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>Sugimori: "...Pidove — first and foremost, it had to resemble a pigeon, but then we also added a heart shape to its design. What I mean is, there’s a heart on Pidove’s chest, and also, when you look at the male form of his evolution Unfezant from the front, you can see a heart on his face. We felt that making a pigeon bigger wouldn’t make it any more powerful, so his first evolution is based on an oriental turtle dove, and the final evolution is a pheasant.”
>Dr Lava’s notes: Sugimori is making reference to Japanese wordplay here. Let me explain — the Japanese word for pigeon is ‘hato,’ and the Japanese also use an English loanword for heart, which adjusted for Japanese pronunciation is ‘haato.’ So the reason Pidove has a heart on its chest is because the words ‘hato’ and ‘haato’ sound alike when spoken — it’s a pun.
>Pidove’s final evolution is a pheasant. The Japanese word for pheasant is ‘kiji.’ And so Japanese wordplay also explains the family’s middle stage. Tranquill is an oriental turtle dove, or ‘kijibato’ in Japanese. ‘Kiji’ means pheasant, and as we just established, ‘hato’ means pigeon. When you combine the words for pheasant and pigeon, you get ‘kijihato.’ But certain rules of Japanese word formation rules that the H should be pronounced as a B, so you get ‘kijibato,’ which again, means oriental turtle dove. Confused yet? Well, if you haven’t lost interest by now, read this paragraph again — it DOES make sense.
http://lavacutcontent.com/ken-sugimori-nintendo-dream-3/
tl;dr; the Pidove family is based on japanese puns.
>Dr Lava’s notes: Sugimori is making reference to Japanese wordplay here. Let me explain — the Japanese word for pigeon is ‘hato,’ and the Japanese also use an English loanword for heart, which adjusted for Japanese pronunciation is ‘haato.’ So the reason Pidove has a heart on its chest is because the words ‘hato’ and ‘haato’ sound alike when spoken — it’s a pun.
>Pidove’s final evolution is a pheasant. The Japanese word for pheasant is ‘kiji.’ And so Japanese wordplay also explains the family’s middle stage. Tranquill is an oriental turtle dove, or ‘kijibato’ in Japanese. ‘Kiji’ means pheasant, and as we just established, ‘hato’ means pigeon. When you combine the words for pheasant and pigeon, you get ‘kijihato.’ But certain rules of Japanese word formation rules that the H should be pronounced as a B, so you get ‘kijibato,’ which again, means oriental turtle dove. Confused yet? Well, if you haven’t lost interest by now, read this paragraph again — it DOES make sense.
http://lavacutcontent.com/ken-sugimori-nintendo-dream-3/
tl;dr; the Pidove family is based on japanese puns.
