>>49849949>>49849960>>49850051Ironically Lugia was intended to be a water type.
It was designed by Takeshi Shudo for the second movie which predated GS by nearly half a year, he wanted it to have a brand new Pokemon to really draw crowds as well as take advantage of newly found creative freedom after the success of the first movie.
Lugia was envisioned by him as a "Maternal Pokemon" of the sea and also envisioned it having a female seiyū, however GF gave it the Psychic typing because that was the strongest type at the time and it was ultimately given a male seiyū (and of course dub voice actor).
Supposedly the event and a couple of compounding issues with his writing for the anime (namely how he found it difficult to keep the show running with just the same MC and could have him develop in any meaningful way) led him to depart from it after OS and he'd pass away from health complications due to an unhealthy drug habit.
There's a DYKG video that goes much more in depth but there's a lot more to Lugia's design process than you guys seem to know and as an aside, the novelizations of the movie (which I believe were penned by Shudo himself) refer to Lugia with its intended typing.
