Pokemon Go

Boy, Zodiac ox is feeling left out of this event. Couldn't have made tauros available from eggs everywhere or something?

Loving everything else, though.

Miltank is standing in for the ox.

Well then, I retract my statement.

(Hard to tell when they're not in actual zodiac order...)

Yeah, Electabuzz is a real eyebrow raiser. Would've preferred Shinx, to be honest.

Tiger was going to be the odd one out because the actual best fit for it is still 3 generations away. Also, though this might be just a local thing, I first thought that they were putting Growlithe in for Tiger (because they're currently spawning at ridiculously common rates and, of course, they have the right fur pattern).

Does anyone know if this means that shiny Electabuzz is going to be temporarily available in the wild? It's interesting to note that half of the increased spawn choices are available shiny if so (and it's already paid off for me; I got my second shiny Ponyta yesterday). And that's not even factoring in the things that aren't a part of the banner announcement that are increased (I've been seeing a ton of Growlithe, and Shellder has been popping up a bunch, but that's normal for the area so that might just be the underlying spawn patterns still having some effect).

I kind of get why they went with Electabuzz for the tiger. The Litten line isn't in Go yet, they probably wouldn't want Raikou to be the tiger due to its Legendary status, and the Growlithe line is more dog than tiger.

Electabuzz also somewhat resembles an oni, which are sometimes depicted as wearing tiger skin.

That's a pretty big stretch. But I guess they also have Poochyena as the dog rep (despite assumptions people tend to make, it's not all that related to dogs), Torchic isn't much of a rooster, and Miltank looks pretty ridiculous for an ox rep, so I guess they're just playing super loose with things in general.

Anyone noticing increased lunatone spawns as well?

Back in G1 I found it super odd that growlithe was a dog and not a tiger, because that thing looks much more tiger-like than dog based on fur.

As for poochyena, I mean based on the name it could just as easily be a pooch, also...

The weird thing is that it seems (at least locally) that Growlithe spawns are up; I had to double-check the announcement to confirm that it was Electabuzz representing the Tiger (and honestly, Growlithe is ahead of Dratini, Electabuzz, Mareep, and Miltank in terms of spawning around here).

The weird thing is that there is an obvious choice to represent Dog even if you don't want to split hairs over what Growlithe should represent - Houndour. It's by far the most obviously canine 'mon in the first four generations (which isn't to say it's the only one that's obviously canine; it just stands out to me). My personal guess is that they wanted something besides Rattata to come up as a possible Ditto spawn, so picked Poochyena for Dog.

Miltank makes perfect sense for Ox to me, particularly since an ox is just a cow or bull (admittedly, more commonly the latter) that works as a draft animal. Some breeds of cattle are more commonly used as oxen, but any sufficiently strong and trained cattle can be an ox. Technically, yes, Tauros would be better, but that would result in cries over how North America didn't get someone else's regional exclusive during the event.

As for Torchic... considering how often I've heard people refer to Blaziken as "The Flaming Chicken," I don't know what else could have been chosen to represent Rooster. I mean, if you want to cheat and say that the representative animal should be Bird, then obviously you have a ton of room. But Rooster is traditional, and nothing else fits nearly so well.

Finally, yes, Lunatone have been a bit more common locally for me as well; that said, not everyone has Lunatone spawns at the moment.

I haven't noticed any boost for Lunatone during this event, but after the spawn changes, it was kind of showing up a bit more often. I didn't really know whether to attribute this to the fact that we've been getting winter into full swing, giving us a measly 6-7-hours of light (the app swaps over to night somewhere between 5:00 and 5:30PM now) or just because Lunatone has been that decoupled from night time.

Miltank just seems overly goofy compared to the usual Chinese depiction. Personally, I wouldn't have cared if other regions got free Tauros, but I can get working to avoid backlash (which is kind of a weird choice, if I'm being honest, since this would be such a minor thing compared to all the magnitudes-worse stupid things they've done in the past).

Eh, Blaziken really doesn't look that much like a rooster, but I guess yeah, there's not really any other options.

Shiny Meltan! Available until March 4th, and the Mystery Box cooldown will be only three days instead of seven for that time!

x4 I've heard some say that the Growlithe line is based on the Shisa.

I like the part where the cooldown isn't reset by the event starting, so anyone who opened the box semi-recently gets mega trolled.

Case in point: I opened a box an hour before the event.

Three notes: Poochyena still makes sense because it is part dog. The name of English and Japanese references it being a part dog. All media displays it as a dog. Granted they should have used Growlithe or Houndour but this works too.

Electabuzz works because it is based on an oni, and oni cartoonishly displayed wearing animal rags for clothing, frequently with tiger skins.

Growlithe is a dog. Its stripes are what you call brindle which certain real life dog breeds have.

Edited by Ookamikun on Feb 9th 2019 at 5:54:43 PM

Wearing the skin of a tiger as a waist cloth and being a tiger are two entirely different things.

The twitter page header is splatted with green ink, as was the last announcement. Smeargle incoming? Splatoon crossover inkoming?

Edited by Anura on Feb 9th 2019 at 9:00:03 AM

it's the closest we have, the other is a legendary and the other is in gen 7

Picking an actual cat—like Shinx—even if it isn't a tiger, would be a thousand miles better than an obscure, reaching reference like that.

Is the reference really that reaching? I see tigerskin-wearing oni in Japanese media lot, so it never really seemed "obscure" to me.

That may be, but I've never seen media references to them treat the tiger skin as their defining characteristic. It's always about their stature or strength or fury in battle (if I had a nickel for every time someone used the phrase "fight like an oni"...). It'd be as reaching as choosing me to represent the horse because I wear a lot of horse shirts.

I mean that's the point. The tiger stripe clothing is an immediate defining aesthetic typically for an oni. Hell it's not really just onis, but brutes in general.

Anyway is the friendship bonus just for the weekend? That's literally just 4 hearts worth.

Edited by Ookamikun on Feb 11th 2019 at 2:33:16 AM

I mean, if Electabuzz appearing more often means more candies to facilitate evolution, I'm not gonna complain. They're not exactly common in my neck of the woods.

Huh... yeah, the Twitter page does have noticeable green ink splotches. And Smeargle does traditionally have green ink in its normal form. It does seem like they're inching towards finally putting it in the game.

Oh, and got my shiny Spoink. I forgot how nice shiny Grumpig looks.

What was the reason why they're waiting so long to implement Smeargle? I mean, is there anything special about him why they had to hold off Gen 2 full completion until now?

Also, there seems to be other Gen 3 Pokémon like Smeargle not even released either. What's up with that?