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What does Blastoise and the color of Blue symbolize in the RGB Trio?

shoz999

Back when Tigers used to smoke.
So there was this interesting interview of GameFreak a while back, feel free to take it with a grain of salt because I can't find it as of now, in how the RGB versions were handled in Japan and in the West. In the West, the first Pokemon games were released as Red & Blue and GameFreak stated that the western take on this represents conflict, opposing forces duking out against each other but in Japan, the first Pokemon games symbolized something different. The original Pokemon releases were Pokemon Red & Green version which does not represent conflict of two opposing forces but instead represents Pokemon Red version as power & passion while Pokemon Green version symbolizes friendship & serenity. If you think about it, this is also a pretty accurate reflection of the characters, Red and his Venusaur symbolizes friendship and his rival Blue or Green originally in Japan and his Charizard symbolizes power. Looking at it this way, this makes a lot of sense in what GameFreak was going for in the themes of the colors, the characters and the design put into the Pokemon but then there's the female protagonist of the Kanto region, Green or Blue originally in Japan and her Blastoise. If Red, his Venusaur and the color Green symbolizes friendship and serenity and Blue, his Charizard and the color Red symbolizes power and passion, what does Green, her Blastoise and the color of Blue symbolize?

So one thing that's interesting to note is that we have seen Green before in three mediums. First was a simple piece of artwork that first officially introduced us to Green with her Squirtle. Second is Pokemon Adventures which introduced Green with her Blastoise, her most well-known appearance. Finally there's FireRed and LeafGreen that introduced Green for the first time as a canon character of the main series games. What do they all have in common? None of their appearances really explain what Blastoise or the color Blue symbolizes. In fact in the Pokemon Adventures manga, which many fans to this day still believes have done more justice to the character than GameFreak ever did, has fans thinking that Blue probably got Blastoise by default, that it was the last starter Pokemon available and that's really it. No symbolism, no theme, no meaning and the more I think about it, it makes a lot of sense since Blastoise does not get a lot of attention from GameFreak. Now here in the west, we may recognize Blastoise as the second most popular starter being the poster-boy of Blue version, Gary Oak's starter of the anime or Blue's starter of the Pokemon Origins. However if we look at it from GameFreak's perspective, one thing that Blastoise has in common with everyone's favorite Kanto girl Green is that GameFreak seems to ignore Blastoise quite a lot actually until Let's Go, almost like Blastoise is the third wheel to GameFreak. I guess that's something that Green and Blastoise have in common, acknowledged by GameFreak last after Red's Venusaur and Blue's Charizard. Huh... maybe that's actually the true theme this whole time, the two bonded over being forgotten by GameFreak... anyways back to where I was getting at. Blastoise doesn't actually get a lot of attention from GameFreak and the more I think about it, Green probably just did get the starter by default... at first. It wasn't until Let's Go appeared to fleshed out what Green's relationship with her Blastoise is through her personality and Pokemon team. This is important factors to consider because as we've seen in the characters Red and Blue, the way they think and act symbolizes their starters and colors and vice-versa.

So in the Adventures manga, Green's team is themed around deception but Blastoise still felt like an odd one out. In the Let's Go games, Green's team is also themed around deception with Pokemon like Gengar, Ninetails, Victreebel but Blastoise still feels like an odd one out until you also notice another possible theme. Brutality and mercilessness. See although deception may fit Gengar, Ninetails and Victreebail and one can argue the same for Kangaskhan for being an overprotective and powerful mother and Clefable for being an absurdly annoying wall but Blastoise still doesn't quite fit this theme well until you look at it's Pokedex entry and it starts to make some sense now in what Blastoise shares with the other Pokemon, brutality and mercilessness. Blastoise according to the Pokdex fights very brutally and looking at Green's other sinister deceptive Pokemon that may show no mercy, that actually makes more sense now but although that theme makes sense for Green's relationship to her Blastoise, does that make sense for the color Blue? Would that mean from GameFreak's perspective that Blue is a color of no mercy, brutality, a harsh destructive force like no other? To be honest I can see it through floods of storms which are merciless and are deceptively fatal to people who've never experienced floodings or storms, especially flash floods that hit fast and I mean fast but I feel there are some holes in my argument that I'm not seeing because how does brutality and deception also coexist with friendship and serenity or power and passion? On the other hand, despite Green's deceptive nature, she seems like a friendly character. However the more I think about it, water can also go both ways, gentle calm waves and brutal destructive waves. Maybe unpredictability is the theme? Who knows?

These are ultimately just my thoughts, what's yours? What do you think Blastoise and the color Blue symbolizes?
 
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