#201: Unown

All forms of Unown, from A to Z, including ! and ?.

Who actually enjoyed catching all 28 different forms of Unown?

Yeah, nobody.

Nobody except me, that is. Of course, finding all different Unown gets harder exponentially, because Unown forms you've already caught show up more often than you'd like once you're coming close to catching them all. I didn't mind though, because - and I know it's a rather unpopular opinion - I actually love Unown for what it is. Sure, I wouldn't be in my right mind if I actually used it, whether it's in a regular playthrough or in the competitive scene, because it's undoubtedly a terrible Pokémon to fight with, but there is so much mystery surrounding Unown that I can't help but to love this thing. Or these things, whatever. If it wasn't already really obvious, Unown are shaped like the letters of the Latin alphabet and were introduced in Pokémon Gold and Silver, where they could be found only in the Ruins of Alph. It's no coincidence they could be found on such an ancient site, because their shapes look like hieroglyphs on ancient tablets. It is a mystery whether Unown predate or postdate written language, and therefore it is unknown which is based on which.

Ken Sugimori only made new official art for Unown F. Prior to
HeartGold and SoulSilver, the official art was an Unown G.

As the core series games progressed, Unown could be found on diverse ancient sites: the Tanoby Chambers on Seven Island (Sevii Islands) in FireRed and LeafGreen, Solaceon Ruins in Diamond, Pearl and Platinum, and one of many Mirage Islands in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. However, they were never found very important by players, not even when Game Freak introduced the ! (exclamation mark) and ? (question mark) Unown in FireRed and LeafGreen. Diamond and Pearl let the player catch all 26 Unown so that a Ruin Maniac could dig a tunnel to a seperate room in the Solaceon Ruins, which contained the ! and ? Unown and a couple of items. Catching all Unown also allowed the player to obtain letter seals for their Ball Capsules by showing some boy in Solaceon Town every individual Unown. Yeah, nobody was going to do that, right? Also, the only move it can learn is Hidden Power, which is a move that practically every Pokémon can learn, with an exception here and there. This all has made Unown a Pokémon that is hated upon very often. Of course, everyone is free to hate on a certain Pokémon (for example, I think I've made it very clear that I loathe Lickilicky's very existence), but I don't think the hate for Unown is quite justified: I look beyond its terrible stats and find a whole lot of mystery and lore. Also, I think Unown is a funny-looking Pokémon, which definitely attributes to my love for it.

Scene from the third Pokémon movie, in which Unown emerge
from a portal that leads to their own demension (depicted).

And while everybody fell in love with Entei in the third full movie Pokémon 3: The Movie - Spell of the Unown: Entei, I was more intrigued by the Unown. Don't get me wrong: I liked the movie as a whole and I really like Entei as well, but it was just fascinating to see how these little creatures in the shapes of the letters we are familiar with could be so powerful. Of course, it was a collective of Unown, but you probably get my point. In the movie, archeologist Spencer Hale (which is an awfully ordinary name for Pokémon standards) reads a story about Entei to his daughter Molly, when suddenly he gets interrupted by an email from his assistant, Schuyler, who says he made a discovery in some desert ruins. Hale rushes to the ruins, but once there he vanishes into a portal to another dimension. When Molly overhears Schuyler telling the butler the news about what happened, she takes some tiles with mysterious letters out of a box and lays them on the ground, forming 'papa', 'mama' and 'me' with them. When the letters begin to glow, a portal to the desert ruins opens and Unown start emerging from it, creating a 'real-life' Entei to be Molly's 'papa' when she indicates she misses her Dad. The rest of the movie is basically Ash trying to save the day. Again.

In the third movie, Professor Oak had some pictures of Unown.
Rather than depictions of the Latin alphabet, they look more like
Greek or Cyrillic letters.

Still, a small, one-eyed Pokémon that can pull others into another dimension and create an entire fantasy world for a little girl who misses her Daddy? That is dope, even though there are in fact many Unown at the same time who manage to do that (although I recall there weren't a bunch of 'em at the beginning of the movie). Their Pokédex entries don't depict them quite as impressive, aside from that whole hieroglyph thing, but Dawn's Pokédex claims they communicate with each other through telepathy - although Professor Oak's research disagrees with that, as Oak states they use electromagnetic waves instead. Either way, it is probably how they are able to keep this whole demension stable, from which they rarely emerge due to their timid and careful nature. They have the power to perceive the feelings of other creatures, which sounds about right when you look at the fact they made Molly's every wish come true by creating everything she wants. And Oak has been extraordinarily diligent, because he also had some pictures on his computer that look like Unown hieroglyphs. However, these Unown do not resemble letters of the Latin alphabet, but look more like they're depictions of letters from the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets. That is curious, because does this mean that Unown have been created from written language or have evolved in order to look like written language? Or are they really from another demension? In the latter case, Unown were seen by ancient people who doodled them on walls, and later generations started using those very symbols to communicate with each other. That means not only written language can be traced back to Unown, but spoken language as well, provided all ancient people could do was growl at each other.

Jeez. So much speculation, and there is still so little known about Unown. Its name fits it perfectly, don't you think?

Unown as depicted in a children's book in Pokémon 3: The Movie - Spell of the
Unown: Entei. 

I love Unown. It's just an original concept for a Pokémon, and I think Game Freak did a good job creating this one. Of course, it is a terrible battler - it's frail and its only known move is Hidden Power - but at least it's not completely useless. That is to say, it provides contrast to other Pokémon: instead of your regular rodents, generic birds, fighting machines and thousands of fish, there is also this mysterious thing to catch. And there are 28 of them, the most out of all Pokémon with different forms. Also, I understand why Game Freak went with the Latin script as an inspiration for Unown, as it's the most commonly used script in the world, used by almost entire America and Africa, and a large part of Europe. It's also the most commonly accepted and understood type of script, even by people who don't usually make use of it. The Greek script is obviously only officially used in Greece and Cyprus (as far as I know), the Cyrillic script is mainly seen in Russia and the Balkans and a couple of other Eastern European countries, and Japanese is rather complicated and hard to understand for the rest of the world. No, Game Freak did it just right with Unown.

Rating: 5/5