Of the more than 1,000 Pokémon that exist and have been created over the last almost 30 years, it is indisputable that the one that has always monopolized the greatest prominence has been Pikachu. The Electric-type Pokémon has become one of the best-known video game characters worldwide and without a doubt the most recognizable face within the Pokémon universe.
A detail related to Pikachu is that He has always been nicknamed “the electric rat”. However, the curious thing about this matter is that it is actually a mistake to give such a title to this creature from the first generation of the saga, given that its design is based on that of a completely different animal and not on that of a rat.
Atsuko Nishida, the artist who ended up giving life to Pikachu, was the one who came to reveal in reality was inspired by squirrels and not on rats to imagine what it would look like:
At that time, I really liked squirrels. So I wanted the character to have puffy cheeks. Squirrels’ tails are very cute (that’s why I wanted him to have a tail). However, I wanted the character to have some element of electricity, so that’s why I gave him a lightning shape.
The fact that Pikachu has red cheeks It is because squirrels are able to store food inside their mouth, so in their case they would be able to store electricity in their cheeks. In addition, squirrels are very fast and agile animals, which are just some of the main characteristics of Pikachu. Even so, Nishida was aware that squirrels were not popular in Japan at that time.
Despite all this, the fact that In the end he was considered a rat by the founder of Game Freak, Satoshi Tajiri. He himself was the one who called him Pikachu, which comes from “pika”, which is the onomatopoeia that sparks make, while “chu” is the onomatopoeia of the sounds of mice, hence in the end it was considered a rat everywhere in the world.
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