Well, it’s time once again for another one of my Interesting Specimen posts. For this week I thought I’d talk about a Pokemon that is not just out of this world, but out of this universe as well, the Unown.
Obviously the girl in the image I found isn’t the Pokemon in question, those black things that are flying around her and making up parts of her dress are. This is just the best image I could find without doing an extensive search. Anyway, there are two big reasons why the Unown have landed in the Interesting Specimens category. The first is that they come in twenty-eight different shapes, with the first twenty-six representing letters of the alphabet, and the last two representing punctuation. This makes the Unown the first Pokemon to have different forms. The second big reason for being in the Interesting Specimen category is that the Unown come from another dimension, and they’re the first known Pokemon to have this trait.
In the Games: In Gold, Silver, and Crystal, and their remakes, HeartGold and SoulSilver, the Unown can be found in the mysterious Ruins of Alph. But first one needs to solve a series of puzzles to summon the Unown to our dimension. The ruins themselves are also quite interesting. When the radio is played within the ruins, one hears a very strange signal of some kind. And from what I’ve recently read, in HeartGold and SoulSilver, the signal sound like a mixture of the distorted cries of Ho-Oh, and the melody of the Azure Flute, the item used in Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum to open the gate to Arceus’s realm.
The Ruins of Alph also receive a little addition in HeartGold and SoulSilver. When the player brings Arceus to the ruins, they gain access to a place called the Sinjoh Ruins. There, the player can then use Arceus to “give birth” to a level one Dialga, Palkia, or Giratina. There are other places where the Unown can be found within the games. In FireRed and LeafGreen they’re located in the Tanoby Chambers in the Sevii Islands. While in Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum, they can be found in the Solaceon Ruins of Sinnoh. Not having played those games myself though, I can’t really tell you much about these spots.
As far as battling goes, the Unown are the last Pokemon I’d use. Basically they’re interesting but useless. The Unown only learn one move, Hidden Power, and their stats aren’t the best in the world. The anime has shown though that while one Unown is pretty much nothing, several are a force to be reckoned with. The awesome collective power of the Unown is implied in certain Pokedex entries, but it doesn’t really help in the game itself.
Legendary Connections: In Pokemon Crystal it’s implied that Suicune has some sort of connection to the Unown, and by extension so does Ho-Oh. That implication seems to have been carried over to other games. There also seems to be a definite connection between the Unown and Arceus implied in HeartGold and SoulSilver. Also as I mentioned before, the strange radio signal in the Ruins of Alph sounds like a mix of the distorted cries of Ho-Oh and the Azure Flute in HeartGold and SoulSilver. It makes one wonder about the nature of these connections, and if there might be a direct connection between Ho-Oh and Arceus as well.
That wraps it up for this week. I have a couple more ideas for next week though, so until next time.
