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graham builds

Poliwhirl's Mouth

posted by graham on

I spent some time this morning thinking about Pokémon. Specifically, I considered how the poliwag, poliwhirl, poliwrath evolution line mimics poliwogs, frogs, and frog-themed wrestlers. While considering this, I noticed that poliwag's mouth is separate from the hypnotic spiral on its front:

the default photo of poliwag, the tadpole pokemon showing its mouth above the spiral

This led me to consider how poliwhirl's mouth must work. I came up with the following two options, which I illustrated by hand on my phone:

normal poliwhirl at the top, an arrow down to the left of poliwhirl illustrated in all blue with a thin black mouth line, and an arrow down to the right of poliwhirl illustrated to open a mouth that sort of peels away the spiral to open

I think the one on the right is technically more frog-like, while the left just looks like a blue Dot Gobbler.