回憶童年! 十大蠢萌的神奇寶貝(上)

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…

到撰寫這篇文章之前，神奇寶貝遊戲裏總共有721種神奇寶貝，其中151種技能強大，就看你所問之人手法多強悍了。遊戲中出現的神奇寶貝近千，因而並非所有神奇寶貝都能成爲贏家也就不奇怪了。儘管如此，遊戲裏那些看起來蠢萌蠢萌的怪獸好像一無是處，然而在設計遊戲時，開發者們可是對它們的設計挖空了心思啊。例如……

karp

10.鯉魚王

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.

在神奇寶貝里，鯉魚王簡直就跟一根菊花口味的棒棒糖一樣沒用，真是被人看到用它對戰都要羞羞的不要不要的。唯一能夠彌補這種先天蠢萌特質的技能是，在練到20級時，它能進化成暴鯉龍，一個甩尾就能掃平一整座城市。然而在此之前，你就只能被迫用着這隻會不停尖叫和胡亂拍打的遊樂場獎品——鯉魚王了。還有那兩撇鬍須，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.

然而這兩英尺寬，只會摔跤亂跳、還長着傅滿楚式鬍鬚的鯉魚王也有逆襲之日。進化之後，鯉魚王的外形大變，變成了足有半噸位重的大海蛇，嘴裏能噴出相當於霸天虎威力的激光，足以毀滅一切。這種大翻身的靈感來源於中國古代的一個傳說——鯉魚躍龍門。故事中講的是任何鯉魚，只要跳得夠高，能躍過被稱爲"龍門"的瀑布，即可成龍。這就是爲什麼在遊戲中只要你訓練得夠久，鯉魚王就能進化成擁有毀滅性力量的暴鯉龍的原因。蠢萌孱弱的鯉魚王可以進化成毀滅世界的暴鯉龍，其中暗含哲理：只要堅持不懈地努力，任何成就都可以實現。

ep

9.咩利羊

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?

在一個怪獸動不動就兩眼噴火，隨心所欲搬動大山的彪悍世界裏，咩利羊算得上是溫順的了。外形也相當可愛，只要刨去它身上那層能使人癱瘓的羊毛就好。然而，這似乎也並非特別新穎吧？不過是一隻帶靜電的綿羊。我是說，這其中能有多少深意？

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，簡直不要太深啦！看看咩利羊的英文名Mareep，這和菲利普·迪克的小說《仿生人會夢見電子羊嗎？》（電影《銀翼殺手》即改編於此故事）大有淵源。還有，"Mareep"這個名字其實是電流單位"ampere"的變位詞，也是一支超棒的樂隊的名字。還嫌意義不夠深遠似的，"Mareep"還是"Mary"和"sheep"的混合詞，所以這個名字裏也暗藏一首兒歌——《瑪麗有隻小綿羊》。更何況，粉紅色的咩利羊也是超級惹人愛噠~

bish

8.破袋怪

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.

破袋怪經常被當作Pokemon株式會社似乎開始不再關心神奇寶貝質量的分水嶺。總的看來的確如此，它看起來只是一個腐臭破爛，裝的快要溢出來的垃圾袋，唯一不同的是它多了一對呆呆的眼睛。

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.

的確，它看起來完全就是一個膨脹的垃圾袋，以致於很多人都未注意到破袋怪頭上其實還有一對兔耳朵。其實破袋怪是根據"塵兔"這一概念設計出來的。另外，破袋怪也是神奇寶貝中"污染三巨頭"中繼臭臭泥和瓦斯彈之後的第三大污染神奇寶貝。臭臭泥和瓦斯彈分別代表了海洋污染和空氣污染，破袋怪則代表了土壤污染，在破袋怪被囊括進污染系列以前沒有人曾想到這點。考慮到他們將臭臭泥設計成了一灘紫色爛泥，瓦斯彈也是一個漂浮在空中不斷噴射毒氣的蛋蛋，我們就不要對破袋怪太苛刻了，因爲比起臭臭泥和瓦斯彈這兩個精神上的"表兄弟"來，他們對破袋怪顯然還是比較用心的。

farig

7.麒麟奇

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.

麒麟奇看起來就像是長頸鹿和小兒畫的以鏈球怪作尾巴的馬形蜥蜴的雜交。這是一個奇葩設計元素的大雜燴，老實說我們真不懂它設計的初衷。但唯一能肯定的是，無論是誰想出了這個設計，他都應該被打臉，因爲不管橫看豎看麒麟奇都不像一隻長頸鹿啊！

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?

不過，這麼說未免有點草率，因爲麒麟奇並不是真以長頸鹿的外形爲基礎設計的，而是基於始長頸鹿，它們現今已遭滅絕，卻是長頸鹿非常了不起的的祖先。始長頸鹿外表看起來就像穿了一條斑馬條紋的降落傘褲。除此之外，麒麟奇看似有意識的尾巴和腰脊的設計靈感來自於劍龍，據傳劍龍的臀部隱藏着第二個大腦，但這一說法已被證明不實。老實說，當你讀到這裏，你真的相信神奇寶貝這麼一個遊戲中竟會這麼微妙地暗示關於恐龍屁股上有腦袋的虛假理論嗎？

6.迷脣姐

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在批評的浪潮和不靠譜的90年代報刊文章的影響下匆忙修改了迷脣姐的設計圖，因爲單是看一眼那最初的設計圖你就知道爲何迷脣姐這麼遭人嫌棄了。簡而言之，人們或多或少被迷脣姐的初始設計圖給激怒了，因爲它像是在笨拙地公開攻擊黑人的形象。

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.

當然，我們絕不打算爲黑人扮演這一歧視性行爲辯護，因爲我們不認爲存在任何證據表明迷脣姐的設計來源於此，除非你到現在還認爲白人看到黑人時的第一反應是首先越過他的肩膀往後看。其實，關於迷脣姐設計的靈感來源有四種說法，其中有北歐神話中被凍得皮膚髮黑的公主，還有90年代時一度成爲日本時尚的褐膚金髮，那時女孩們通過這種方式來對日本社會中"魅力"一詞的狹隘含義表示不滿。因爲可能我們永遠也不會得到對迷脣姐初始設計來源的滿意答覆，所以這些說法也就僅僅是說法了。不管怎樣，也許，只是也許，創造了這151個初始神奇寶貝的設計師不是一些又壯又懶的種族主義者，這樣想會讓我們覺得舒服一些吧。

審校：敖有沒 來源：前十網