Pokemon 20th Anniversary: Manaphy!

What's up heroes? It's June, and with the new month comes a new mythical pokemon giveaway! In thise case, it's also my birthday, with June 6th being the special day. With the mythical pokemon being released each month, I've started to view them as a sort of Pokemon Zodiac. So that makes this month's pokemon, Manaphy, my Zodiac Pokemon!

Manaphy is the Seafaring Pokemon. It's ability is Hydration. While not a terribly unique ability, with just over twenty different species of pokemon sharing the ability with Manaphy, it is an incredibly useful ability that heals the Pokemon of all status conditions in the rain. Like many other Mythical Pokemon that came before it, Manaphy has a base 100 stat in all six of it's stats. So you may be asking yourself: What about this Mythical Pokemon makes it so special?

To begin with, Manaphy's original distribution was very unusual, and hasn't been replicated by any other pokemon since. To obtain a Manaphy, first you must have owned Pokemon Ranger. This was a non-main series game for the Nintendo DS. You had to complete the game, then complete a special post-game mission to save an egg. And not just any egg. This is Manaphy's egg. It even had a custom egg sprite and art.

Once this egg was saved, you could transfer it from your Pokemon Ranger game to your Pokemon Diamond or Pokemon Pearl game. From there, you had to hatch the egg to get Manaphy.

Another thing that makes Manaphy so special is the fact that it can learn Tail Glow. This is a very useful, and extremely rare move. It is a bug type move, that when used raises the user's Special Attack by THREE stages! That's a huge boost! Only one other pokemon could learn this move, and that was Volbeat. It also had it's own unique attack, called Heart Swap. It swaps status changes with it's target. That means in a double battle, you can Tail Glow to boost your special attack through the roof, then Heart Swap with your partner to grant them those huge special attack gains!

But to continue with this theme of breeding that Manaphy seems to have, Manaphy is also the only Legendary Pokemon, Mythical or otherwise, that can breed. It requires a Ditto, but if you breed Manaphy you will get an egg. However, this egg gives you an entirely different Pokemon: Phione!

Phione is the Sea Drifter Pokemon. While very similar to Manaphy both in it's look and it's movepool, it lacks the ability to learn Tail Glow and Heart Swap, and all of it's base stats are 80 instead of 100. Functionally speaking, it's basically an inferior Manaphy. Like it's... a phony.

You know, in a way it's like Manaphy and Phione are two sides to the same Mythical coin. Like a Gemini, the real world Zodiac sign that represents the month of June. At any rate, I know I'm excited to get my Manaphy this month, and I hope you are too! Be sure to pick yours up before it's too late. And as always heroes, I'm Pogiforce, and we'll see you later! Take care!