Quoted By:
>Sugimori: “Our designer was struggling with this one for a while. The motif was supposed to be a war tank, and the purple stripes on Zweilous’ stomach are the leftovers of that early design. Initially, the designs weren’t really working, so we put them on ice — but later on in development, when orders came down for a powerful three-stage Dragon family, they were resurrected. After some discussion, we wanted the color to be somewhat unique, so we chose colors that makes it look tough. The aim was to recreate Yamata no Orochi (the mythical Japanese dragon with 8 heads), but so many heads can make a creature look disgusting. Thus the design of Hydreigon, with one true head, and whose arms and wings give it a silhouette that still looks like lots of heads. By the way, the arms that looks like heads don’t actually have their own individual brains.”
>Unno: “Well when I heard that Hydreigon was modeled after Orochi, I told them it’s supposed to have 8 heads. Hydreigon has 3 heads (including arms), and 6 wings. That’s a total of 9.”
So basically the line started out as tank dragons, but were scrapped, and then brought back and redesigned to be based on the Yamata no Orochi instead, but with only three heads, and the six wings being meant to look like six more heads when in silhouette
