You were playing Red and Blue all along! PART 2

Last week we went over Generation I games and color theory, and after some thought processing we came to conclusion that RED and BLUE are the best primary colors to represent duality, just like BLACK and WHITE. Awesome, isn’t it?
Well, not to burst your bubble, but we just rediscovered a concept that’s been around for at least TWO AND A HALF THOUSAND years. Gee, aren’t we clever?!

Some of you may already have some idea of what I’m going to talk about, but those who don’t – fasten your seatbelts, this will get crazy at some turns.

CHAPTER 2: “TAEGEUK AND TAIJITU. WAIT, WHAT KIND OF COLOR IS CRYSTAL?”

Now what the hell, sounds like moonspeak to some probably. Will you be surprised if I told you that all of you know what those two are? Or if you don’t know what they are, you have SURELY seen them AT LEAST once in your lifetime? Still nothing? Well, let me jog your memory:

Taegeuk (left) and Taijitu (right)

Still, though the one on the right is definitely something you all know, the one on the left is not so popular. No, it’s not the Pepsi logo. It’s part of the South Korean flag.

Does this look familiar?

What exactly are taegeuk and taijitu? Those two are the symbols representing the concept of TAIJI – SUPREME ULTIMATE and they’re old as hell. I’m aware I may be still speaking riddles to some, so I’ll explain right away.

Supreme Ultimate is grounded on two principles, DUALITY and POLARITY. Duality is a philosophical concept that describes the order of the universe by using two forces (those can be seen as 2 deities, 2 groups of deities, 2 moral principles, etc.). Polarity then states, that those two forces are OPPOSITE to each other, yet EQUAL and COMPLEMENTARY, meaning that one can’t exist without the other. And apparently, this duality is all that’s needed to describe pretty much every phenomenom in the universe. We will go through some examples in a minute. So far, so good, but what does it have to do with Pokemon?

Yang is the active principle, the sun, while Yin is receptive, the moon.

Well, only EVERYTHING?

What if I were to tell you, that all the main Pokemon games you’ve played so far, the paired versions of every Generation, all stay true to those principles? And not just on the surface, by using RED and BLUE or BLACK and WHITE as the version colors. The franchise follows this philosophical concept PASSIONATELY, deep underneath the covers. In a way, you’ve been served exactly the same design concept for VI generations, only in different flavours (well, V actually, as gen I was a bit messy on that part, as presented last week).

So how exactly does Taijitu and Taegeuk translate to Pokemon? We will go over it in detail for every generation, but now we will agree on some general guidelines for understanding Taiji.

“Taiji is understood to be the highest conceivable principle, that from which existence flows”. The supreme ultimate “divides”, or gives birth to yang and yin. Those two are contrary, yet interconnected and interdependent. One gives rise to another, over and over again. The easiest way to describe the two is to call yang “movement”, and yin “tranquility”. This interaction between yin and yang, when seen as a whole, is taiji, and taiji is understood to have INFINITE POTENTIAL withing the boundary of itself.  We branch from there and apply this association to almost everything we can think of. Then we get the extremes:

Yin-Yang
Black-White
Negative-Positive
Intuituve-Logical
Receptive-Active
Disruptive-Creative
Low-High
Cold-Hot
Calm-Angry
Slow-Fast
Soft-Hard
Passive-Aggressive

and so on, and so on… remember, those are only the EXTREMES, they don’t matter on their own. They can only exist as concept when we take the opposite one into account. They must always be in balance. But how does this principle even work in real life? Here are some examples:

We have a seed buried in the ground. That’s YIN
The seed sprouts and grows upward toward the sky. That’s YANG
Then when it reaches the extreme of its growth, the seed falls back into the ground. That’s YIN again.

At the same time, when we look at the plant as a whole, it requires both YIN and YANG to grow – its roots are in the ground, in the darkness, while its leaves are above it, seeking light.

Perfect illustration.

YIN nourishes, sustains and controls YANG and the other way around.

That being said, in every generation, 2 paired versions create the “supreme ultimate” when together, while when separate, they’re two opposites – one being yin, the other being yang. How are they represented thorough the series? Well, care to guess?
Yes. With RED and BLUE. ALL. THE. TIME.
Then, somewhere along the way, GREEN and YELLOW came into the equation, and I’ll tell you how it all fits together. We will get back to the concept of taiji constantly thorough this article, just like the color theory.

We covered the Taijitu and Taegeuk, now let’s take care of… Crystal. In the last part I went over how GameFreak made the first generation a real mess. They realized that themselves, and so they tried to fix the issue in the second generation. “No more 3 starters for 2 version mascots!”. What do we do, then? Limit the choice to 2 starters, or make THREE versions of the game instead? Neeeither, we think out of the box and use something way better than starters for version mascots – legendaries. They’re much more presentable, elegant, unique and majestic. It’s not a new concept, we had that in Generation I (although not really in equal duos), so this time we will just alter the formula slightly and create TWO main legendaries, each representing one game.

Sounds perfect, right? Yeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaah, not really. It would be perfect if they stopped there.

GOLD and SILVER are perfect extensions of RED and BLUE. Silver plays the role of Blue and is the cold, dark, spiritual/abstract (they even called the remake Soul Silver). It’s the Yin of Generation II. Gold on the other hand is the Red version, warm, bright, organic (Heart Gold). It’s even reflected in their legendary mascots (Lugia bears blue, Ho-oh red) and original logos (the ones in the west fucked it up, but redeemed themselves with Heart Gold/Soul Silver logos)

If you screw it up with the logo, there’s no redemption for you

It was very well thought out design-wise. Staying true to the RED/BLUE formula, while still presenting something fresh in the form of GOLD and SILVER. Then Game Freak got the evil idea.

We should make a third, upgraded version.

Gee, great move in your development schedule! Too bad you didn’t think about it from the start, because now it won’t fit, no matter how hard you try. You have only 2 legendary mascots, Celebi is out of the question (it has no relation to the two, and it’s a Mew-like, extremely rare legendary). Color theory wise, you can only use green – the history/culture association is prevalent in Generation II games, so science/nature “yellow” doesn’t fit here, unless the third mascot is somewhat equal to the previous two. Then the situation is reversed. Well, too bad, we have no such mascot.

Let’s improvise this time! Pick Suicune, for whatever reason, merge RED and BLUE into PURPLE and call it Crystal. Most people won’t notice that we pulled it out of our butt, and next time we will totally get it right!

They just couldn’t help themselves with that GREEN reference.

And they did. They finally managed to plan it out in advance in the third generation and finally established a pattern that they will follow in every following generation. That’s not the end, however, as some interesting patterns are embedded in the simple idea of 2 paired versions + 1 upgraded version. This we will talk about in the next part of this article, though.

The mystery of LUGIA & HO-OH

Have you ever noticed, how Lugia and Ho-oh as a pair are… really weird? Especially compared to future legendary version mascots. Looking at Groudon and Kyogre, those two perfectly represent whatever their games are named after, same goes for Dialga and Palkia, Reshiram and Zekrom, Xerneas and Yveltal. Lugia and Ho-oh, on the other hand… they just don’t work with each other that well.

Lugia and Ho-oh… what is going on with you two?

Other than being “birds” (and the word bird is a big stretch in Lugia’s case), flying creatures, they don’t have that much in common, there’s no common ground between them in terms of design. Groudon and Kyogre have the similar markings on their bodies, the yellow eyes and the set of murder teeth.

Kyogre can give you nightmares.

Dialga and Palkia work with each other well, they both look like some advanced machines, one to travel through time, the other through space. They both have a reference to their respective games incorporated into their design, Dialga’s diamond shaped crest and Palkia’s pearly pauldrons. Also, much like Groudon and Kyogre, they have the same ugly face and those red, tiny eyes. You can see right away that they form a duo.

The megazords of the Pokemon franchise, Dialga and Palkia.

Reshiram and Zekrom, following the duality theme of their games, look completely opposite at first glance due to their coloration, but they have more in common than one may think. Their body structure is very similar, their eyes, the wing placement and the most important of all: their tails. They both have tails that generate some kind of energy, either heat (in Reshiram’s case) or electricity based (in Zekrom’s case). As you can see, even though they’re vastly different, they still work great as a duo, they still reference each other (red eyes of Zekrom to Reshiram’s flames and blue eyes of Reshiram to Zekrom’s bolts of lightning) and stay integral design-wise. They’re the closest to yin and yang that Pokemon can get.

Vastly different, yet almost the same.

The newest addition, Xerneas and Yveltal, are more subtle than the previous bunch. You could miss their connection if you saw them apart and knew nothing about their names, but as soon as you realize that Xerneas is a walking X and Yveltal is a flying Y, you catch the drift instantly. Xerneas being the X axis, runs horizontally, while Yveltal, being the Y axis, can be seen flying vertically. Opposite coloration, as in the case of Groudon and Kyogre or Reshiram and Zekrom, but still nearly half of their bodies are both black. The connection between them goes even deeper, but that is something I’ll leave for another article, as it’s too much to talk about here.

Xerneas and Yveltal, they want you to learn geometry.

Going back to Lugia and Ho-oh, where lies THEIR connection? They MUST be connected somehow with each other, right? There must be some THEME to them, something that other legendary version mascots all have. Care to guess what that might be?

It’s colors.

Now, now, before you call me crazy, I’ll throw in more fuel to the fire: their coloration is the primary aspect that gives them a THEME. Now let me explain.

So vastly different, much like Reshiram and Zekrom, yet without any common elements between the two. But when you analyze their coloration, you can find something interesting. They are, in some way, reversed. While Lugia is mostly white, with bluish belly and very dark “eyelashes” and “feathers”, Ho-oh is vivid and colorful, the only part of it white being its belly. But that’s not enough, is it? We still don’t see the THEME behind them.

What about the names of their games, GOLD and SILVER? Does that work? Not so much.
While Ho-oh DOES have some gold elements, like its feathers, beak and headcrest, it’s still more RED than GOLD. There’s even green in there, for no real reason (?). Lugia speaks no silver at all either. Mostly white, with darker BLUE here and there. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?

No, it makes perfect sense.

So… monochromatic and cold.

Lugia is, in a sense, monochromatic. It’s got only two colors to its name, white and blue. In a way, that’s just 3 different shades of blue. Shadow Lugia accents on that even more, being Lugia in NEGATIVE. Ho-oh, is the opposite of that, it’s vivid, it’s colorful, it has THE FULL palette to its name. Green, Blue, Yellow, Red, you can get any color from that.

Ah, there you go! Shiny, colorful, warm!

Gold and Silver made the first big leap in the Pokemon Franchise, the jump from monochromatic GameBoy screen to the colorful, vivid GameBoy Color. It’s just fitting to symbolize that, somehow, no? Lugia comes before Ho-oh in the national dex, that may be one of the reasons (though the reason is different, but that will be explained in “You played Red and Blue all along!”).

Lugia represents the past of the series, the monochromatic GameBoy screen, Ho-oh is the bright future, the vivid colors ahead of it.

That can be supported even further by the fact that, despite being Generation II Pokemon, Lugia has more connection to Generation I, being a trio master of the Kanto legendary birds. Hell, it’s even Psychic type, the strongest thing Generation I had to offer (but that has no real meaning).
Generation II is like a direct sequel to Generation I. In the whole history of the franchise, that was the only time where 1 generation could be considered a sequel to another. We got Black 2/White 2 later, but that was during the same generation. In a way, you could mash up the whole dex of Generation I and II and crown Lugia as the version mascot of Generation I and Ho-oh as the version mascot of Generation II, and it would work perfectly. Lugia belongs to the GameBoy era, while Ho-oh is the master of GameBoy Color.

This kind of symbolism and allusions to the current state of the series didn’t die with Generation II. It returned in Generation IV, when Pokemon finally conquered SPACE and TIME, making it possible to connect with everyone around the globe, in different time zones, and even transfer your Pokemon into the future generations. It came back once again in Generation VI, the current generation, when the series made the leap into 3D and decided to call itself X and Y.

One can now wonder how the franchise will evolve in the future. Will we get another big leap and be able to play Pokemon in virtual reality environment? Will we finally get an MMO that so many people crave? There’s no way to know, but one thing you can be sure of: GameFreak will reflect that big change in their games. It’s what they love to do.