Pokemon of the Week #17: Araquanid

#752 Araquanid, the Water Bubble Pokemon

Okay, we're back with this. Right, from now on I'm going to do a different kind of randomization, because sometimes I just luck on something I don't particularly have much to talk about (like the previous entry, Pansear), so I'll just talk about things that I'm slightly more interested in talking about, and that'll change from week to week, whether that be generation or type. So let's pick one of the newest generation of Pokemon, Araquanid. 

Araquanid is one of the generation's two new dual-typed Water/Bug Pokemon, the other being one of my favourites from the generation, Golisopod. Where Golisopod is a far more offensive creature with a drawback ability, Araquanid is far more defensive. It has a pretty high base Sp. Defense of 132 and a respectable Defense of 92, and its offensive capabilities leans more towards the physical, which is nice because Araquanid gets access to two pretty devastating new physical moves -- Liquidation and Lunge, which are water and bug respectively. He also gets Crunch and the newly-buffed-to-insanity Leech Life, and via TMs get X-Scissor and Waterfall, as well as Poison Jab for that coverage. In the games, Araquanid and his pre-evolution, Dewpider, is found in the Malie garden during the day (in the night their fellow water-dwelling insect Masquerain takes over).

Also, Araquanid looks like a super badass spider monster. We've had spider Pokemon previously, of course, mainly Spinarak and Ariados, who are chunkier spiders; and Joltik and Galvantula, based on the tarantula spider. All the spiders in Pokemon have six legs, though -- someone really needs a lesson in biology.

Meanwhile, Araquanid is this gigantic, thing with spindly legs, a truly alien and bug-like face with long, sideways eyes, gigantic mandible fangs, little bubble cushions on his joints and a bubble of water around its head. It looks sinister, like some enemy out of a sci-fi game, and I love Araquanid for it. See, spiders and myself have had a... strange history over the years. I used to be an arachnophobe as a child, but over the years exposure therapy and Spider-Man movies have kind of flipped it upside-down. Now I'll freak out over real-life spiders, but I've grown so fascinated with the amount of things a spider can do -- which is a lot. See, spiders have invaded every surface of the world's land other than Antarctica due to the sheer variation of them and their adaptations to catching prey.

You'd think that the water would be safe from spiders, but, oh no. Meet the diving bell spider, otherwise known in the scientific community by the name Argyroneta aquatica. There's a Japanese variant (which I bet Araquanid is based on), too, though for the life of me I can't tell the difference. Some spiders, like the raft spider, can walk on the water surface and fish for tadpoles and fish babies, but the diving bell spider takes it a degree further. See, the diving bell spider, despite spending its entire life underwater, cannot breathe underwater. So it goes up to the surface, grabs a bubble of air with its web, and pulls it down into the aquatic plants to create a personal little dome of air in the pond it's living in, secured by web. Diffusion of oxygen and carbon dioxide can actually happen between the spider's air bubble and the water around it due to the relatively small size of the bubble, so there's no problem for the diving bell spider. When it wants to hunt, it just pulls a small bubble around its abdomen (where the spider's version of lungs are located) and swims around, being a demonic underwater spider that chomps down on anything it can find.

So Araquanid is the diving bell spider flipped around. Whereas the diving bell spider is a land creature who lives on land by carrying a bubble of air,  Araquanid is an aquatic creature who migrates onto the land by carrying a bubble of water. It's so insanely weird and awesome that they didn't just adapt the animal whole-sale and actually added a little variation to it.

I also do like that Araquanid has very few poison moves -- it learns Toxic (everyone does, really) and Poison Jab via TM, but just like Galvantula, I appreciate how not every spider is given poisonous attacks. Nearly every RPG game likes to just dumb spiders down to 'poisonous' and 'web', where they have so many other different things you can adapt into an RPG system.

Araquanid's Pokedex entries are conflicting on whether it's a savage predator or a misunderstood beast, though. The Sun entry claims that Araquanid headbutts smaller Pokemon to suck them into  its water bubble and drown them, presumably to then be ingested with those creepy-looking fangs. Its Moon entry, on the other hand, talks about how Araquanid cares for others, and protectively brings vulnerable weak Pokemon into its water bubble. So either Araquanid uses its bubble to both hunt and protect weaker Pokemon, or it's just a poor clumsy big dude who thinks that, hey, the water bubble keeps him alive, so clearly these smaller weak Pokemon can be protected by my bubble too! Except they drown. Or something. At the moment of writing this episode, Bulbapedia has not listed any appearances of Araquanid in anime or manga, although presumably they'll go for the gentle scary protector part. Nintendo never likes villifying their Pokemon. 

Araquanid's name is also awesome. Mixing arachnid and aqua? Genius! Its Japanese name, Onishizukumo, is based on onigumo, literally using the kanji for ghost/devil spider. Onigumo actually refers to a different spider, the orb weavers, that has nothing to do with how Araquanid is based on or looks.

Also, to close this off, while regular Araquanid is a cool green-and-blue thing, shiny Araquanid looks like a goddamned Predacon, with purples and dark reds all around. Awesome.