Pokemon of the Week #28: Granbull

# 210: Granbull, the Fairy Pokemon

Obviously, if we're going to cover all the types before November we can't go with one Pokemon a week (plus I kinda need to make some extra articles for September anyway) so 'Pokemon of the Week' might be a misnomer since we'll be having multiple Pokemon of the Week articles in a single week. Just take it as me making up for the many weeks that I didn't actually do the article.

So we jump from one of the oldest types to the absolute newest -- Fairy. Fairy type was introduced a couple of years ago, in Generation VI, and obviously has the least members among the 800+ Pokemon currently in existence. Sure, Generation VI and VII introduced a fair bit of Fairy-types, and a couple of older Pokemon are retconned into Fairy-types (basically most of the pink cute ones) and it's one such retconned Pokemon we're going to talk about now.

And Granbull being the choice for my Fairy-type article is... interesting. I could go for the obvious 'aww adorable pink buds' like Jigglypuff, Clefairy or Sylveon, but I feel it's far more interesting to dicsuss Granbull. So when Granbull and his pre-evolution Snubbull were among the list of older Pokemon given the Fairy typing, And while there is exactly one other retconned Pokemon that's more questionable than Granbull (Mr. Mime, hello?), Granbull got some people scratching their heads.

For me, I know my Pokemon lore and ever since Generation II Snubbull and Granbull has always been called the 'Fairy Pokemon' in the Pokedex, so it's not as surprising as, y'know, the mime Pokemon given the Fairy typing. It is a bit odd, though, why a Pokemon that's just a big purple humanoid bulldog with gigantic fangs is given the Fairy typing, when, as I said before, Normal seemed to be the 'animal' type in Pokemon.

So I did a bit of research (yes, research!) into whether there is such a thing as a dog fairy... and lo and behold, the first thing on google is the Cu Sith, a mythological dog fairy in Scottish folklore, comparable to the similar Cu Sidhe in Irish folklore. The Cu Sith is a hound the size of a bull, with shaggy dark green fur with paws shaped like a man's hand, and is feared as the harbinger of death that sometimes lets out three -- specifically three -- bays that will cause anyone who hears all three to be terrified to death.

And, er... it's actually a very, very far stretch from the lore between Granbull and the Cu Sith beyond both of them being dogs, and both of them being fairies. Looking through its Pokedex entries and assorted lore, none of them mention anything similar to the terrifying stuff that the Cu Sith has. Granbull is actually timid and easily spooked, its fangs are sometimes too heavy for its head, it is the true epitome of 'bark is worse than its bite', scaring smaller Pokemon with how it looks. 

I tried looking for anything from Japanese culture, but can't really find any dog myths that would fit Granbull's inspiration. I mean, Snubbull at least has the weird clown dress thing that kinda might be a fairy if you really, really squint, but that's really forcing a reason onto something without one.

Even in design, Granbull is based on a humanoid bulldog with oversized fangs instead of a hound, as the description for Cu Sith states. So, um, why are Snubbull (clown bulldog) and Granbull (scary man bulldog) categorized as fairies again? Maybe it's the whole 'scary but actually nice' misunderstood fae trope? I dunno. Well, um... Okay, yeah, it's a tenuous connection and honestly it's hard to really say why whoever was writing the Generation II entries decided that the two of them are Fairy Pokemon seemingly arbitrarily. But there you go.

Snubbull is pretty dang prominent in the anime for generation II, being a recurring Pokemon that appeared every second episode to bite Meowth's tail. Because ha ha, dogs and cats, right? Snubbull isn't a very common encounter, but not vanishingly rare, and Snubbull evolves into Granbull by plain ol' level up. He's a very slow physical attacker, and while he's honestly a shit, boring Normal-type in generation II, Generation IV gave Granbull the elemental fangs, and a crapton more elemental TM moves. Someone at Nintendo must really like Granbull, because through V to VII, he just keeps getting Dark, Dragon and obviously Fairy moves added to his movepool. and, jeez, just look at his TM learn list! He's honestly still a bit crappy, but he's a physical Fairy-type attacker with a wide learnset, and that's pretty dang cool. He's no Azumarill, but still, at least not entirely crap.

He's... he's not really been super-relevant, erally. No gym leaders or prominent characters use Snubbull or Granbull, and like many Generation II Pokemon he's just kind of forgettable. Well, he was. He used to be 'that boring pink dog'. Now he's 'that boring pink dog that is a Fairy for some reason'. 

Granbull is honestly a pretty interesting Pokemon simply because of the retcon from pure Normal to pure Fairy, and out of all the other Pokemon that didn't actually gain the Fairy type (Audino! Chansey!) Granbull doesn't look any more fairy-er than any of them. He's an interesting discussion piece on just what constitutes a Fairy, and sadly we don't really come to any proper conclusions beyond a brief discussion about the myth of the Cu Sith. It does kind of show that sometimes, um, there really isn't a specific, smart reason behind things. I dunno. Maybe if I get the time I'll do another Fairy-type article with a pink fluffball. I just already realize the futility of trying to compare Granbull to the Cu Sith after I've finished working on this one. Oh well, live and learn.