I’m Luke Summerhayes, and I love Cryogonal.
Snow has always been exciting for me. Growing up in the UK, we saw less and less snow each year, and when we did see any, it came later and later. I can’t remember my last white Christmas in England. Now, living in Nagano Japan, I see snow every year, too much of it if anything. A layer of soft, white powder over the whole landscape.
Up close, snow is actually miraculous. Water falls from the clouds through layers of atmosphere of just the right temperature and pressure for it to freeze and unfreeze, its molecular shape letting it develop into six-pointed crystalline structures. Each snowflake is unique in its intricacies, but fits into a limited set of overall shapes, today catalogued at 121 varieties. As queen Elsa once sang, frozen fractals all around.
Cryogonal is a snowflake Pokémon, a pure ice-type floating geometric shape with glowing eyes peering out and a chain of orbs parading through its mouth.
White
They are born in snow clouds. They use chains made of ice crystals to capture prey.
These chains could be based on rosary beads common in many religions around the world, but also old buddhist and Shinto practices in Japan. The overall body of Cryogonal, with the six points of a snowflake, resembles an old bronze hexagonal mirror, as we last saw when we talked about Bronzor in the third generation. These mirrors are common treasures of Japanese archaeology, and are often found or kept with chains of prayer beads!
Being a mirror may explain why Cryogonal can learn attract, despite being a genderless monster, and also several light-based attacks which one may not expect of an ice type Pokémon, like solar beam.
The name Cryogonal takes cryo, referring to extreme cold, and hexagonal, this pokémon’s shape. The Japanese name Freegeo combines freeze and geo, for the geometric shape.
Black
When its body temperature goes up, it turns into steam and vanishes. When its temperature lowers, it returns to ice.
Shield
When the weather gets hot, these Pokémon turn into water vapor. Cryogonal are almost never seen during summer.
The water cycle is one of the most miraculous things about our planet. Every drop of water has been, at some point in the past, a gas, a liquid, a solid, part of the oceans, part of the rivers, part of the clouds and part of a living thing. It’s the kind of thing which makes one feel a religious majesty in the natural world, of exactly the kind that ancient Japanese animism worshipped.
Scarlet
Cryogonal appear during cold seasons. It is said that people and Pokémon who die on snowy mountains are reborn into these Pokémon.
This makes it seem like Cryogonal ought to be a ghost type – it does, after all, bear more than a passing resemblance to Glalie, relative of the ice and ghost type Pokémon Froslass. Instead, Cryogonal is a pure ice type, often regarded as the worst type in terms of defence, yet this Pokémon’s stats, and its move pool with the likes of Aurora Veil, make it a somewhat successful monster, especially with the levitate ability and rapid spin for removing hazards.
ANDY
Snowflakes are unique, and a fascinating quirk of physics and chemistry that inspire a wonder for the natural world. Cryogonal embodies that wonder and the worship of it, all while looking kind of cool and being a useful monster on the right team.
Original music for Luke Loves Pokémon is by Jonathan Cromie. Artwork is by Katie Groves. Funding is provided by listeners at Patreon.com/PodcastioPodcastius. For just a dollar a month, supporters can listen to episodes a week early and also help cover hosting and fees, making it possible for me to keep making episodes every week.
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I love Cryogonal. And remember, I love you too.