The Holiday Season is in full swing, and children all across the world are likely waking up to presents covered in everyone's favorite Pokemon mascot, Pikachu. However, the image often used for Pikachu nowadays doesn't quite match up with some of the older fans might remember the little lightning rodent looking like back in 1996 when Pokemon Red and Blue were released, or 1998 for stateside fans.

Many speculated on why Pikachu changed so much from then to now, but last year Lead Pokemon Designer Ken Sugimori shared the rather practical explanation for the Pokemon's weight loss with Yomiuri Newspaper. Although the original design made a cameo recently with Gigantamax Pikachu, the Pokemon has never looked quite the same for years, and it has more to do with easing the burden on the animation team for the Pokemon anime series, than it did with brand appeal or selling toys.

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According to Sugimori, the game developers and the animation team weren't exactly in 1-to-1 conversations about how the series would progress. So when the team chose Pikachu to be Pokemon's mascot, changes were made to his design in order to make animating the once pudgy body easier to move and emote. The result of this process required straitening Pikachu's spine, defining his neck and facial features, and ultimately slimming his waist to make movement look more natural.

Additionally, Sugimori was also surprised to find that the Pokemon would speak his own name, Pikachu, whenever the animators needed him to make a sound, even though the Pokemon has been known to talk on occasion. Apparently, the designer would have preferred if Pikachu simply said "chu" rather than his full name, comparing it to a cat crying out the word "cat" as opposed to meow, or nyan to those from Pikachu's country of origin. However, after the Pokemon anime was released, Game Freak decided to use and improve on the new popular design moving forward, as to not create too much of a gap between the series and the games.

After years of designing and redesigning Pikachu to better fit the anime and for mass public appeal, the Pokemon has now become one of the most popular characters in the world. Although, the anime does tend to deviate from the game at times, making Pikachu frighteningly more powerful than most would expect of a creature described as a rodent, the two series have worked together to make one of the most successful franchises of all time. So whether or not Pikachu has been hitting the gym over the past few years, fans still love his rosy cheeks and lightning bolt tail to this day.

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Source: Twitter