>>34029605Interesting. I knew the translation wasn't perfect or necessarily good but my logic for it is mostly "it's the best we have" or something like that.
Oh but, unrelated to my earlier point but still worth mentioning due to its relation with Cyndaquil, the point this anon
>>34029172 makes about the patterns only happening post gen 2 is relevant. We know they tossed around the idea of a Fire-type Bear starter (honoguma) so we know the zodiac pattern at least wasn't alive then (as they expected it to be the final Pokémon games in many interviews, pardon my lack of source but I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.)
They knew going into gen 3 that they were going to have a long-running series and even had another Fire-starter pattern starting in that gen, being the Journey to the West pattern with the Fire/Fighting starters.
I think it's a very fair conclusion to think that they saw, sometime between gen 3 and gen 5, that the fire starters could roughly fit the Zodiax theme, and decided to follow it as their new theme once the JttW idea couldn't continue.
Obviously not certain, but again, I think it's fair.
