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On the Origin of Species: Victreebel: Investigating the inspirations behind Pokémon

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On the Origin of Species: Victreebel: Investigating the inspirations behind Pokémon

As part of an ongoing series exploring the likely cultural and zoological origins of Pokémon species, we take a look at Victreebel.

Read more on Bulbanews
 
Re: On the Origin of Species: Victreebel: Investigating the inspirations behind Pokém

I had heard some of that stuff about pitcher plants. I did know that some creatures held a symbiotic relationship with them, but I wasn't sure which ones. And I always thought that leaf on top was to keep prey trapped, but actually it keeps rainwater out. Pretty cool. And at least now I know what type of pitcher plant Victreebel is based off of. I was never sure. Nice reporting.
 
Re: On the Origin of Species: Victreebel: Investigating the inspirations behind Pokém

Victreebel has been one of my favourite Pokemon since I was a little kid way over a decade ago, so naturally I loved reading this! The shrew lavatory part made it even better.
 
Re: On the Origin of Species: Victreebel: Investigating the inspirations behind Pokém

It's a bit of a shame that these articles are going to get a bit overlooked from the XY news, but I'm happy to see them back, I loved them.

Carnivorous plants always fascinated me in a similar way. I found it odd Game Freak decided for a pitcher one, since a more movible flytrap would seem more easily adaptable for a monster design (See: the Mario series, other monster plants tend to favor that kind too like Audrey II), but perhaps also because of that they went for that one.


It is a bit of a shame that both Carnivorous plants happened to be 4x to Bug, though. I'd like if Poison were strong to Bug and resisted it, so Victreebel would be neutral to bug attacks (just as the relationships the real life ones have with insects in general) while being dangerous.

Anyway, I like Victreebel: A good real basis to make a nice design for a threatening plant monster. I preffer Vileplume admittedly, but I still have fond memories of the thing.


On that note... Bellsprout always looked odd to me for some reason, as if I was missing something. I used to assume it was going from a tiny ringing bell to a large one that'd hang from an structure (specially with Bellsprout being filmsy and movible while Victreebel looking mostly static and hanging from a tree), but the "bell" part seems to be a fabrication of localization...
So it's just this weird twiggy thing that becomes Weepinbell. Which is made even more odd with how Johto has a dedicated tower specially to it and not even to the line.
 
Re: On the Origin of Species: Victreebel: Investigating the inspirations behind Pokém

Hm, i was under the impression from the last entry that this was gonna be a once a week thing until XY launch. I see i was wrong as it's only been two days.
 
Re: On the Origin of Species: Victreebel: Investigating the inspirations behind Pokém

A great article, as usual. Carnivorous plants are fascinating, I hope one day we'll get a Pokemon based on a Sundew.
 
Re: On the Origin of Species: Victreebel: Investigating the inspirations behind Pokém

Hm, i was under the impression from the last entry that this was gonna be a once a week thing until XY launch. I see i was wrong as it's only been two days.
I'll be doing a different gen each week, and there'll be three articles per gen.

(Probably. There are some that haven't been fully written yet.)
 
Re: On the Origin of Species: Victreebel: Investigating the inspirations behind Pokém

Hm, i was under the impression from the last entry that this was gonna be a once a week thing until XY launch. I see i was wrong as it's only been two days.
I'll be doing a different gen each week, and there'll be three articles per gen.

(Probably. There are some that haven't been fully written yet.)

Will we be seeing fossil pokemons as well?? :D??
 
Re: On the Origin of Species: Victreebel: Investigating the inspirations behind Pokém

Will we be seeing fossil pokemons as well?? :D??
Yep. There is one family of fossil Pokemon on the list.
 
Re: On the Origin of Species: Victreebel: Investigating the inspirations behind Pokém

It's great to see that you are doing these articles again, because I kind of miss them.

Anyway, I thought it was a really disingenuous thing to make Victreebell take super-effective damage from Bug attacks back in Generation 1. That issue had been fixed, but I thought that it would have been a bit better if they made Victreebell immune to Bug-type attacks, because of the "preying on insects (mainly)" deal with carnivorous plants.

It seems that you are dealing with Victreebell only, and not Weepinbell and Bellsprout. Are their origins vastly different from Victreebell's?

Thanks for reading.
 
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