The 7th generation of Pokémon made its debut in 2016, with the release of Pokémon Sun and Moon, introducing a total of 88 new Pokémon. Among them were the Ultra Beasts, a group of creatures who aren’t originally from the “Pokémon world,” but rather, come from another dimension commonly known as Ultra Space – which pretty much makes them alien. With all this in mind, their designs were rather “atypical” for the franchise, sometimes even becoming a subject of debate among fans.
Illustrator Yusuke Omura, who was a character designer at Game Freak and the lead Pokémon designer since Sun and Moon, recently took to X to discuss some of the design choices behind the 7th generation’s dimension-crossing Ultra Beasts. Apparently, the reason why Ultra Beasts may seem so unusual to some fans is because their designs drew inspiration from many Omura’s past design proposals that were rejected by Ken Sugimori, the Pokémon series’ primary character designer and art director. It seems Omura basically extracted everything about these designs that made them unfit for regular Pokémon to create Ultra Beasts.
Post translation:
I designed the Ultra Beasts by recalling some of the designs I made which were rejected by Mr. Sugimori, and I decided to deliberately use the very reasons for why they were rejected and base the artistic direction of the designs on them. So in some way, they’re like a manifestation of my own resentment– pretty scary.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that I hate Mr. Sugimori or anything like that.
Omura’s post was likely prompted by a fan theory which has recently been gaining a lot of traction on the Japanese side of X. According to the user’s interpretation, the concept for Ultra Beasts was based on “a combination of unrealistic motifs,” “a complete removal from anything Pokémon-like” and “getting filled with a sense of dread at first glance.” So, looking at the Ultra Beasts and thinking that “they aren’t actually Pokémon” is what the creators had intended all along. Omura later confirmed this theory on his X account.
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