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The Ever Changing Pikachu

C

Clefable

Spatial Princess
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Concept Art:
Early_Pikachu.png

I remember the first pikachu. Small and round and tubby.
025Pikachu_RG.png
Pikachu-original.png
That thing was adorable.

The Anime came along, and as the anime most often does, stuck it's foot in it.
The earliest anime had a rotund Pikachu. Compare two early episodes; the first pic is Episode 1, Pokemon I Choose You, and the second is from a richie episode, which occured early on. Even So, Ep1 Pika still had the inklings of a neck.
Pikachuep1.jpg
EP078.png

And we got this.
025Pikachu.png

Images Spoilered for size.

Somewhere along the line, Pikachu slimmed and gained a neck. I, for one, prefer the little tubby jumping pikachu a shown in the second picture of the second spoiler.

If the Anime had kept with its original, tubby artwork, would Pikachu be different today?
 
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I've looked back at early Anime, and Pikachu was indeed still a rather rotund mouse. But as early as the richie episode, it changed drastically.

Hmm.
 
my guess, they might have stopped thinkinig the chubby pika wasn't cute anymore
 
I actually like the slimmer Pika better...it looks cuter IMO. But both are cute so it doesn't matter.
 
I like the concept art the most myself. But the slimmest Pikachu is my second favorite.
 
Glad I'm not the only one who noticed pikachu dropped quite a bit of weight. It still actually 'weighs' the same though. Must be all that muscle.
 
As much as I hate Pikachu I'd have to say the "skinny" one is better because people always are in awe how "fast" Ash's Pikachu is.
 
Obviously since the anime was going to be using Pikachu for marketing, the concept art was depicting Ash's Pikachu.

Which lost weight due to all their rigorous training.

Which leads me to conclude that all of Bruno's Pokemon must have an eating disorder if his Onix is still an Onx's normal weight...

EDIT: No wait Pika has a tapeworm that must be it
 
Your screenshot from Pokémon, I Choose You is my favourite Pikachu "stage", I think. I really don't like the current Pikachu, though.
Same goes for the sprites, actually.
If we look at Red/Green and Red/Blue sprites here:
Spr_1g_025.png
Spr_1b_025.png

Both of these are fairly chubby. But as early as Yellow Pikachu's sprite started slimming; Probably due to the Anime slimming Pikachu a bit, as Clefable said.
Spr_1y_025.png

And now, the sprites of Pikachu are really thin - at least they look it to me. I just don't think it suits the Pokémon at all.
Spr_4h_025_m.png
 
They did this with everyone, not just Pikachu. The trainers got slimmer, look it Red in Red Version, and Red in FireRed. And that's a remake. Lucas is a lot thinner than Red. This goes for most of the people. I think they really started on the slimming down of things in Gen3. Gen2 was still a bit chunky. As for the Anime, I think they wanted to look more agile, like some others have said.

I mean, look at Gen1 Game Blastoise... He looks super round, his face is huge. Now... not so much. He's still big, but a lot less round.
 
I like the Red/Blue sprite the best <.<
I dont care if its tubby, i think its cute.
 
Yes, all of the original 151 and a fair amount of Johtoians have changed, because of going from Sugimoris old to new style.

But aside from colour-changing Mew, Pikachu is the one thats altered so drastically.

I have a theory. The original, tubby pika had rather short and stubby limbs. The japenese anime artists needed more flexibility so Pikachu could do more things, so they slimmed and elongated him. Now, Anime Pika does a huge amount of things it probably wouldn't find easy with stubby arms.

I still like tubby pika though.
 
Spr_1y_025.png



This is the best size for pikachu. I hate the fat ones from Red/Blue the most though, especially the back sprite, seriously it's like the second most glutton-est pokemon beside snorlax in the first gen.
 
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