40. Wigglytuff

Wigglytuff's design has changed drastically over the years. You can barely recognise it anymore! Observe the sprites. First, it had white tips on its ears, then it didn't, and now it does again! Also, the white fur on its stomach used to stop underneath its mouth, and now it extends past it! The job of a character designer never ends.

I had a good chuckle reading up on Wigglytuff on Bulbapedia (spoiler: 99% of how I write this blog). It says, “Wigglytuff's name is a combination of wiggly and tuff —...tuff may refer to either its toughness or the tuft of hair on its head (Pokémon names can only be ten characters in length, and Wigglytough would be eleven).” Yeah, I think you can safely rule out the “tough” bit Bulbapedia. Having high HP and no defense doesn't make a pokemon tough, unless by tough you mean it may still have health after any proper attack does a gazillion million damage to it.

Furthermore, we have yet another stone-evolved, move-illiterate pokemon here. Were they all clustered together in the pokedex? It could be worse though; they could be trade-evolved pokemon. Hissssss

But believe it or not, I'm not here to hate on Wigglytuff. I actually really like its design. There is something about it that is very prominent and unsettling. I'll give you a hint.

Jeepers peepers.

Wigglytuff has a soul-piercing gaze for the ages. It basically has Jigglypuff's eyes transplanted onto a bigger, more bunnyish body, and yet Jigglypuff's stare isn't nearly as skin-crawly. I'm not sure why this is. Consistently Wigglytuff is given the most circular, empty, marble eyeballs possible, directed square at the viewer... am I just imagining this? Is it the fault of early game sprites, or the anime? Maybe I should check out Sugimori's original artwork for this pokemon, see how he envisioned it looki—OH MY GOD








Not only are they perfectly round and symmetrical, they also appear to be reflecting a sunlit vision of Elysium. Maybe Wigglytuff looks as it does because its eyes see nothing but death. That should have been one of its pokedex entries! Nintendo dropped the ball there.

I also like how Wigglytuff had its own Jungle expansion pack, because nothing says “Jungle” like a giant pink bunny. Apparently Wigglytuff is hard-ass enough to handle itself in any extreme environment (note the green eye reflections in that pic, by the way). Finally, I want to give a shout out to the Jigglypuff family's pre-evolution, Igglybuff. Normally I hate baby pokemon, but this one might actually surpass Wigglytuff's creepiness. Look at this thing:

You've got the blood-red eyes, and what I can only assume is some kind of Wiccan symbol on its forehead. Clearly this is a hellspawn.

The winner:
FireRed and LeafGreen




A fun side-quest for this blog would be to determine which of the first two GameBoy sprites is the scariest. It's a close call. One's got the crazed asymmetry, but giving it two oversized dinner plate eyes doesn't exactly improve matters.

From there, though, they try to go the cute route, giving Wigglytuff more scaled-down, Jigglypuff eyes. It loses some character that way though; Jigglypuff looks good with slight crosseyes, but on HG/SS here it just looks mildly daft. R/S is, I think, the first time I've seen a pokemon given an official :3 face.

FR/LG I think best captures Wigglytuff's weirdness. Instead of making it just look happy and playful, they gave it a more ambiguous expression, like it just might be batshit insane.