![]() The writers within the games are happy to position one Legendary Pokémon as an entity that can bend physical laws and travel through time – and then let you catch one and trade it with a friend, because the games’ mechanics take precedence. One of the frustrating problems in – and also one of the joys of – the Pokémon franchise is that it doesn’t seem to have a terribly consistent style guide. At times, they’re just treated as powerful and hyper-rare, with multiple distinct specimens within a given species known to exist, and with academics deliberately reserving space for them in their documentation. At other times, they’re treated more as powerful cryptids, Pokémon that some within the canon believe to be the result of folklore. ![]() A lot of their Pokédex entries read out like proper myths and legends, and they’re positioned within the series’ stories as deities in their own right. The three of them make an interesting collective study on what “legendary” even entails within the series. The three of them collectively have quite a lot of screen-time – they’re regulars in Super Smash Bros., headlined the second (and quite posibly best) of the series’ yearly anime movies, they’re slated to get entirely new forms in the expansions to Sword & Shield (more on that later), and generally tend to pal out around the series’ merchandising an awful lot. All three of them boast some very potent special attack power but are crippled by common type weaknesses, so use all three with the intention of them being glass cannons (and, again, overkill for anything outside player-vs-player competition). Legendaries are just overkill for the main game, which is usually what I’m concerned about with these little “usability” blurbs. That smooth body helps it really look like a proper Firebird born of the element of fire itself more than a bird that merely wields fire, which in the end certainly gives Moltres a more potent impression. It almost ands up with more of the body shape of a wading-bird, ironically enough for a fire-type – unless it’s wading through magma, as the Pokédex suggests. Phoenixes are a great concept in their own right, and this is a good take on one that doesn’t really look like many other Phoenixes that I can think of thanks to its lack of (or very tight and fine) feathers. Oh, and the whole thing is bright orange.Īnd do ya know what? It works. If you ask a five-year-old to draw a phoenix, this is probably what you’re going to get – something vaguely chicken-y, with its tail, crest, and wing ridges radically on fire. Of the set, Moltres has always felt the most predictable to me. For a trio referred to within canon as the legendary birds, you’d kind of expect all three of them to rise on majestic wings, though I suppose there’s nothing wrong with breaking things up with a long-nosed chickadee. Granted, there are plenty of offenders to this, even within the first generation, and imagery of the actual Thunderbird is usually more impressionistic than flight-worthy, even being more triangular or X-shaped (both of which you can absolutely see in Zapdos’ key art). The one thing that gets me about Zapdos is that it looks distinctly incapable of flight – it’s shaped more like a kite than anything that would soar under its own power. It’s a bit much for me, personally, but I can absolutely appreciate its moxie. This thing is just bristling with energy, shouting lighting from the rooftops. Zapdos is anything but subtle, being a bright yellow son of a gun (standing out even stronger against its black under-coat) and shaped of nothing but sharp, jaggedy edges and a fierce glare. Good job, Articuno, embodying the theme without beating us over the head with it. None of these individual aspects is loud about its presence, but everything together gives the low-key impression of an icy bird. And that pale blue plumage on its chest does look at least a little something like a muffler or fur coat. That long, gorgeous tail is something that certain real-world birds flamboyantly sport, but it waves and folds, suggesting an aurora. ![]() That crest on its head looks like pretty normal plumage, but is angled in such a way to evoke ice crystals. In fact, that relative simplicity is why I love Articuno so much (as you may have noted, “doing more with less” is my design jam). ![]() ![]() Articuno is probably my personal favorite of the Legendary Bird trio, despite it looking a titch plain by the standards of its station it’s the easiest of the three by a country mile to attribute as just a bluebird or magpie-jay dolled up to fit in with a light fantasy setting rather than a preternatural Roc that bends ice and wind to its will. ![]()
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