hey everyone gaijin goomba here and with the advent of pokemon ultra sun and moon i think it's time to head back to the soft waves and gentle breeze of alola to explore cosmic wormholes? uh... to capture new, pokemon like disco clown balls and mokumokuren? uh... and most importantly to fight on the side of right against multiverse villains? okay, is this pokemon or an episode of dragon ball super? i'm all for experimentation and trying new things, but when i think of pokemon sun and moon
i can't escape the amazing connections that lie between alolan unique pokemon and their true to life connections with hawaii. like bounsweet's connection with hawaiian native mangosteen fruit, marowak's connection to fire knife dancers and night marchers, exeggutor's highly marketable and mean worthy transformation into a palm tree and dugtrio's horrible life ruining curse that dooms tourists to horrible luck and even death. what, haven't heard of that one? yeah, maybe matpat shouldn't have been so savage to dugtrio's golden flowing locks matpat: "other dishonorable mentions dugtrio with crappy weaves, living sand castle, and pedobear." because as sweet and suave as alolan dugtrio looks, within it holds a dark power so great
you'll be fleeing to the nearest portal back to kanto. now, i recognize there's been a decent number of people around the internet that have discussed this roughly a year ago but the curse of dugtrio and its connection to a well-known hawaii taboo is something i've been dying to talk about at links for some time now. and what's a better time than the completion of the sun and moon series? heh heh... i mean unless nintendo creates something like hyper sun and moon... oh crap gaijin, don't give them any ideas. but before we can get into the whys of dugtrio's curse and its real-life inspiration, we gotta talk about the origin of it.
that shining golden hair er, whiskers. according to the dex entries of pokemon ultra sun and ultra moon, the metallic whiskers of the lowland dugtrio serve a two-fold purpose: protection with the ability to dig through bedrock, but more specifically, volcanic rock as seen in the ultra moon's diglett entry, they need to dig through volcanic rock in the ground has made them more powerful than the diglett of other regions, and the second function of these whiskers is a sensory organ, both from ultra moon.
it's shining gold whiskers are advanced sensors that can detect vibrations from sounds from several miles away now while we're not blessed with the ability to capture and train highly destructive monsters at the responsible age of 10 in real life, the concept of dugtrio's whiskers actually is a real-life thing when it comes to volcanic environments it's actually an extraordinary geographical phenomena born from traditional volcanic activity, uh,sorry austin i gotta borrow your science hat for a minute okay, so picture this: you've got an active volcano exploding and spurring and pyroclastic material at nearly 450 miles per hour, and among that pyroclastic material is molten basaltic glass. and like most other glass when
superheated, basaltic glass is very very malleable, meaning after being shot from a volcano at 450 miles per hour, that chunk of glass is gonna stretch pretty dang long due to its high velocity. the other thing too, is that this elongated blob of basaltic glass is gonna get supercooled really quick just like standard lava. thus, the product of those drops of red-hot basaltic gasping shot out of the air are clusters of individual strands of blonde hair like fiberglass called pele's hair. now, some of you might be asking what in the heck kind of name is that? well it actually comes from one of hawaii's most powerful goddesses within its pantheon, pele, goddess of fire, lightning, wind, and volcanoes.
on one hand, she's been credited to have created the hawaiian islands with her nutrient-rich lava and ocean breaching volcanic formations but she's also known as a great destroyer as anyone with half a brain can tell you the cataclysmic effects of volcanic eruptions. in any case though, as the strands of basaltic fiberglass are a byproduct of volcanic activity as well as hair like in properties? it would only make sense to name it pele's hair. and if the connection between dugtrio and it's blonde hair like whiskers weren't already a connection enough with pele and the hair like golden strands of volcanic fiberglass that carries our namesake, in alola, dugtrio is also revered by many to be a deity similar to pele taken from the description of the alolan dugtrio on the official pokemon website, "in the alola region, dugtrio is revered as an incarnation of the god of the land" but hey, that description might be too vague to be the goddess pele specifically, right?
the dex entry from moon pretty much confirms it, quote "these pokemon are cherished in the alola region, where they are thought to be feminine deities of the land incarnate" and what's pele to the hawaiians? a goddess of the land incarnate. so we've got a solid connection between dugtrio and pele, but what about that dreaded dugtrio curse that kicked off this whole video? what role does it play in the world of pokemon and how does it have any connection to real life? to understand that, look no further than the pokedex. according to sun's entry, "it's shining gold hair provides it with protection. it's reputed that keeping any of its fallen hairs will bring bad luck" while the official pokemon website has an entire paragraph about the lore of dugtrio's curse.
"alolan dugtrio's whisker shine with the brilliance akin to golden hair", sounds familiar "removing alolan whiskers from the alola region is prohibited. it's said that those who take them receive divine punishment." "every year tourists come back apparently to return the whiskers that they've taken." this seems kind of weird right? like, i know that there's some pretty horrendous things that pokemon do to humans based on their dex entries, but those are typically dark and ghost types. not ground! you mean to tell me that something with a face like this is going to unleash some holy divine curse that's so bad i'd spend another 2,000 dollars to fly back to a little just to return some metallic whiskers well gang believe it or not. this is happening in hawaii right now in fact. it's been happening for a couple of decades
hawaiian part carriers have been reporting hundreds of packages from tourists coming from germany, australia, japan, the united states, and pretty much all over the world filled with hawaiian native rocks dirt and pele's hair. reason being is that the majority of these tourists have claimed to be cursed by pele ever since pilfering their souvenir steve parso of california claimed that after he took home with him a molten rock from the big island his life was falling apart his marriage was destroyed his son began having problems as mother passed away however after returning the rock to the park where he took it his sons issues resolved, and he was able to remarry but this is just a simple stone right or at worst a handful of straw like fiberglass why would pele concern herself so much over rocks to curse people that pocketed them? well, to put it nicely
pele's not exactly an all loving deity many a folk story talk about her unbridled wrath and vengeful jealousy in one instance she got so mad at losing a sled race to her sister poliahu goddess of snow, that she tried to murder her and destroy her mountain! another tale tells of pele meeting a handsome warrior named, ohia who she asked to wed, but unfortunately ohia was already happily taken. outraged, she transformed ohia into a gnarled tree and trust me there's a lot of these kinds of stories with pele she's not the kind of goddess to trifle with let alone expect mercy from she's as wrathful and unforgiving as the volcanoes themselves so why wouldn't she curse those who took part of her body away from her spirit
so there you go gang based on paley's fiberglass hair and vengeful streak it makes all the sense in the world how dugtrio would have similar locks as well as a divine curse guess it wasn't so farfetch'd after all, heh-hehe... uhm... gaijin? oh, what's up lg is the ending going okay? *whispers* yeah... what do you mean was made up by some guy named russ? okay, apparently it was all one big lie. volcanoes national park ranger, russ apple
alongside other rangers apparently made up the entire story to scare tourists in the 1940s and 50s because they got tired of vacationers messing around with the natural environment of the land well, hope you're happy man cuz i got park rangers having to deal with 2,000 pounds of rock sand and fiberglass every year and there's no evidence of that easing up anytime soon interestingly enough there's a huge number of historians and natives that claim that there's never been an account either written or by word of mouth that this curse ever existed but so strong were people's belief in the connection of their horrible luck and a random piece of big island lava that a collective 1 ton of the stuff keeps getting shipped back home in hopes of lifting a curse that never existed so effectively the doug trios. curse is a lie. it's all a lie and
you first you light a map at about gardevoir s black holes, and now you lie to me about those riyals curse who wrote you anyway wait dr. wes wood, but didn't he? well i guess you could say i'm making stuff up i suppose you know what i can't even be mad sure the pokedex is likely filled with dirty dirty lies but it's gotten me researching all kinds of cultures that pokemon take inspiration from i've done videos on alolan marowak comfey, solgaleo, and lunala and each one of the starters from sun and moon and the culture
i've learned from them has taken me from hawaii to australia all the way to north west europe the pokedex might be a lying sack of galaxy note 7 parts but it's been a huge source of topics for me now when it comes to pokemon and global culture there's no end in sight of what i can research but thanks for watching everyone like i said i've done tons of pokemon videos in the past and matpat actually recently done one talking about how president trump our youngest actually could wipe out all pokemon life on alola but if you're hungry for more culture and gaming i've been working on a miniseries covering all the japanese references and bowser's kingdom for my odyssey and let's just say things get a little nuts
but as always don't forget to subscribe to stay up to date on all of our newest theorist videos and until next time everyone this is gaijin goomba signing out!