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POTW Pokémon of the Week #98: Girafarig

SirOni

Driving You Batty
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In the World of Pokémon, there lives a vast number and variety of amazing creatures to befriend and collect. Every week, we will be focusing on a single one of these Pokémon or evolutionary line and talk about what makes it special. This week's Pokémon of choice is Girafarig!

480px-203Girafarig.png

A unique and peculiar Pokémon Girafarig is a single stage Normal/Psychic-type that debuted in Generation II. Girafarig has a fairly simple and quirky design with a surprising amount of history behind it. Its Normal/Psychic-typing is rather elegantly represented by its body composition. The front end of Girafarig is a rather standard looking giraffe design with a few cartoony embellishments. It represents the Normal-type which is chock full of mammals with little or simple deviations from the real animals they are based on. The back end of Girafarig is a reverse palette of the front end capped off with an odd enigmatic tail that happens to be a second head with a small brain. This end’s curious qualities represent the Psychic-type. It projects an eerie and mysterious nature that further amplifies its psychic powers with the aid of the second brain. Unlike something we’ll get to later Girafarig’s second head mostly provides it with support for its main body. The second brain is small enough that it doesn’t do any independent thinking instead relying on instinct and being very reactionary. Girafarig live on wide-open plains where there is not much cover for its large body. The tail does not sleep so it can easily keep watch whenever Girafarig is feeding or sleeping. What’s amusing about this is that real life giraffes use their sheer size, enormous neck, and herd living to guard against predators. Girafarig is significantly smaller than real giraffes which it can probably justify because of its ever-vigilant tail. The tail will also mimic the eating motions of Girafarig’s main head possibly due to brain signals used during eating reaching its second brain. Girafarig’s tail also has a decent sense of smell which will cause it to react to new scents. Often if the tail smells something close it will try to bite it.

A lot of care was put into Girafarig’s name in every language to make sure that they are palindromes so as to reflect its one body facing opposing directions. That may not be saying much since they’re either Girafarig or Kirinriki in all languages. Its Japanese name Kirinriki can also be a combination of ‘kirin’ meaning giraffe and ‘nenriki’ meaning telekinesis. This fits nicely with its typing and may even be part of where the Psychic-type idea came from after making kirin a palindrome. For a simple and quirky design, Girafarig has quite a variety of inspirations it draws from. It mainly takes after the Pushmi-pullyu, a mammalian herbivore from The Story of Doctor Dolittle which has a head at each end of its body. Girafarig also takes from the theory that some dinosaurs, such as Stegosaurus, had a second brain in their tails. The idea here was that these animals were so big and their brains so small that they needed a second brain to effectively wield their spike tails against predators. This theory has proven to be invalid though.

For a long time now Girafarig’s beta design has been available to us showing that it more closely resembled the Pushmi-pullyu having a giraffe head at each end of its body. Not much was known other than that image but with having two assumingly full functioning heads Girafarig could have acted a lot more like Doduo and Dodrio where the heads may often fight but would ultimately have to work together. Neither would be a purely supportive role. With the recent GS Demo leak, two new interesting details were discovered. Firstly, Girafarig was planned to be a Dark/Normal-type. It looks like it already had the duality of its typing represented with its lighter front end and darker back end. The backsprites revealed that this Dark-type back end had a somewhat sinister expression as well as some errant pixels around the mouth which some fan interpretations suggesting they were sharp teeth! The other interesting surprise is that Girafarig may have been an evolution of a discarded beta Pokemon known as Twinz which its shares its type combo with. Twinz was composed of two ghost-like blobs connected by a thin black cord. It appears just before beta Girafarig in ID order and is stated to evolve at level 29. These two are very different Pokémon that share some very specific similarities. It’s unknown what the intended plans were for Twinz and Girafarig but it would be confusing and interesting seeing why and how a ghost blobs evolve into a giraffe.

Here are some questions to consider to get the conversation rolling. You don't have to answer all of them or any of them in your post as long as you're staying on topic and within global forum rules.
-Do you like or dislike this Pokémon? Why?
-How is this Pokémon in-game?
-How is this Pokémon in competitive play? Are there any interesting strategies you like to use for them?
-Do you like this Pokémon's representation in the anime? Are there any moments or qualities, in particular, you enjoy/dislike?
-How do you think this Pokémon would interact with our world?
-If given the power to, would you change anything about this Pokémon and if so, what would you change?
-How do you think this Pokémon fares as a Normal-type and as a Psychic-type?
-What do you think about the way this Pokémon depicts dual-typing? Is there a way to depict dual-typing that you favor?
-What do you think about this Pokémon’s beta designs and the process of creating a Pokémon from beta to completion? What do you think of beta designs and their influence on the games and the fans?

If you have any suggestions for Pokémon you'd like to discuss in the future just leave your ideas at the bottom of your post. Make sure you give your thoughts about the current Pokémon first!

Previous Pokémon of the Week:
 
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Girafarig is a palindromic Pokémon that gives me the chortles! Its beautiful smiling tail can unleash the unexpected FURY on opponents, and saves Girafarig’s design and typing from the naughty badness that is boringness! Receiving the Psychic Fangs as an egg move in Ultra Sun and Moon is like the toothy icing on its moveset cake...yet to my fury, Girafarig still has access to the better choice of Psychic combined with a higher Special Attack, tainting said icing with the sprinkles of inferiority! But that is okay for Fawful. Girafarig still has the immunity to any fink-rat Ghosts that try to attack, thinking they will scare it like a little Psychic baby, but being wrong as they think that! And Fawful also has the gladness that Girafarig’s beta design was improved, and its blobby baby of nonsense was left in the scrap pile of unused ideas that are chortled at with unrelenting fury! Overall, Girafarig...A WINNER IS YOU!
 
Girafarig is one of my favorite gen II Pokémon, it's so cute and I really love it's design! Especially since I already really like giraffes. Also it's naming is really cool too. Though I do feel they missed out on using it's beta design, but regardless both are cool designs and I still would've loved it anyway.
 
Girafarig has a unique design, but other than that I never thought is was anything too special. It was just one of those Pokemon that existed and make me think "well, we got our giraffe Pokemon now." I like it, but I am not crazy for it. In-game, it was alright. I used it in a playthrough once and it was decent enough to make it through GSC. Competitive... not so much. The stats aren't great, its movepool can be learned by other Psychic-types that are far superior, and its abilities are nothing special with the exception of Inner Focus. All I can see it being used as is a Baton Passer while praying the opponent doesn't have Taunt.

I did like the first episode Girafarig appeared in. Not just for Girafarig itself, but just the whole episode being wacky. Girafarig is cute in the anime. I cannot dislike it at all.

Girafarig would just be like a smaller giraffe in our world. Minding its business and eating grass, staying away from wild Pyroar and Luxray. The problem is that its tail bites. Careful of that tail!

Oof... there's so much I'd love to change. I'd make the stats better. All of them. At least give it a buff in Speed and Special Attack.

The Normal-typing gives it an immunity to Ghost-types. I like that. Unfortunately, the ever-present Fighting-type moves will now get a 1x damage hit instead of 1/2. Its defenses are trash so I'm not expecting it to take any 1x hit very well.

The way this Pokemon depicts dual-typing? Okay, I guess. If you are talking about aesthetics, yeah, it depicts it pretty well. Yet again, as mentioned above, Girafarig's stats are terrible. It doesn't matter if it had a dual-typing that made it resistant to numerous moves. There's going to be at least something that'll knock it out in one hit without it being super effective.

Beta designs are hit or miss for me. There are things I would have really wanted (baby Meowth) and there are others I am glad got on the chopping block or got a complete redesign (Elekid's beta design was fucking terrible). Girafarig's was interesting, for sure. But, we got what we got. I like what we got.
 
I love Girafarig. It is bizarre, cute, cool, capable of holding its own and its slender form is pleasing to the eye. I had one in Diamond and it was formidable and a joy to use, but someone deleted my file and decided not to play it. :notworthy: Moral of the story - sulk.

And it has to be said that any Chain Chomp victim is worthy of mention.
 
Never cared much for Girafarig. I guess its name being a palindrome makes sense considering its lore, but it is still very forgettable. Its stats are very underwhelming and its movepool is fairly generic, as are its Abilities. Its type combination gives it an immunity to Ghost attacks and prevents it from getting wrecked by weaker Fighting attacks, but that's it.
 
I know this is a bit late but:

-Do you like or dislike this Pokémon? Why?
I like Girafarig. Its a interesting design and kind of cute

-How is this Pokémon in-game?
I don’t think I have ever even seen one in-game

-How is this Pokémon in competitive play? Are there any interesting strategies you like to use for them?
I don’t think I have ever even seen one in-game

-Do you like this Pokémon's representation in the anime? Are there any moments or qualities, in particular, you enjoy/dislike?
I don’t remember any.

-How do you think this Pokémon would interact with our world?
He would eat up our lawns

-If given the power to, would you change anything about this Pokémon and if so, what would you change?
Kind of wish the back part aka the tail was bendable

-How do you think this Pokémon fares as a Normal-type and as a Psychic-type?
What do you think about the way this Pokémon depicts dual-typing? Is there a way to depict dual-typing that you favor?
I don’t think Girafarig should be a psychic type. Seems kind of odd because it has no obvious psychic traits in its design. I think Normal/fairy, dark/fairy, or Normal/dark.

-What do you think about this Pokémon’s beta designs and the process of creating a Pokémon from beta to completion? What do you think of beta designs and their influence on the games and the fans?
I think the beta design is cool. It sort of fits Girafarig better because its name is the same forwards and backwards. But, then again, it was a less attractive design so I understand why they scrapped it. Beta designs are really cool, it gives us a idea on what could be to come (since they have reused beta pokemon ideas before) and what theirs were meant to be like!
 
One would think that a giraffe with psychic and mystical powers would be an instant win with fans, but it wasn't, and it's not hard to see why, as Girafarig doesn't look cool or majestic enough. As for me, I appreciate it for what it is, a simple okapi Pokemon with its biology twisted in a very clever way, and with really good-looking colors.

Its beta concept was likely scrapped because of the Unfortunate implications of replacing a tail with a head and making it perfectly symmetrical. I don't mind the change, but I do hope we get something along the lines of a black horse eventually. Also, Twinz' concept was very cool too, as a ghost who when evolving becomes a material thing.

Girafarig's type combination is very nice, as it was the only Pokemon from the first 3 generations to have the Normal/something other than Flying combination. It represents it well with its pink accents, but I know that some people would rather Stantler have the combination instead.
 
Please note: The thread is from 6 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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