Z – Zoroark: Master of Illusions

A high level of nostalgia means that this year my chosen theme for the 2016 A to Z challenge is Pokemon. Whether you yourself have a similar level of sentimentality or you’ve never really gotten into it, I hope that you enjoy this month of posts as I indulge myself.

Zoroark: Master of Illusions is the 13th Pokemon Movie, and for the last letter of the month, that is my topic – Pokemon Movies. Yes! Got through the alphabet!

A Pokemon movie is a feature length film, typically 90 minutes or more, which will generally feature Ash and his friends from the current anime series, and a legendary or rare Pokemon. There are also a number of shorts that focus on Pikachu and the adventures that he gets up to without Ash around, and they tend to be super cute Pokemon centred adventures. These are often shown before the movie.

Typically there is one film released every year, usually in July, and by this point, this means that has been at least one film every year since 1998. Which means that there are 19 movies in the running total ‘main’ series as it were:

• Pokemon: The First Movie – Mewtwo Strikes Back
• Pokemon The Movie 2000 – The Power of One
• Pokemon 3: The Movie – Spell of the Unown: Entei
• Pokemon 4ever – Celebi: Voice of the Forest
• Pokemon Heroes: Latios and Latias
• Pokemon: Jirachi: Wish Maker
• Pokemon: Destiny Deoxys
• Pokemon: Lucario and the Mystery of Mew
• Pokemon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea
• Pokemon: The Rise of Darkrai
• Pokemon: Giratine and the Sky Warrior
• Pokemon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life
• Pokemon – Zoroark: Master of Illusions
• Pokemon the Movie: White – Victini and Zekrom / Black – Victini and Reshiram
• Pokemon the Movie: Kyurem vs The Sword of Justice
• Pokemon the Movie: Genesect and The Legend Awakened
• Pokemon the Movie: Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction
• Pokemon the Movie: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages
• M19 – Coming later this year

Typically, because they have more time, they can explore different and deeper topics then the ones they touch on in the anime, and usually it involves the battle between greedy people who want to use Pokemon for evil and their own gain, and people who are friends to Pokemon, such as Ash and his friends.

Outside of Japan, we haven’t had them released in the cinema’s since the early movie, but they are always released in Japan and they tend to do quite well over there. In the UK and United States, we tend to get them shown on cartoon channels and we can always buy them on DVD.

As well as movies, there have been four specials. These weren’t released in cinema’s, but they are a lot longer than the normal half hour episode of the anime, so they get their own special little category. Interestingly, only the two prefaced with ‘Pokemon:’ contain Ash and his friends, the other focus on different trainers. Origins tells the stories of Red and Green, the trainers from the original Red and Green games/anime/books.

• Pokemon: Mewtwo Returns
• The Legend of Thunder!
• Pokemon: The Mastermind of Mirage Pokemon
• Pokemon Origins

Basically, there are a lot of movies and move length features, and they are an excellent showcase of Pokemon, the trainers, the world, and those things that cartoons like to try and teach kids about. I just like seeing the legendary Pokemon getting up to hi-jinx. Mew & Mewtwo are my favourites, and turn up in more than one movie much to my delight.

 

Pokemon of the Day

Z is for Zekrom

Zekrom is a duel Dragon/Electric type Pokemon, is the game mascot of Pokemon White, and along with Reshiram and Kyurem is a member of the Tao legendary trio from the Unova region. This black bipedal Pokemon resembles a dragon or dinosaur, looking almost like it is covered in modern armour. It’s large, conical, spiked tail has been likened to an electricity generator, as it produce lightning for attacks and emits an anti-gravity field, allowing Zekrom to fly. It can cause thunderstorms and will generate them and then hide in the thunderclouds.

There are actually a surprising amount of Pokemon that begin with the letter Z, far more than X or Y, but I went with one of the legendaries because A) it’s a dragon, and B) I rather enjoy the black-white combination and that they swapped the colours of so you get the Black Legendary in White and the White Legendary in Black. That, and it ties in nicely to the theme of the day, because in the movies, they did something slightly odd. They released two movies, one featuring Zekrom, and one featuring Reshiram. The plot was the same, but the Pokemon got swapped over, and you could choose which movie to watch, which was pretty awesome.

 

Z – Zeal

What is one of the most important things about writing? You’ve got to enjoy it. What is the point of investing energy, time and your precious tears in something that you just don’t have energy and enthusiasm for? You have to have zeal, be zealous, zealously pursue your writing goals. I think I ran out of zeal derivatives now 😛

The point is, a reader can tell. A reader can tell if you were bored, if you weren’t all that interested, if you have no passion for the subject or topic. It’s easy to tell. And there are so many other writers out there, one who will have passion for what they are writing, that readers will just go elsewhere, because they will get a better experience.

Of course, not every day has to be a perfect writing day. Dragons know I’ve had days where I sit down and every word is agony, and some days I hate what I’ve written with a passion. It happens.

But underneath that all? I love writing. It’s what keeps me coming back day after day, that I love writing and I want to write, and I love what I write (most of the time).

And that’s it!

26 posts, one month of April flown by. It’s been great, I’ve had so many wonderful visitors, and I have loved visiting other people as well, there are some amazing bloggers out there and I relish this month because I get to meet you.

I hope that people have enjoyed what I’ve been writing, and I hope to keep discovering more blogs next month 🙂

Z – Dragon Zoology

I can’t believe that we’re here. Final day! And I’ve kept up with it, haven’t missed a single post! (Thanks to the magic of scheduled posting, I will admit.)

So for my final topic this year, I will be talking about dragon zoology. Zoology is defined as: the scientific study of the behaviour, structure, physiology, classification, and distribution of animals.

The people who undertake this sort of study of dragons are called dragonologists, and most of them time they dedicate their lives and career’s to the task. It is hard to learn how to stay alive whilst dealing with dragons if your entire mind is not focused on the task, so dragonologists tend to be focused people.

There are various parts of zoology to study, as listed above. In no particular order:

Physical Forms: Handily, I’ve done posts on this area before. Check out P – Dragon Physiology and T – Draconic Traits for information on the physical properties of dragons. Physiology also covers anatomy, listing the various parts of the dragon from bones to muscles to organs. It can go down to the microscopic, but getting those kind of samples from dragons is quite difficult even when the dragon is being friendly towards you. And from the microscopic to the macroscopic, it looks at the individual parts of the dragon, and then fits them together to see how they work as a whole. It is possible to concentrate just on this area of study, since there can be so much to discover about the physical aspects of a creature.

Evolutionary: Some dragonologists try to work out where dragon come from in the evolutionary chain. Some believe that dragon are descended from serpents, since the earliest remains of dragon that have been found indicate two or fewer limbs. Old records also describe ‘wyrms’ as gigantic beasts that could breathe flames, and many think the term wyrm describes a creature with no legs. Unfortunately dragon fossils are incredibly rare, even more so than dinosaurs, so there’s little evidence to go on in this area.

Classification: Dragon are also a hard creature to class with the other creatures. They are hot blooded like mammals, but lay eggs, have scales, and can also fly. Most commonly they are linked to serpents, but scientifically there is a lot of argument about where they should fall, so much so that they as of yet do not have an official classification. Most people who are not scientifically inclined put them in the ‘Fantasy/Mythical Creatures’ classification, where they join phoenix’s, unicorns and other such creatures, and leave it at that.

Behaviour: The study of behaviour is technically called Ethology when it is observing the creature in question in it’s natural habitat. Behaviourism is used when the creature is being studied under lab conditions, but no one has successfully attempted that with dragons, so all studies are done in the wild. It studies the interaction of the creature in question with other living things, from creatures it would consider prey, to predatory ones (really the only two predatory animals for dragons are humans and other dragons), it’s behaviour around it’s own kind, it’s young, and any other sort of interaction it might have. For a little more on how dragon interact with each other, see S – Dragon Society. Whilst we know quite a bit about dragon behaviour, most of the time it is observed at a distance, for the health of the dragonologist. Friendly dragons are a boon, but when studying behaviour, you have to look at all kinds of behaviour, which includes bad tempered dragons.

Distribution: Studying distribution mainly involves maps. Lots of maps and information on when and where dragons are seen. Dragons live all over the world, but the important bit is which dragon live where, since different dragons live in different environments. For instance, you probably expect brown dragons to live in mountains or deserts, whereas white dragons favour snowy or cold environments. It’s all about mapping the patterns that are observed, and tracking down the reasons for anomalies, for instance if a red dragon takes up residence in a sea cave, that’s unusual and bears investigation.

 

And we’re done! Thank you so much for visiting this blog if you did so during the a to z challenge! (Personally I’m going to use that list of sign ups to keep finding more amazing blogs 🙂 ) I hope that you had as much fun as I did with the challenge and that you got as much out of it. I’m proud to say that my followers have nearly quadrupled since I started this challenge (20 to 74!) so thank you to everyone who followed or visited or commented or liked, you’ve made this month amazing. Hope to see you all in the challenge next year!

~Princess of Dragons