Featured Image Credit: The Pokémon Company
Topics: Pokemon, Anime, Game Freak
The Pokémon universe has built up a surprisingly deep amount of lore over the last 25+ years, and there are a huge range of Pokémon with different orders of power and special or unique abilities.
At the top of the tree power-wise are Legendary Pokémon, who come with their own godly powers that put the regular Joes to relative shame. Arceus is widely considered to be the most powerful Pokémon in the story, as the creator of the universe, but there are plenty of other choices who have a potential right to claim that crown.
Now, it seems another Pokémon may have been in the thoughts of the team as a potential Legendary, and it might not be one that you expect.
Over on Reddit, one user shared a screenshot of a season one episode of the Pokémon anime, where the three legendary birds, Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres are featured on an ancient stone tablet. Interestingly, slotting into a fourth slot alongside the three birds is a depiction of what appears to be Arcanine.
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Now, Arcanine is absolutely one of the stronger Pokémon in the original 151, but it was never considered a Legendary, so what’s the deal here?
Well as the top comment explains, it may have been in Game Freak’s original plans to make him one, though don’t let his OG Pokédex description fool you.
“Well… he was never officially a Legendary. The Pokédex calls him “The Legendary Pokémon,” but that’s just flavour text since he’s based on mythical guardian dogs from Japanese lore,” the comment reads.
“A lot of people think Game Freak might’ve planned for him to be one early on, then swapped him out for the bird trio. So he’s “legendary” by name, not by category.”
The issue is deepened slightly when you remember that the original run of Arcanine cards in the TCG had it marked as a “Legendary Pokémon,” with the capital letters suggesting that it was a categorisation, rather than a description.
Regardless of our opinion, Arcanine appearing on the tablet as the only non-Legendary suggests that they may have had entirely different intentions for the Pokémon in the earliest days.
Even in it’s non-Legendary design, it’s still one of the coolest Pokémon from the first Generation and an iconic design that players keep coming back to. It’s also an absolute beast in the games, so it almost doesn’t matter that it isn’t officially as powerful as Moltres et Al.