs that's obscure even if you happen to be japanese
or you know into kaiju and stuff is:
if you ever wondered why Yamask evolved into a sarcophagus, the answer becomes simple once you know what Yamask
actually is; Yamask has 3 main elements in it's design the more obvious being this:
this is a death mask, they were used in the mummification process and were believed to strengthen the spirit of the mummy and guard the soul from evil spirits on its way to the afterlife, as you can see is blantanly refencing a big element of egyptian rites
the second element of it's design is Yamask "arms", many people have complained about them seeing them as superfluos but if you looks closely at the eye of horus
can you see the "arm"? you can also kinda see Yamask's head, and speaking of it's head
the final element of its design is Yamask's head wich looks like a bird, this is intentional you see one of the elements of the soul in egyptian religion was the ba, wich was represented as a bird with a human head, in Yamask this is reversed
http://www.kingtutone.com/ancient-egypt/ba-ka/
neat huh?
now originally this post is waaaaaaaaaaaay longer but in order not to break the forums while trying to post it
again I'll cover most of the "japaneseness" of Gamefreaks designs on the following post(s)
but not before we look into how Gamefreak's designs depend on being japanese to be understood not only for species but for mechanics
for example we all know the type chart can be a bit....
unintuitive yet it's suppoused to be logical enough that any child should understand it as demostrated by the starters; well it becomes a bit more logical (
a bit) when we look at the original japanese names
Dark for example is originaly Evil and some decisions about effectiveness make more sense when looked as Evil, why would be a Ghost be afraid of the Dark? it wouldn't, but ghosts (in japanese mythology) are easly corrupted by Evil, same with Fairy as fairies with their pure hearts are not easily corrupted by Evil
but if we do this we come to an obvious problem, why would be a Bug good at fighting Evil? and the obvious answear would be
rider kick
that guy up there is Kamen Rider he's a cybernetic mutant grasshopper and if there's any equivalenet to Superman in japanese culture it's him, and of course he's good at fighting Evil! this also explains why Fighting is good against Dark/Evil all tokusatsu heroes fight evil with martial arts! (and the occasional magic sword/giant robot)
man look at this thing, it's ridiculously long and I'm not even half way done see you next post