I’ve decided to do something a little different for this week’s Legendary Pokemon of the Week post. This is technically a Pokemon I’ve already talked about in a previous post, but umchan and I ended up talking this particular variation of the Pokemon I speak of a few days ago. So for this week I thought I’d go beyond the mainstream games and cover this Pokemon. The following information was obtained from recently declassified military documents (actually I just read some stuff on Bulbapedia and serebii.net). Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Pokemon XD001, Shadow Lugia.
Shadow Lugia is a dark variation of Lugia that appears exclusively in the in the consol game, Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness. It was created by the criminal organization, Cipher, to be the ultimate Shadow Pokemon. I guess I should start by explaining what a Shadow Pokemon is. Shadow Pokemon are a concept that was introduced in Pokemon Colosseum and used again obviously in Gale of Darkness. To put it simply they are Pokemon that have been through unknown means filled with a sort of darkness that “shuts the door to a Pokemon’s heart” and turns them into ruthless, emotionless fighting machines.
One of the major objectives of both Colosseum and Gale of Darkness is to purify all Shadow Pokemon and return them to normal. This is often done using methods similar to the ones for say evolving Eevee into an Espeon or Umbreon. Shadow Lugia is different however; it was created to be the ultimate Shadow Pokmeon immune to all methods of purification. The darkness filling Shadow Lugia is so great that it looks completely different from a normal Lugia. One could probably assume that Shadow Lugia is a sort of clone that was filled with darkness from birth.
Shadow Moves: All Shadow Pokemon have at least one attack in their move set that’s of the Shadow-type. Shadow-type moves are super effective against all non-Shadow Pokemon, which gives them a major advantage in battle. Normal Shadow Pokemon usually seem to know only one or two Shadow moves, sometimes the stronger ones know three. But being a “pure” Shadow Pokemon, Shadow Lugia knows four. The moves are Shadow Blast, Shadow Down, Shadow Remove, and Shadow Storm.
Shadow Blast is basically the Shadow version of a normal Lugia’s signature move, Aeroblast. Shadow Blast isn’t quite as powerful as Aeroblast, but with the general super effectiveness of Shadow-type moves it doesn’t make much difference. Shadow Down is a move that greatly lowers the opponent’s Defense stat. Shadow Remove is an attack that, as the name suggests, removes the effects of moves like Light Screen and Safeguard. Finally there’s Shadow Storm, which creates a powerful twister that can hit multiple opponents.
Purification: Despite being the ultimate Shadow Pokemon, there is a way to purify Shadow Lugia, and it lies with the Purification Chambers in Gale of Darkness. The Purification Chambers are a way to speed up the purification process. First one needs to put four already purified or non-Shadow Pokemon into the outer ring of the chamber in a circle, and arrange them so that one has a type advantage against the one next to it in a clockwise order, like say Fire, followed by Ice, followed by Grass, followed by water. With the proper type order is in place the chamber is at maximum tempo and the purification process goes faster. Next all that’s left is to place the Shadow Pokemon in question in the center of the chamber and watch as it becomes purified.
With Shadow Lugia, all nine chambers have to be at maximum tempo, and when placed in the center of any of the chambers it’s instantly purified and becomes a normal Lugia. Though its original Shadow moves will be replaced by a somewhat odd assortment. It learns Hydro Pump, which it would normally learn by leveling up, and Earthquake, which it can learn by TM. But it also learns Feather Dance, and for some reason Deoxys’s signature move, Psycho Boost. Still, once Shadow Lugia is purified it can be traded onto the mainstream Gen. Three games. This was the only way to get Lugia in Generation Three without a special event.
That pretty much covers it for this week. Next week I’ll be wrapping up the Legendary Pokemon of Johto. So until then stay tuned.
