#493: Arceus, the Alpha Pokemon
Hoo boy, we've got a big one this week. It's Arceus, the big daddy of all Pokemon, and I do mean that literally. The fourth generation is big on trying to create a creation myth for all of the Pokemon world, and introduced several godlike Pokemon (even more godlike than most legendaries released before or after) that serves the core of not of Sinnoh's myths, but of the Pokemon world as a whole. We have Dialga, the god (or ruler, or aspect, or what-have-you) of time. Palkia, the god of space. Giratina, the god of antimatter. And chief among them? Arceus. Who's just, well, god.
Where to begin, then? In the Generation IV games, Arceus is one of the three event legendary Pokemon alongside Shaymin and Darkrai. While both Shaymin and Darkrai had their obvious 'plot hooks' (Generation IV and V were pretty great at integrating their event legendaries to the in-game stories, unlike VI and VII ) throughout Diamond, Pearl and Platinum in some sub-areas, Arceus's touch is felt throughout the main plot of all three Sinnoh games due to being, y'know, the creator deity that's tied very strongly to the origins of Dialga, Palkia and Giratina, the mascot Pokemon and major players in all three Sinnoh games. References to how Arceus hatched from an egg, created Dialga, Palkia, Giratina and the lake guardians and basically the whole world, could be found in the Canalave Library.
Oh, and add the fact that all of Arceus's specific held items, the Plates, could be found all over Sinnoh and Johto. That's probably a big clue to something... mysterious going on with these plates. The elemental plates are simple held items which increases the power of the type associated to it, similar to items like Charcoal or Mystic Water before them. But attach them to Arceus, and suddenly you realize that the Normal-type god of Pokemon is able to transform its type and the type of its signature move, Judgment. More on that later.
Let's talk inspirations first. Arceus himself is a bit of a mish-mash of multiple Asian creator deities. Sure, it's easy to diss off Arceus as just an overdeigned llama, and honestly that was what I said when I first saw Arceus. I believe my thought process went something along the likes of "the ruler of time is... a dinosaur. Okay. The ruler of space is... godzilla with wings. The ruler of darkness is... a giant pit lord from Warcraft. And the god is... a llama with fabulous hair and a ring that chokes its waist. What?"And, yeah, Arceus's design isn't the best design to come out of Pokemon. I'm pretty sure I've said that in the past as well, in my top ten lists.
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| A Qilin |
But there's some measure of elegance in making the creator of the world of Pokemon be this majestic-looking creature that while looking familiar (he's a horse!) still has aspects of it just looks so unearthly to it. Various sources have tried to pin-point the inspirations behind Arceus, and there's a lot of them. I won't go into too much specifics, but I'll still try. Its base physical form seems to be based on the mythical Chinese creature 麒麟, the Qilin (known as Kirin to the Japanese). The Qilin is not a creator god, but it is an oriental-based equine deity, which tends to be described as a majestic horse or giraffe with draconic features and tends to be the portent of good luck. The Qilin in Chinese mythology certainly isn't rulers -- they were pets of the gods, and are always seen to be inferior to dragons and phoenixes. Yet one aspect of the Qilin that seems to make it into Arceus's design is its benevolence as well as its ability to aid in divine judgment by their ability to see into a person's soul to determine if he or she was wicked.
But while the Qilin explains the origins of Arceus's design, that doesn't really satiate the need for our little search of a creator deity, or the big fat ring that surrounds Arceus's midsection. Some sites note the similarities between Arceus's ring and the Dharmachakra, the wheel of the Dharma in Buddhism and Hinduism that represents reincarnation. It's a sacred symbol that depicts the cycles of reincarnation, and tends to also be heavily associated with the symbols of ideal rulers and universal monarchs. While no such references to reincarnation or the multiple paths of samsara are made in Arceus, it is quite possible that the designers had that in mind while designing Arceus's ring. In the games, anime and manga, Arceus's ring tends to act more as an indicator of what type he's currently transformed into, and a place where his elemental plates weave in and out of.
The concept of a 'first god among many' is a common conncept in many, many mythology, and if we take Japanese mythology, the equivalent would be Kunitokotachi and/or Amenominakanushi (depending on the version of the tale), which is the god that came out of nothingness and created the other gods like Izanagi and Izanami to then create the world, a role that Arceus fulfills -- even if Dialga, Palkia and Giratina rule over more sci-fi concepts as opposed to Izanagi and Izanami's yin and yang.
Arceus's own myth, that he rose from an egg, and then shaped the universe, bears a resemblance to various 'World Eggs/Cosmic Eggs' found in the creation myths of various religions and mythologies, but most resembles the Chinese myth of Pan Gu. In Chinese myths, the world was created when an egg within nothingness hatched and created the giant deity Pan Gu, who would separate the yin and yang forces of the world and create land and sky, holding up the sky and separating them until his eventual death, upon which parts of his body would become parts of the world as we know it (his breath became wind, his eyes become the Sun and Moon, etc). Meanwhile, some Pokedex entries for Arceus (the Diamond version in particular) note that he shaped the world with one thousand arms, which is similar to the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, who is often pictured with eleven heads and one thousand arms.
I could go on and on. With Nintendo keeping mum about the specific deities that came were utilized when designing Arceus (or maybe it's just a sketch that everyone liked), the resulting creature looked... well, godlike. while not appearing to be human at all. Which is fine. Arceus was the god of all Pokemon, after all. He would look nothing like a human. Regardless of what is true and what is not, the Pokedex entries all agree that Arceus existed before the world, hatched from an egg, and shaped the world as we know it.
Oh, pronunciation! No one can agree how Arceus is supposed to be pronounced, even among official material. The Japanese katakana, アルセウス, translates into "Aruseusu", which in English would be something like ar-say-oos. However, throughout various other games and anime adaptations, we've had ar-say-oos, ar-cee-yoos and ark-ee-us. I dunno, I don't think that the pronunciation with the hard ARK like the third one is particularly easy for me to imagine in my head when I read the word Arceus, and I always inevitably read it as either ar-say-oos or ar-cee-yoos in my head. But I understand that Nintendo would want to move away from the ar-cee-yoos pronounciation for the simple reason that it sounds like, y'know, arse. With how Silvally and Type: Null have the whole "RKS System" thing, I guess they're doubling down on the ark-ee-us pronunciation?
It's particularly hard because unlike most other Pokemon names, what inspired Arceus's name isn't clear. Arch? Arc? Archon? Arcane? Archaic? Archetype? Aureus? Deus? Zeus? Bulbapedia gives like six more of these.
Oh, and I suppose I have to talk a little about Type: Null and Silvally, a Pokemon that could similarly transform its type depending on its held item, is a mainly-white quadrupedal Normal-type Pokemon... it's obvious that Silvally was designed to mimic Arceus, with some of the Aether Foundation documents you find in Sun and Moon noting that they obtained some of the data for Type: Null's creation from Sinnoh. Time will tell if Silvally and Arceus would have more tie-ins beyond that, though.
There's a bit of a dispute between Mew versus Arceus as the creator of all Pokemon, considering how Mew has also been claimed to be the originator of all Pokemon. It honestly could go either way. Maybe Mew laid the egg that became Arceus? Or maybe when Arceus created the universe, Mew was the first Pokemon to be created there? Eh, either way, it honestly doesn't matter.
In fiction, Arceus was the star of the honestly rushed and underwhelming HeartGold/SoulSilver portion of the Pokemon Adventures arc, which felt like a huge attempt to tie in everything that's been going on in previous arcs to some big Arceus plot. I dunno. It felt kinda weak and rushed to me. In the anime, Arceus made its big debut in the twelfth movie, Pokemon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life, where Arceus descended upon the world and unleashed a crapton of judgment because of humanity's betrayal of it in ancient times (they stole his plates, which weakens him), while Dialga, Palkia and Giratina, befriended by Team Ash in the previous two movies, fought Arceus off while Ash went back in time to do stuff. It's... well, I'm not the biggest fan of that movie, but it's a pretty neat story. Arceus is also heavily involved in the Hoopa movie, although he only shoes up as a deus ex machina near the end.
In the games, Arceus tends to be portrayed as the creator and all that jazz, and was involved in two separate event-triggered... well, events in the fourth generation games. There was supposed to be an Azure Flute event item that allowed you to walk up from Mt. Coronet to the Halls of Origin and encounter the god above the god you just caught, but that never happened. Instead, we got the bizarre Sinjoh Falls event Arceus instead. Sinjoh Falls is a weird location beyond space-time that can be accessed from both Sinnoh and Johto, vaguely related to the Ruins of Alph and Unown (what's the deal with these fuckers, huh?), and there Arceus can simply... create a Dialga, Palkia and Giratina. Through a very bizarre cutscene ritual that shows images from the real world (apparently, according to some of the game makers, in that scene Arceus just created a new parallel universe for him to pluck the Dialga/Palkia/Giratina out of for you). Yeah, mind-fuckery. Arceus's also a major player in the weird Japanese history/Pokemon crossover game Conquest, but I never played that game and I don't know much about it.
Arceus has insane stats, having a full 120 on all of its statlines, sitting at a total of 720 -- a good 40 stats more than the previous record-winner, Mewtwo. And it held this position as the undisputed god of stats until the sixth generation, where Mewtwo's Mega Evolutions eclipsed Arceus once more -- but there's no shame to being eclipsed by Mewtwo. Oh, and later on the Primal versions of the Hoenn weather legendaries also eclipsed Arceus... but what's to say that Arceus doesn't have a Mega Evolution or Primal Reversion or what-have-you mode in the future?
Arceus also has the ability Multitype, allowing him to transform his type depending on the plate you give him. Sadly, unlike what you see in the anime or manga, Arceus can't do this on a whim thanks to balance reasons, but it's still pretty cool. He also has access to the insanely powerful 100-damage STAB Judgment, which will change its type similarly to whatever plate Arceus is holding. Portrayed in the anime as a storm of meteors striking down and destroying everything on the ground like the wrath of god.
Arceus's own learn set isn't actually very impressive, Judgment aside. It's mainly normal-type moves, with a couple of Psychic-types thrown in, as well as Seismic Toss (Fighting), Punishment (Dark) and Earth Power (Ground) but it can learn neraly all TMs. And also gain STAB from them if you so choose. So yeah. (I have an Arceus sitting in my Pokemon Y save file from that 20th Anniversary event. I can't really use him in Wi-Fi battles or whatever, but he's an immensely powerful motherfucker and Judgment looks really cool in 3D animation.)
So yeah. I've spoken at relative length about the god-creator of the Pokemon world, Arceus. A lot of Arceus's mythology in the games itself honestly is still very vague and mystical, which honestly fits it just fine -- as the creator of all Pokemon you're not really supposed to understand Arceus, even if it'll apparently just hang out in a pokeball and unleash the wrath of god upon my command on a level 2 Pidgey just for shits and giggles.
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