Nice idea. Though, how would Zygarde look without all its hexagons?
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Nice idea. Though, how would Zygarde look without all its hexagons?
It's like a much more meta Steven Universe set up. All these individual personas fuse together into one hyper-intelligent being. With six stubby arms and four eye panels on each side of the head.
I'm a little upset at how clever the new Mega Evo trailer is where it features the Zooids. They're light show/potential fusion cinematic show you nothing, and it's going to bug me until they release something with more context.
I seriously don't know...just a complete being with symetric parts of green and black in a helix body pattern.
I'm curious to know why the one Chespin carries has a pinkish/reddish hexagon and others don't...perhaps they're cores and linked to Mega-evolution.
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Yeah, I noticedthat Dunsparce is the same kind of critter. But there's no denying these things are the same kind of creature. They even resemble the myth more closely than Dunsparce does. Since they are actually children of the earth guardian. It may be that Zygarde is just a collection of all these little guys, as some are suggesting. Like a colony or hive-mind.
I know that legends from X, Y, Z are loosely based on the world tree Yggdrasil, the dragon below Nidogg, and the eagle that sits atop of the tree *doesn't have a name*
I say loosely because the dragon in the nose myths eats the roots great tree and isn't necessarily a good character. While the dragon under the earth in pokemon is Zygarde, a pokemon we consider to be a guardian of the earth, and not a life-sapper like Yvetel.
The only character they're missing from this Norse myth is Ratatosk, the squirl who traveled up and down the world tree deliving messages from the eagle (Yvetel) and the dragon (Zygarde)
I'd be interested to see if they bring that into pokemon.
Well, the Kalos trio has other arguable origins besides the widely agreed-upon fan interpretation of Norse creatures:
Xerneas is a shishigami
Yveltal is an artistic license of the Yatagarasu, and may also be based on the Onmoraki.
Zygarde is an interesting case. There aren't any dragons, snakes, worms, or otherwise in all the monstrs and yokai of japan that could be a direct basis for his design. First thing I think of when I see him is a polar opposite to Rayquaza.
They're both green dragons that reside in a specific boundary (the lithosphere for Zygarde and the Mesosphere for Rayquaza) who are the mediator between a red Pokemon that has some relation to the end of life (Groudon, with his new Primal form and Desolate Land that hints toward being lethal enough to kill off living beings, and Yveltal, the Destruction Pokemon, both of which are also tied in to a unique boundary, being the Asthenosphere and the Stratosphere, respectively) and a blue Pokemon that's tied in to the creation of life (Kyogre, whose Primordial Sea ability alludes to the theory that life began in the ocean, and Xerneas, the Life Pokemon, who again are assigned a boundary, being the hydrosphere for the former and (arguably) the Troposphere for the latter).
-On a side note, I'm beginning to think they imbued the life/death theme into Groudon and Kyogre and then fleshed out the XY trio so they would have that parallelism between the two teams.-
Since Zygarde lives underground, it figures that it would look like something that percieves its surroundings differently than something that flies constantly, which is why Zygarde has specialized eyes, no mouth, a flat body other than its torso, and other features that attribute to its cave life. Rayquaza, on the other hand, perceives light differently, feeds on water molecules, has a cylindrical body and fins conducive to something that would require aerodynamics to function, etc. I'm also the fan of those who have made the comparison between Zygarde and a futuristic CPU, as something that sits and processes information from ecosystems all over the world, with flashing panels all over its body as the first indicator that it's working.
Also, they've both been given a prominent role in the mysteries of Mega Evolution, so that's something.
That was just me rambling. What bugs me is:
Also, "earth child" is a very distorted artistic license of the transliteration of "Tsuchinoko", which means "hammer spawn". I guess you could argue for that translation being poetic reason enough to tie it into the Nidhogg theory, since the hammer is widely recognized as a symbol of someone in Norse mythos...
Xerneas is a shishigami
Yveltal is an artistic license of the Yatagarasu, and may also be based on the Onmoraki.
Zygarde is an interesting case. There aren't any dragons, snakes, worms, or otherwise in all the monstrs and yokai of japan that could be a direct basis for his design. First thing I think of when I see him is a polar opposite to Rayquaza.
They're both green dragons that reside in a specific boundary (the lithosphere for Zygarde and the Mesosphere for Rayquaza) who are the mediator between a red Pokemon that has some relation to the end of life (Groudon, with his new Primal form and Desolate Land that hints toward being lethal enough to kill off living beings, and Yveltal, the Destruction Pokemon, both of which are also tied in to a unique boundary, being the Asthenosphere and the Stratosphere, respectively) and a blue Pokemon that's tied in to the creation of life (Kyogre, whose Primordial Sea ability alludes to the theory that life began in the ocean, and Xerneas, the Life Pokemon, who again are assigned a boundary, being the hydrosphere for the former and (arguably) the Troposphere for the latter).
-On a side note, I'm beginning to think they imbued the life/death theme into Groudon and Kyogre and then fleshed out the XY trio so they would have that parallelism between the two teams.-
Since Zygarde lives underground, it figures that it would look like something that percieves its surroundings differently than something that flies constantly, which is why Zygarde has specialized eyes, no mouth, a flat body other than its torso, and other features that attribute to its cave life. Rayquaza, on the other hand, perceives light differently, feeds on water molecules, has a cylindrical body and fins conducive to something that would require aerodynamics to function, etc. I'm also the fan of those who have made the comparison between Zygarde and a futuristic CPU, as something that sits and processes information from ecosystems all over the world, with flashing panels all over its body as the first indicator that it's working.
Also, they've both been given a prominent role in the mysteries of Mega Evolution, so that's something.
That was just me rambling. What bugs me is:
The legend of a Tsuchinoko is that it's a flat snake who can speak, enjoys drinking, will eat it's tail and roll along the ground like a wheel, and can jump up to three feet high. Dunsparce can do one of those, the Zooid has failed to prove itself in any of those specialties, as so far we've only seen it derp around and look very cute.
Also, "earth child" is a very distorted artistic license of the transliteration of "Tsuchinoko", which means "hammer spawn". I guess you could argue for that translation being poetic reason enough to tie it into the Nidhogg theory, since the hammer is widely recognized as a symbol of someone in Norse mythos...
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Now lets be fair here. Tsuchi is the element of earth. I didn't go through any distortion to get that answer. I saw the term "Hammer spawn" too on a wikipedia page. But really, "otsuchi" is closer to the word hammer in Japanese, not tsuchi. You can't always trust wikipedia. Noko is roughly "child of" "spawn of".
I can see how I may come off as pompous though, saying "There is no denying" my idea. To be honest, I know it is only an opinion/theory. I could be wrong, but I'm just saying I'm pretty sure of my theory.
My theory about the Norse trio also ties in to the way that Xernaus appears as a tree the first time you see it. Yvetel is the eagle and not Nidhogg, as it is not dragon type, but flying instead. And Zygarde is Nidhogg as it is a dragon that lives underground.
But I can definitely see that they have Japanese myth influences though. I don't disagree with your statement about that. Pokemon has rarely made direct rips out of mythology, but rather put their own spins on ideas. It's interesting though, because if they took the Norse myth farther, the life tree, Yggdrasil connects several different worlds together, and they might use that to explain the different dimensions in the pokemon universe. Who knows though.
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More Pachirisu!
That's true from a phonetic standpoint, but the written name "Tsuchinoko" doesn't use the kanji for earth. While it can be viewed that way when speaking it, it's not known colloquially to have "earth" as an intentional part of its name, such is the case with many other japanese phrases that use an abridged/corrupted form of a word in its name, e.g, not every woman named "Tsuki" uses the kanji for "moon" to spell their name. My point is, to say that "Tsuchinoko" translates into "earth child/spawn of earth" is misleading, among other points you've made.
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Fair enough, I didn't consider that. If anything though, learning this sort of supports my case more.
All the word-play aside though, I'd consider that many pokemon are based on puns or play on words, and it is totally believable to me that someone in the Japanese thought of the tuschinoko and thought, "Huh, that means one thing, but could mean another if you just the way you think about the word "tsuchi." Stack that on top of it's strong physical resemblance to the creature, and I would say I still have a solid case in saying that this new pokemon was probably based on the myth. I'm just going to wait and see more I suppose.
P.S. I saw your previous comment before you edited it. I'm not trying to start a fight with you here. Relax.
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