Down the Rabbit Hole of Huge Power
Huge Power is a notoriously busted Pokémon Ability — it doubles the entire Attack Stat, which is a stratospheric power boost. Diggersby and Azumarill go up ≥3 tiers by having it.
It doesn’t make much sense, though. I initially wrote it off as something given to Azumarill to make it unterrible (and then Azumarill kept getting buffed). But there is a next-level pun and story behind Huge Power.
Dajare is a Japanese wordplay tradition kind of like a pun and homophone rolled together. And it is everywhere; Japan, as it turns out, is infested with dad jokes.
And boy is this ever a dad joke.
Huge Power’s Japanese name is strictly translated as “Muscleman”. That’s all Bulbapedia explains, because Bulbapedia and nuance are mutually exclusive. But if you paste the characters into a more sophisticated translator, you get two results:
力持ちちからも — Noun
- muscleman; strong man
力餅ちからもち — Noun
- fortifying mochi; mochi that improves one’s strength
- mochi received from one’s parents after giving birth
- mochi given to a toddler on its first birthday
It’s one of them Dajares. But what does mochi have to do with anything?
We speak of “the man in the moon” in the West, but Japanese mythology considers the patterns on the moon’s visible face to instead be a rabbit making rice cake — that is, mochi.
And who gets Huge Power?
Azumarill, the Aqua Rabbit Pokémon; Diggersby, a bunny with big beefy arms for ears; and Mega Mawile, which looks rabbitish with the second giant alligator mouth coming out of the back of its head.
I told you this pun was next-level.
