>>53705989It's pretty obviously a work in progress. There's no real continuity from Chikorita to the second form, and the only things in common with the second form and Meganium are the presence of a flower and having a couple antennae on its head. For all we know, it could be another Blastoise story of Meganium having been designed first as a big cool grass dinosaur with the second form being a placeholder with some ideas present for what a potential pre-evo might have been intended to be like at some point (looks unassuming, small and stationary), but then it got co-opted into being a starter and they had to start thinking of an evo family of three. Or this line of speculation could also be total bullshit and they just didn't know what the fuck to do with the second form for a while. It could even be a scrapped mon that was always completely unrelated to the grass starter but happened to be placed between Chiko and Mega in a beta build's internal data for whatever reason.
The other two WIP starter guys sure are pretty boring, huh? And while I like Chiko, it does make a lot of sense seeing it alongside the others with its similarly plain features, no reason to doubt Chiko having been the first finished starter design of gen 2.
