Pokéology: Feebas & Milotic

Heya folks, I wanted to take a moment to thank you all for the warm welcome; being a staff member here is such a dream come true. If you can guess, I’m currently working backwards in the article generation by generation, just to get even coverage of a variety of designs and concepts used in each generation. 

Anyway, this Tuesday we’re talking about Feebas and Milotic, some of the strangest looking evolutionary relatives, and yet it makes so much sense.

If you’re afraid of fish, I recommend not looking in the spoilers, though, there’s probably a low chance that you would be.

Basis

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This fella up there is a largemouth bass. Now, I didn’t just go and pick the largemouth bass because it’s a bass, and has a large mouth like Feebas. Although that’s actually a pretty good reason, as it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what species was going through the makers heads when they decided to make Feebas. But there’s some method to this madness.

These bass can have pink coloured lips, with a rather distinct mouth. They have a spotted pattern of scales  and a head that rounds out from their body, giving them a kind of hunchbacked look. Spiny dorsal fins, and a fanlike tail add to this as well, though those can be common traits in some fish.

Speaking of origins, the concept being used is the “ugly duck” scenario, where Feebas, the ugly duckling, becomes a beautiful ‘swan.’ So how about that swan? This next part might be a bit shockingly ugly as well, but bear with me.

Now, some of you jumped out of your chair at that image, and others were clueless. It’s not a very descriptive image, but I wanted to point out the fins on the head, which are pretty difficult to see in other images. This is the oarfish. A creature renowned in legend, although it is very much real. It is thought to be the origin of Sea Serpents in mythology, but I wouldn’t call it the origin even. It’s truly a sea serpent, only as a fish. So still.

See how big that thing is? Crazy right? That’s not even the full size of an oarfish. They’re a crazy, yet beautiful creature.

But that’s the oarfish itself, let’s talk about how it relates to Milotic. As you can see, Milotic has a distinct hair-like structure on its head, I’d call those the red oars that oarfish got their name from.  To add to that, oarfish have a horn-like structure that comes from their head; this can be seen as the spike that comes from an Milotic’s head.

The oarfish sure doesn’t  match the ‘beauty’ of Milotic, unless you’re like me and look at everything in nature as beautiful. That’s all about design though. You may notice Milotic’s tail has a beautiful pattern, but that looks more like the oarfish’s true pattern. I’d say the tail fin is a natural change from Feebas’ tail, but it could draw inspiration from birds that inspire the ‘ugly duckling’ basis.

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Biology

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So let’s see what the Super Rod has tossed up this time.. Now here’s a fish only a Pokémon player would go wild over catching.

Visually, this fish is not appealing, however, any predators aren’t going to care about how the fish looks. That’s why this fellow is camouflaged even in the ugly look of it. The pale blue fins would not stand out in the murky waters it lives in. The body is perfectly concealed with sediment, as the pattern on its scales would break up its silhouette and make it look like a rocky outcrop.

They are very rare, suggesting that they have been fished to near extinction by humanity, as this fish is unlikely to stand out to predators. Whether catching this fish due to its beautiful evolution, or due to food is unknown, as Pokémon isn’t likely to explain which Pokémon gets eaten by humans.

In my opinion, the chemicals within ‘beauty’ based Poffins and Berries  change the biochemical nature of the Pokémon. This explains how this Pokémon could evolve; a chemical change that leads to mutation-based evolution into a far more beautiful fish. Increasing pigments and causing other traits explain some of the features of Milotic.

Now I’m sure by now you probably don’t think much about how crazy the change is by now, but come on, that’s one mighty majestic fish.

Milotic is a very powerful Pokémon, and it has dropped all traces of camouflage due to this.  Who needs camouflage when your threats would be the only ones suffering? It can flaunt its earned beauty by now, and the power in the coils of its body would be enough to down a large Rhyperior.

However, Milotic is supposedly more angled towards peace, and seems to have powers to calm the fear of other Pokémon, as suggested by its Pokédex. This could be easily traced to the hypnotic reflections of its scales, which could trigger many parts of the brain, releasing calming hormones such as Serotonin.

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So that’s that. What do you all feel about the two? Favorite? Personally, although I absolutely love the oarfish, I prefer Feebas out of the two. Questions?  Suggestions? I love talking to you guys in the comments, so..

Cheers guys!

-Mechanos