Cetoddle and Cetitan
NEW WHALE! This is only the second or third whale Pokemon that's ever existed. Or third or fourth? It depends on whether you count the legendary orca, Kyogre, or you're one of those "actually, orcas are technically dolphins" kinda people.
Either way, Cetoddle is both really cute and perfectly peculiar; it's a spherical white whale with a tail, a pair of big arm-like flippers, ink highlights, a horn on its head and a big mouth with an upper jaw that swoops up in between its eyes, which is a great way to evoke the bizarre mouth and eye arrangements of actual whales on such a chibi-fied design, but most importantly, it also has feet. Cetoddle is said by the Pokedex to be a distant relative of Wailmer that adapted back onto land, hence its name, its pure ice rather than water/ice typing, and its two stumpy little legs.
It is also, quite likely, a reference to a type of cryptid popular in Japan, oddly only referred to as "ningen," literally just meaning "humans," which are said to be either giant, whale-like white humanoids or just very weird arctic whales with arms or legs.
Either way, Cetoddle is both really cute and perfectly peculiar; it's a spherical white whale with a tail, a pair of big arm-like flippers, ink highlights, a horn on its head and a big mouth with an upper jaw that swoops up in between its eyes, which is a great way to evoke the bizarre mouth and eye arrangements of actual whales on such a chibi-fied design, but most importantly, it also has feet. Cetoddle is said by the Pokedex to be a distant relative of Wailmer that adapted back onto land, hence its name, its pure ice rather than water/ice typing, and its two stumpy little legs.
It is also, quite likely, a reference to a type of cryptid popular in Japan, oddly only referred to as "ningen," literally just meaning "humans," which are said to be either giant, whale-like white humanoids or just very weird arctic whales with arms or legs.
Then we have the evolved form, Cetitan, which is a seriously COOL looking monster! It's mostly a bigger, meaner looking Cetoddle of course, but it exaggerates and stylizes whale facial features even more, in a way that's unfortunately tough to describe for those of you listening to a screen reader, but I'll do my best: picture three conical horns on the front of this orb-shaped creature. The horn in the center is white and situated much lower than the other two, hich are grey. The creature's tiny eyes are on the sides of the head, just slightly lower than those upper horns. Now, starting beneath the eyes, draw a curvy line that swoops up over the grey horns and then dips down around the white horn. That line is the mouth, interlocking like three huge zipper teeth!
When the mouth is open, you get an extremely weird looking maw, like the knobby outline of a missing puzzle piece, and it exposed rows of extremely long, thin, rectangular white teeth, like piano keys, to evoke a whale's baleen!
When the mouth is open, you get an extremely weird looking maw, like the knobby outline of a missing puzzle piece, and it exposed rows of extremely long, thin, rectangular white teeth, like piano keys, to evoke a whale's baleen!