After I got myself a copy of the magazine and scanned it all, I decided to take all this a bit further. With access to the best possible quality images of it, I couldn't just leave it at that. Given we only had a very poor translation of the page, I got Obskyr from Team Spaceworld to retranslate the page for us. So now, we have an improved translation erasing any grey areas that we initially had. Due to my PNG Copy being 16.3 MB I couldn't get it on here, but you can view it here. To compensate and for a more streamlined experience for you all, there's a JPEG version below. So overall, this translation has some key differences thanks to the kanji being legible: firstly, it confirms that Tyranitar was a throwaway design. I went over this in two articles, which you can see here and here. However, the latter is thrown into question. You see, Sugimori states here that these were original designs, made for a parallel universe of sorts. A separate world, in his words. Thus, these designs were never intended to be canon at all. This is more of a practice go or something, although the motivation is not mentioned. Thus, that's speculation. In regards to my Tyranitar Dev History Article being thrown into question, it's mainly because I claimed that Ken Sugimori likely polished Gyaoon to make Tyranitar. While Question 3 does support this, Question 1 does not. In fact, Question 1 could outright deconfirm this: Ken Sugimori claims they are original. However, polishing an old design and using it could also be just as good as an original. It could be a final hurrah for a Pokemon Design he had a kinship with. Or, he revived the concept of a Godzilla-like Pokemon as I said. It could mean anything, and sadly this is the one question we'll leave with: was Tyranitar a revived concept, or an original throwaway design before its inception in the final game? I believe this also confirms that Hitmontop was never, ever a part of this. From this I infer that this is simply a non-canon design (as stated in the original interview) that was taken from the Clefairy formula. They feel sort of similar. Possibly a Clefairy in a parallel universe as he claimed? Now for the turtle design. I agree with the masses that this could well have indirectly inspired Tirtouga. There are some very strong similarities between the two, although there are some differences between them that are natural with age. Now, I believe that the Clefairy-Hitmontop mishmash was laid to bed quickly after this magazine was published. I think Ken Sugimori did what he did in Question 3 to bring Tyranitar into being: looked back at the magazine, liked the idea, and pitched it. The turtle, I believe, was redesigned across multiple generations to eventually become Tirtouga.
So there we go! The Sugimori Interview has been retranslated and we have answers!
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About meSo I really, really like researching Prototype Pokemon information. That's about it. I also do things on Smogon, I guess. Archives
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