Most Probably, That It Wasn’t (it Was Long Ago And I Don’t Remember It Exactly), But I’m Sure That

Well, Blastoise with backwards-facing cannons would make sense, because these cannons would be able to act like a water thrusters and allow this turtle to achieve surprisingly high speed in water, or even act like a water-based jet pack for short hops and sharp direction changes. In short, backwards-cannons Blastoise trades firepower for speed and maneuverability.

I found a mutated bulbasaur plushie

There’s a small mistake about the Battle Pyramid - it has 5 rotors instead of four. The fifth one is hidden on the down side of the main hull of the Pyramid and can be observed during the crash scene.

Also, it isn't a dex entry, but I'd be curious to know what your thoughts are on possible flight systems for the airships we've seen in the series, in particular the Hikoukyuu, Megarig, and Battle Pyramid.

I’ll be honest–I’m not all that familiar with the anime. That being said, this question is so interesting, I just have to tackle it. I did, after all, run a whole week on Pokémon Flight–it only seems fair that I cover the man-made airships too.

The Hikoukyuu

The “Flying Palace” makes its debut in the second-ever pokémovie, Pokémon 2000. I had actually seen this one before I watched them for this post, although that was probably at least 8 years ago. The Flying Palace is the airship of the evil Lawrence, who seeks out to selfishly “collect” Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres.

The only flying mechanisms it seems to have are the tiny propellers attacked to the top and bottom of the craft–roughly 40 in total. It also has about 20 propellors along the sides.

Propellers work using Bernoulli’s Principle. Basically, they are shaped in a way that air must travel farther to go over them than under them, creating a pressure difference, and thus creating an upward force.

As far as I can tell, the propellers on the sides do absolutely nothing to lift it into the air. In my opinion, they are more likely wind turbines, harvesting the air rushing past and turning it into energy, to power the engines or supply electricity for Lawrence’s unecessarily large holograph machine.

You have to understand, this thing is massive. Quoting Bulbapedia, the Flying Palace is “about the size of a small city” and likely weighs at least 100,000 tons (200,000,000 lbs). To fly, the propellers must generate at minimum that much, or about 5 million pounds of lift per propellor.

Now, without even touching the math I can tell you without it that this is already incredibly ridiculous and there’s no way this thing could fly. Even if I considered the lessened gravity of the Pokémon Universe. It must use some other mechanism to fly.

I could say that it is actually in orbit above the pokémon planet, but we see multiple shots of the ship close to the ground, and it even crashes at the end of the movie.

I could say that it has some magnetic mechanism helping it out, but a field of that magnitude would serious mess up anyone near/inside the ship (since we are mostly made of water, a polar molecule), let alone destroy his equipment.

Yeah, no idea how this thing flies.

The Megarig

The Megarig (and its smaller sister ship, the Mecha Giratina) appear in Giratina and the Sky Warrior, piloted by the antagonist Zero and auto-piloted by the program called Infi.

The Megarig doesn’t fly, but rather appears to hover–more on that in a bit, but the more prominent feature about the MegaRig is that is possesses the ability to freely hop between the distortion realm and back through portals, much like Giratina.

To dimension-travel like it does, the Megarig must use some kind of wormhole. There are technically several different, totally acceptable mathematical models of wormholes. The problem is, in the realm of physics we currently understand, there is no form of energy good enough to keep the wormhole stable for more than a few microseconds.

There are several hypotheses that there is an energy–they call it “Exotic Matter”–that we don’t know of yet that could stabilize a wormhole. The Megarig is able to harness this, and create stable wormholes to jump between dimensions freely.

And, energy is energy. Because Exotic Energy does not interact with our bodies or any form of matter we currently have (like a magnetic field would), it makes a near perfect candidate for the Megarig’s hovering.

The Battle Pyramid

The Battle Frontier is great. The Battle Frontier in the anime is possibly even better. In the anime, the Battle Pyramid is a giant, flying hunk of metal that is constantly changing location. The location is only given to those who have defeated the other six challenges, and is the Frontier equivalent of beating the E4.

It flies through giant turbines attached to the pyramid. It reminds me a lot of Marvel’s helicarrier, recently in the Avengers films. Four massive turbines, one giant hunk of metal.

I’m going to assume that the Pyramid is about the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza, so about 140 meters tall and 230 meters each way along the base. The Great Pyramid (made of limestone) has a mass of around six trillion (6,000,000,000) kg, which I will also assume for the battle pyramid (made of some kind of metal).

I’m following this process, which took data from Boeing to see how big the rotors would have to be for this thing to fly. Even for Earth’s gravity (g=9.8 m/s^2), These propellers need a radius of around 6,000 meters to fly. I don’t know about you, but those propellers don’t look thirty times longer than the base of the pyramid to me.

But okay, my estimate for the weight was pretty big. A flying pyramid is probably not made out of heavy limestone blocks, but more likely some light material, closer to aluminum or carbon fiber. So, let’s work backwards here. The radius of the propellors look about ¼ the length of the whole thing. Let’s call it 60 meters. With that, the propellers can generate as much as 550,000 kg of thrust. As long as the Battle Pyramid weighs less than that, it can fly.

If it was made from Carbon Fiber, which has a density of 1600 kg/m^3, it might be able to meet this criteria. But only might.

Thanks for your question!

You’re lucky. Once I’ve watched a movie with plot-crucial scene subtitled as “I have no idea what are they talking about”.

I’m watching a movie that’s in about a dozen languages and everything is subtitled EXCEPT when a character gets up on a stage to sing. Than it’s just “singing”. This song pops up several times throughout the film and none of it is subtitled or captioned.

Do you remember Dex entry on Arceus? The “It is described in mythology as the Pokémon that shaped the universe with its 1,000 arms.” one? I think, that what we get under the name “Arceus” in games is really just one of these “arms”, which he sorta “donates” to player.

catching legendary Pokémon has always made me a bit uncomfortable like? tapu koko is in my pc box rn. who’s protecting the island. Arceus is pretty much god and probably has better things to do than follow the commands of a 12 year old but ok

Some worldbuilding for my fic - Azoth Kingdom, Alva, part 1.

Unlike in the canon, Cabinet Minister Alva here is less of a “Complete Monster” and more of a “Well-Intentioned Extremist” with a tiny bit of Richard Hawk from “Metal Wolf Chaos”. He still wants to overtake the Azoth Kingdom and rule it from the Giant Metal Spider Flying Fortress (which here is also often called “Defence Fortress”), but here, it’s because he wants Azoth Kingdom to become great and powerful once more (no, no Trump jokes. Really, no Trump.)

As for now, Azoth Kingdom is slowly, but surely losing positions in the airship and small VTOL markets due to corporates proposing more advanced machines for the same price. Considering that Azoth’s main sources of income are, again, airship and small VTOL production and export, you can understand the feelings of minister, who does love his motherland and does not like the ruling royalties, which do next to nothing about it.

The true reason Alva was able to get along with prince Raleigh is because the young boy was very alone. Raleigh’s mom has passed away several years ago, dad is paying next to no attention to him, Kimia is not much better in it, so young prince took refuge in studying arcane science, which has brought him close to Alva, who was an arcane researcher. A small kinda quote from the fic:

(Raleigh, trying to ask his sister for help): Kimia, can you help me?

(Kimia, going to king to discuss Alva’s financial report and barely paying attention to her brother): Not now, Raleigh.

(Raleigh, silently, but angrily whispering): “Not now”, just as always! Daddy - “Not now”, Kimia - “Not now”, so when will then be “Now”? And these people wonder...

(Alva, silently coming to prince): Is there something wrong?

(Raleigh, calming down): Nothing special, minister Alva. For some reason, I can’t assemble a working levitator - outer shell breaks all the time, resulting in systems failure. Can you help me with this?

(Alva, smiling): Of course I can.

Not quite like the canon Alva, this version of the cabinet minister actually does sympathize Raleigh, which is why he tries to slowly get his trust, loyalty and support instead of just using him as a simple tool.

When it comes to arcane science, Alva uses the Nikola’s version (the only one available now), but he does know the rumors about the Soris origins of this discipline, though he prefers to dismiss them as jokes. His favorite directions in it are arcane computing devices (for unlocking Fortress’ control systems) and Mega Evolution research (he is yet to create Mega Wave devices here, though he has some working prototypes now).

Thing is, the horizontal-propulsion propellers face in all directions, so for setting course Hikokyuu can just run several of them on high speed, and they will then act as pushing propellers on plane, and Palace will go in new direction without turning it’s entire hull. I think this was a major point to design Flying Palace circulary. Also, Flying Palace reminds me of Jule’s Verne “Albatross”, which was constructed by Robur the Conqueror and had pretty similar propellers on long spindles for vertical propulsion, although “Albatross” was far smaller and had more ship-like design.

Pokedex flying machines entry

“I always thought that Flying Palace (Hikokyuu) uses some sort of anti-gravity propulsion and propellers are just for setting course (ring-mounted change altitude, wall-mounted propells Palace horizontally), and anti-gravity modules are this giant vertical things between outer rings and central building, one of which serves to heroes as slide after the Palace crash.”

Ooh, thank you! Though the propellers seem to be fixed in place no matter the direction the ship is going.

What the Ultra Space is wrong with me?

A day ago, after watching some Infinite Warfare gameplay - space battle, to be specific (I don’t play COD and usually don’t watch vids about it, but thanks Youtube for this vid - I love watching space battles) and re-watching Pokemon Generations, I’ve got a very weird idea for fanfic, which I’ve immidiately put into work.

Now, I look at the space battle between corporate aerospace force and Team Tornado squadron, while Mega Rayquaza and Deoxys are fighting on the background and... no, I think, how to improve it and, if possible, prevent jumping the shark for fic (current events are roughly at the beginning of Johto season of anime, except not in Johto, and the battle is pre-written for much later). Also, Brendan/May dies, because being on the satellite’s solar panel when the debris cloud from the destroyed Tornado Interceptor flies right at you at high speed and with enough energy to tear this panel clean off the satellite is a very bad idea. And Mega Rayquaza does not notice this until some time later, because here, it needs to evade attacks of both Deoxys and Tornado Fighters.

Why the Ultra Space this battle has begun in the first place? To put it short:

Corporates wanted to commence high-orbit asteroid interception and test their shiny new toy - “Spark” directed-energy cannon, which has enough power to blow it up and can be installed on orbital EOS-controlled fighter drone. They knew nothing about Brendan/May and Rayquaza until the Sky High Pokemon destroyed the asteroid with Dragon Ascent and released the Deoxys.

Rayquaza and Brendan/May wanted to intercept asteroid and deal with Deoxys.

Team Tornado, which here complements Teams Magma and Aqua like the Rayquaza complements Groudon and Kyogre, knew about Brendan/May’s plans and wanted to get Rayquaza and/or Deoxys. They’ve even installed Pokeball launchers on Fighters and Interceptors, which they’ve loaded with mostly modified (Snag-type mod) Ultra Balls, but several modified Master Balls were present as well.

What the Ultra Space is wrong with me?

To quote a TV Tropes : “Emperor Neo's demand that England surrender itself and place a white flag on top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris seems absurd - why make the demand with the Red Noah in Paris instead of in London, especially when there's no way the English would be able to put the flag up on the Eiffel Tower in time (this being the 19th century)? The demand was meant to be unfulfillable, so that Red Noah would have an excuse to lay waste to London, Paris and other human cities.”

Ummm… I think Emperor Neo failed Geography.

Pokemon Sun and Moon trailers

Two new japanese trailers for Pokemon Sun/Moon.

Re-entry (mini-fic)

Six months.

For six months already crew of the “Space Lab Two” was working on pure inertia.

Because Soris Empire fell.

Their families, friends, relatives, co-workers - they were no more.

Killed by the rampant Pokemon, irradiated to death, evaporated in the giant thermonuclear blasts - it did not matter.

The only thing that mattered now was the supplies.

And they were running low.

- Captain, we’ve already overshot our goal by two months, - said the physicist, floating from one wall of the command module to another. - As for now, we have one week at most, then air reprocessors won’t hold anymore and will most likely fail - I told we needed to replace them three launches ago. Does anyone there want to suffocate to death?

- To be honest... - started the biologist.

- To flak with this pessimism, - harshly said the captain. - There are still people down there, so we may as well as try to get down and try to survive alongside them. Our death up there will be no use to anyone!

- Well, you’re top officer here, so, as you wish, - responded the pilot. - However, there are no infrastructure left to meet us, so, we have to de-orbit our return vehicle in such a way, so we’ll land somewhere near the survivors.

- Do you think it’s such a big problem? - asked physicist. - Even if we, for some reason, won’t use our own surveillance telescopes, we still can communicate with the recon satellite network and get all data we want from them, so, finding the good landing place shouldn’t be that hard. Re-entering the atmosphere and landing, however...

- I can work on that, - said the pilot. - Of course, autopilot shall do most of the job, but, in the event of something, we need to be sure we’ll actually land our and not commence unplanned lithobreaking. Even if our return vehicle is, basically, renamed... 

- Work on it tomorrow. Right now, everyone goes into gravity wheels and takes a nice, long sleep. We need to calculate how to bring twenty-five humans back to Earth safely. We need to get everything ready for it. We will not be able to properly do it in such an exhausted state, so, put these caffeine drinks away and go snore a bit.

-... So, deorbiting at this points shall be fine, - murmured the captain, plotting the course for the return vehicle. - The secondary data pod shall be ejected at this point and then station will commence transfer to the junkyard orbit. Vasilyev - had you located the survivors enclaves?

- Yes, I’ve had, you can see them here, - responded the crewmember, marking several points at main display. - As you can see, we can correct our landing course in the atmosphere itself, so, detaching the return vehicle from the station here shall be fine enough. Also, all of the “Overlord of Skies”-class airships have been destroyed, the most recent one - “Researcher-2″ - crashing in Kalos, and, considering the radiation scans, because of some sort of a reactor failure. It’s good thing satellite network is still kicking.

- Not so good, - said communications operator. - We can’t manually order heavy recon and repeater satellites to fire the engines and transfer themselves to graveyard orbits.

- Do you think...

- Yes. If something goes wrong, satellites will de-orbit and disintegrate upon re-entering atmosphere. And, as you remember, they are powered by the nuclear fission reactors...

- Just like the our station now, since the parabolic mirror was destroyed. Well, shouldn’t they fire engines if automatics onboard detect something going wrong with reactor, such as meltdown or running low on fuel?

- They should, and they also should auto-correct orbit, but, if system goes offline or, what’s even worse, nuts, we’ll have radioactive nuclear fuel sprayed across the world.

- But ISF9 automatics rarely, if ever, fail, - taped the captain, trying to prevent panic. - Besides, it’s not like we can do something about it, so let’s just hope for the best. What about our return vehicle?

- Good, comrade captain. After some tweaking, according to the pre-written instruction for that exact kind of situation - apparently, our guys in FCC were quite paranoid - we’ve modified interior of the lenticular return vehicle to be able to safely house all twenty-five peoples for entirety of return and landing procedures. A bit cramped, but better that, than nothing. What we’ll do with normal 3-seated return pods, though?

- They’ll stay here. After all, there’s no infrastructure left for retrieval operations. the LRV can guide where it lands pretty good, these can’t.

- Goodbye, “Space Lab Two”. We will greatly miss you, - said the pilot, looking in the return vehicle’s main window. The space station, jewel in crown of the Empire’s space program, was left by it’s crew forever and was programmed to eject an emergency data pod at the marker of the landed return vehicle, so knowledge will be preserved. - Proceeding as normal, four hours until touchdown.

- Acknowledged - replied physicist, still thinking about the fate of the space station. - Station will fire engines and transfer to the graveyard orbit in ten orbital periods, secondary data pod ejection will be commenced in three periods.

- Good, - said captain. - Let’s hope this snake-dragon-missile-thing - the green one...

- It’s called “Rayquaza”, comrade captain, - taped the biologist.

- Whatever. So, let’s hope it does not commence orbital interception of our lenticular return vehicle.

- And it applies to our station and satellites too, - grunted comm operator, looking at the map with locations of recon and repeater satellites. - I’m sure no one will like reactor’s active zone dispersed all across the region...

The streamlined lenticular return vehicle fired the small frontal engines and slowly sailed away from the huge station, which has already stopped rotation of the giant centrifugal gravity wheels. then turned and fired main thrusters, decelerating and starting the atmospheric re-entry sequence, while the Space Lab Two continued to silently perish, deactivating life support systems, which were not needed anymore, one after another, and preparing to shut down the reactor as soon as it gets to the graveyard orbit.

- Mom, you’ve told me, that seven years ago, our village’s elder died upon gazing at the shooting star and said some strange words. What did he say?

- Something like “recon”, “re-entry”, “disintegrating” and “all across the...”, upon saying which he died.

- What did it mean?

- Who knows, dear, who knows. After all, he came from the time, when humans made great things, discovered the basis of life itself, cracked the uncrackable and even flew beyond the skies...