回忆童年! 十大蠢萌的神奇宝贝(上)

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At the time of writing this article, there are currently 721 Pokemon, about 151 of which are actually any good depending on how much of a tool the person you ask is. With nearly a thousand different Pokemon out there it's understandable that not all of them are going to be winners. As it turns out though, some of the stupidest and laziest looking Pokemon in the series have actually had some of the most thought put into their design. For example, just consider…

到撰写这篇文章之前,神奇宝贝游戏里总共有721种神奇宝贝,其中151种技能强大,就看你所问之人手法多强悍了。游戏中出现的神奇宝贝近千,因而并非所有神奇宝贝都能成为赢家也就不奇怪了。尽管如此,游戏里那些看起来蠢萌蠢萌的怪兽好像一无是处,然而在设计游戏时,开发者们可是对它们的设计挖空了心思啊。例如……

karp

10.鲤鱼王

回忆童年! 十大蠢萌的神奇宝贝(上)

In the Pokemon games, Magikarp is about as useful as a butthole flavoured lollipop and is about half as embarrassing to be caught using. Its singular redeeming feature is that at level 20 it evolves into a hulking dragon monster that can level cities by twerking. However, before that happens you're forced to use a constantly screaming, flailing, fairground prize with a ridiculous moustache.

在神奇宝贝里,鲤鱼王简直就跟一根菊花口味的棒棒糖一样没用,真是被人看到用它对战都要羞羞的不要不要的。唯一能够弥补这种先天蠢萌特质的技能是,在练到20级时,它能进化成暴鲤龙,一个甩尾就能扫平一整座城市。然而在此之前,你就只能被迫用着这只会不停尖叫和胡乱拍打的游乐场奖品——鲤鱼王了。还有那两撇胡须,真是滑稽透了。

As it turns out, Magikarp changing from a flopping, two foot wide fish with a Fu Manchu to a half ton sea snake with that can fire Decepticon obliterating lasers from its mouth is because it's based on an old school Chinese legend about fish backflipping over a waterfall. More specifically, the legend states that any carp that can jump high enough to clear a waterfall that's known only as the "Dragon Gate" would turn into a kick-ass dragon. This is why Magikarp turns into a gargantuan death snake if you persevere and train it long enough. Basically, it's based on a legend with the moral that trying hard enough leads to achieving anything, and it just so happens that Magikarp wants to become death, the destroyer of worlds.

然而这两英尺宽,只会摔跤乱跳、还长着傅满楚式胡须的鲤鱼王也有逆袭之日。进化之后,鲤鱼王的外形大变,变成了足有半吨位重的大海蛇,嘴里能喷出相当于霸天虎威力的激光,足以毁灭一切。这种大翻身的灵感来源于中国古代的一个传说——鲤鱼跃龙门。故事中讲的是任何鲤鱼,只要跳得够高,能跃过被称为"龙门"的瀑布,即可成龙。这就是为什么在游戏中只要你训练得够久,鲤鱼王就能进化成拥有毁灭性力量的暴鲤龙的原因。蠢萌孱弱的鲤鱼王可以进化成毁灭世界的暴鲤龙,其中暗含哲理:只要坚持不懈地努力,任何成就都可以实现。

ep

9.咩利羊

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In a game filled with Pokemon that can shoot fire from their eyes and launch mountain ranges into orbit with their minds, Mareep seems a little tame. Sure it's cute, as far as sheep coated in paralysing wool go, but it's not exactly an inspired design, is it? It's a sheep, that's electric. We mean, how deep could that possible be?

在一个怪兽动不动就两眼喷火,随心所欲搬动大山的彪悍世界里,咩利羊算得上是温顺的了。外形也相当可爱,只要刨去它身上那层能使人瘫痪的羊毛就好。然而,这似乎也并非特别新颖吧?不过是一只带静电的绵羊。我是说,这其中能有多少深意?

Pretty damn deep, as it turns out. You see, Mareep is based on the short story (which would later inspire Blade Runner) by Philip K. Dick, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". Along with this, the name Mareep is an anagram of the word "ampere," which is a unit of electric current as well as badass band name. As if that wasn't enough layers, Mareep is also a portmanteau of "Mary" and "Sheep," so the name is also an allusion towards the nursery rhyme, Mary had a Little Lamb. Plus, its alternate color is pink, which is just adorable.

嗨,简直不要太深啦!看看咩利羊的英文名Mareep,这和菲利普·迪克的小说《仿生人会梦见电子羊吗?》(电影《银翼杀手》即改编于此故事)大有渊源。还有,"Mareep"这个名字其实是电流单位"ampere"的变位词,也是一支超棒的乐队的名字。还嫌意义不够深远似的,"Mareep"还是"Mary"和"sheep"的混合词,所以这个名字里也暗藏一首儿歌——《玛丽有只小绵羊》。更何况,粉红色的咩利羊也是超级惹人爱哒~

bish

8.破袋怪

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The Pokemon Trubbish is often pointed to as the point at which Pokemon kind of stopped caring because it is, for all intents and purposes, literally just a festering, overfilled sack of garbage with goofy looking eyes drawn on it.

破袋怪经常被当作Pokemon株式会社似乎开始不再关心神奇宝贝质量的分水岭。总的看来的确如此,它看起来只是一个腐臭破烂,装的快要溢出来的垃圾袋,唯一不同的是它多了一对呆呆的眼睛。

Due to the fact its body looks almost identical to a bulging garbage bag, many people fail to notice that Trubbish has what appear to be a pair of bunny ears on its head. This is because Trubbish is based on the concept of "dust bunny," also known as those clumps of hair and dirt that live in the place under your couch you can't reach. On top of this, Trubbish is also supposed to stand alongside the Pokemon Grimer and Koffing as the third and final member of the pollution trifecta. Whereas Grimer and Koffing represent sea and air pollution, Trubbish is supposed to represent land pollution, something that was, up until it's inclusion in the series, never touched upon. As for why they decided to make this Pokemon look like a bag of trash, considering they made Grimer look like a pile of purple slime and Koffing look like a floating, poison spewing testicle, we're going to give Trubbish a break since they clearly put more effort into it than they did its spiritual cousins.

的确,它看起来完全就是一个膨胀的垃圾袋,以致于很多人都未注意到破袋怪头上其实还有一对兔耳朵。其实破袋怪是根据"尘兔"这一概念设计出来的。另外,破袋怪也是神奇宝贝中"污染三巨头"中继臭臭泥和瓦斯弹之后的第三大污染神奇宝贝。臭臭泥和瓦斯弹分别代表了海洋污染和空气污染,破袋怪则代表了土壤污染,在破袋怪被囊括进污染系列以前没有人曾想到这点。考虑到他们将臭臭泥设计成了一滩紫色烂泥,瓦斯弹也是一个漂浮在空中不断喷射毒气的蛋蛋,我们就不要对破袋怪太苛刻了,因为比起臭臭泥和瓦斯弹这两个精神上的"表兄弟"来,他们对破袋怪显然还是比较用心的。

farig

7.麒麟奇

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Girafarig looks like a cross between a giraffe and child's drawing of a horse-shaped lizard that also happens to have a Chain Chomp for a tail. It's such a weird hodge podge of design elements we honestly can't tell what it was originally intended to be. The only thing we can discern with any clarity is that whoever came up with this design should have been slapped across the face for thinking it looked anything like a giraffe.

麒麟奇看起来就像是长颈鹿和小儿画的以链球怪作尾巴的马形蜥蜴的杂交。这是一个奇葩设计元素的大杂烩,老实说我们真不懂它设计的初衷。但唯一能肯定的是,无论是谁想出了这个设计,他都应该被打脸,因为不管横看竖看麒麟奇都不像一只长颈鹿啊!

Then again, maybe that's a little hasty because Girafarig isn't really based on a giraffe, it's based on a now extinct, rather kick-ass ancestor of the giraffe called a Giraffokeryx. A giraffe like creature that looked like it was always wearing a pair of zebra stripe parachute pants. Along with this, Girafarig's seemingly sentient tail and spinal ridges are inspired by the now disproven theory that the stegosaurus had a secondary brain hidden somewhere in its ass. Be honest, when you started reading this, did you honestly think a Pokemon game would contain a subtle allusion to a defunct theory about dinosaurs having brains in their butts?

不过,这么说未免有点草率,因为麒麟奇并不是真以长颈鹿的外形为基础设计的,而是基于始长颈鹿,它们现今已遭灭绝,却是长颈鹿非常了不起的的祖先。始长颈鹿外表看起来就像穿了一条斑马条纹的降落伞裤。除此之外,麒麟奇看似有意识的尾巴和腰脊的设计灵感来自于剑龙,据传剑龙的臀部隐藏着第二个大脑,但这一说法已被证明不实。老实说,当你读到这里,你真的相信神奇宝贝这么一个游戏中竟会这么微妙地暗示关于恐龙屁股上有脑袋的虚假理论吗?

6.迷唇姐

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Just one look at Jynx's original design before it was hastily changed by GameFreak amidst a storm of criticism and poorly researched '90s era newspaper articles should tell you everything you need to know about why Jynx sucks. In a nutshell, people were kind of pissed about Jynx's design because it appeared to be a rather tactless and spectacularly offensive combination of blackface stereotypes.

Game Freak在批评的浪潮和不靠谱的90年代报刊文章的影响下匆忙修改了迷唇姐的设计图,因为单是看一眼那最初的设计图你就知道为何迷唇姐这么遭人嫌弃了。简而言之,人们或多或少被迷唇姐的初始设计图给激怒了,因为它像是在笨拙地公开攻击黑人的形象。

While we're absolutely not going to defend blackface, because we have more sense than that, there's never really been any proof that this was the inspiration behind Jynx's design beside the fact white people can't look at the original sprite without first looking over their shoulder. In truth, there are about four different proposed theories about what inspired Jynx's design, including that it's based on a Nordic legend about a princess whose skin was turned black by the cold, and one about it being inspired by a brief Japanese fad in the '90s where girls would tan their faces and dye their hair blonde as a protest against the limited Japanese concept of what constituted "attractiveness." Since there will probably never be a satisfactory answer to Jynx's origin, these theories will presumably remain just that. However, it's a little comforting to think that maybe, just maybe, the people who designed the original 151 Pokemon weren't huge, lazy racists.

当然,我们绝不打算为黑人扮演这一歧视性行为辩护,因为我们不认为存在任何证据表明迷唇姐的设计来源于此,除非你到现在还认为白人看到黑人时的第一反应是首先越过他的肩膀往后看。其实,关于迷唇姐设计的灵感来源有四种说法,其中有北欧神话中被冻得皮肤发黑的公主,还有90年代时一度成为日本时尚的褐肤金发,那时女孩们通过这种方式来对日本社会中"魅力"一词的狭隘含义表示不满。因为可能我们永远也不会得到对迷唇姐初始设计来源的满意答复,所以这些说法也就仅仅是说法了。不管怎样,也许,只是也许,创造了这151个初始神奇宝贝的设计师不是一些又壮又懒的种族主义者,这样想会让我们觉得舒服一些吧。

审校:敖有没 来源:前十网