Pokémon‘s seventh generation is less than half a year away. Hard to believe, isn’t it? As the summer goes on, speculation grows over both the news already revealed and whatever has yet to be revealed. Everyone seems to have their own thoughts and ideas on what Sun and Moon could be like.
Yet all of the news and discussion over such a major release also leads to something else…leaks. It seems like we can hardly go a few days without another image or list of information claiming to be from the finished games. They tend to have varying levels of quality and credibility…yet one particular set seems to rise above the others, and hardly anyone is talking about it! These are currently unconfirmed, though, so they are, so far, only a rumor. Keep that in mind.
Rest assured, this isn’t some simple clickbait video. This is a full analysis of the possible leaks in question, looking beneath the surface at all of their apparent design choices, how well they match the information we currently know about the Alola starters’ base forms, and even some theory on what they might be like ingame if they were to be real.
Warning: there’s a chance these really are the starters’ final forms. Anyone who’d prefer not to be spoiled, watch at your own risk.
The wrestler motif on the fire one actually really sells this leak for me. The idea of anouther Fire/Fighting starter is so loathed by the community I feel fakers would attempt to stay far away from anything that could be perceived as Fire/Fighting. That along with the overall professionalism and Gamefreak-y feel they have to them.
Normally I wouldn’t trust any information which many people refer it a “leak” as its nothing but clickbaits, a pathetic way to gain attention for popularity and fame by using fakes, which is also childish and futile. I prefer to wait until the officials announce something, or until Serebii.net reveal something once they get the game first. However, although I have many doubts on this leak you provided, it may possibly be real in some form. Not 100% personally, but some how close to be real.
First thing first, I do believe that Rowlet’s final form won’t be Grass/Ground, because wasting Flying on that point would be meaningless. Sure, people hate the combination of Grass and Flying because its weak against Ice, but Grass/Ground is also weak against Ice too, and I don’t know why people don’t even complain about that.
Litten’s final form is kinda eerie to me. There is a possibility that it can be a Fire/Fight Pokemon, something that most fans hates due to being generic and boring for a fire starter. As the design is being a motif of a wrestler, or the legendary wrestling manga “Tiger Mask”, then it’ll possibly be Fire/Fight. I do somehow feel that there’s gotta be a Fight type addicted fan in the staffs, saying Fire/Fight fits perfectly for a starter as its so strong.
I have nothing to complain about Poplio’s final form as it make sense.
However, there are three things that I’m really concerned about. One is those two hidden type icons “Ground” and “Fight” found in the Japanese website. Some fans predicted that those types are for Litten and Poplio as Litten will be Fire/Ground and Poplio be Water/Fight, but some objected that Litten is plain Fire but Rowlet would be Grass/Ground due to the file number alignment. But you objected that both of them are wrong. Then why are those types are hidden in the site anyways? Was it there for some purposes, or was it simply an accident? Second is Ash being in Litten’s final form’s pic. Why was a character that’ll never appear in the game doing in that pic? Does this mean that concept art is planned to be used for the next Pokemon anime, which also proves Ash will STILL be returning for some epic (but meaningless) adventures? And that girl next to him…she doesn’t look like a female protagonist due to her design (nor even Serena either as fans wanting her to return and follow Ash). Could she be a new Alola gym leader? And finally, if these concept arts were leaked by somebody in the staffs, wouldn’t that person be in danger? It’s already spread throughout the network, and it wouldn’t be odd that one of the officials would realize that there’s a perpetrator who’ve leaked the secret, and would be deleted immediately by their hands. There is so many things that I don’t even know what’s this all about, which is why I prefer to wait until the officials announce it.
That’s a lot to go over! Let me see if I can answer you questions here…
-I think the type icons they found hidden in the website’s code are for some other purpose. Maybe they’re for mons that haven’t been revealed yet. Maybe they were just placeholders to test out the site code. I have serious doubts that they’d upload icons for the fully evolved starters so soon when they never officially revealed the starters’ final forms until shortly after the games’ release. And I’m not 100% on this, but apparently the Ground and Fighting icons on the site are loaded from a different file than the ones for Grass, Fire, and Water.
-The Litten design does look like it _could_ be Fire/Fighting, which is one of the reason many of the people who’ve seen it pull out the torches and pitchforks with reckless abandon. Thing is, some of the design choices and the things it’s depicted doing in the smaller drawings seem to imply Fire/Dark, not Fire/Fighting. Looking beyond the surface here is important!
-Ash may not be in any of the games, but he’s still well known enough for part of the design team to add him in to a side drawing. As for the girl, she’s presumably someone we haven’t heard about yet. Possibly a gym leader, possibly some other NPC.
While Litten’s final evolved form seems to be the most controversial, I think it’s the most plausible link to this conceptual artwork being real. Most fans loath the idea of another Fire/Fighting type start, so any design that bares a passing resemblance for one would be disliked. Most fake or simple imaginions of what the final evolved forms could look like by the fans do not play around with such a muscular feline for this reason. The onky ones who would may be Game Freak themselves.
From what I understand, the ‘leaks’ are considered real because they resemble pokemon reference sheets.
Here are all the reference sheet images I could find:
I believe those ‘leaks’ are fake for the following reasons. You are free to disagree–I just want to get my thoughts across:
– the official reference sheets essentially contain reference drawings of pokemon. we see one or two fully colored pokemon in a standard sort of pose, rather than expressing the pokemon’s concept through different poses or scenarios.
– there are depictions of pokemon in certain angles, often plain with only lineart, as the point is to help visualize the pokemon the correct way.
– the latest official reference sheet have the notes typed up rather than hand-written.
– the confidential stamp (newest reference) or pokemon’s name (older references) is always at the bottom.
From what I can gather, the official reference sheets have an emphasis on perspective drawing and certain design particulars about the pokemon, such as how Noivern’s wings connect to its body, or how Mareep looks without the wool.
– include comic scenarios and lots of fully-colored art
+ different from the lineart perspective drawings in the official references
– Litten and Popplio’s final evolution reference sheet ‘leaks’ have the confidential stamp at the top
+ the official ones have them at the bottom
– color codes of sorts are included on the ‘leaked’ reference sheet
+ this is not seen in the official references
– except for parts of Owlet’s final evolution ‘leaked’ reference sheet, all notes are hand-written
+ the very latest official reference sheet, and the only one with the confidential stamp, has notes typed up
There is always the possibility that I am wrong, so please take what I’ve said with a grain of salt.
for some reason, the links got removed. I’ll try to post them again. It they do not appear, please go to archives dot bulbagarden dot net, and type these terms in the search bar:
sugimori noivern bw
sugimori ag
sugimori crobat feet
http://archives.bulbagarden.net/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=default&search=sugimori+ag&fulltext=Search
http://archives.bulbagarden.net/wiki/File:Sugimori_Noivern_BW.png
http://archives.bulbagarden.net/wiki/File:Sugimori_Crobat_feet.png