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504
- ↓ 0.14
- ꩜ 0.33
- ↑ 1.30
{C} → Tackle : 10
{W} → Bubblebeam : 10
Flip a coin. If heads, the Defending Pokémon is now Paralyzed.
illus. Mitsuhiro Arita
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At night, the center of its body slowly flickers with the same rhythm as a human heartbeat.
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Bubble and Bubblebeam both debuted in Base Set – the former on Squirtle, the latter on Gyarados. There is technically nothing differentiating the two attacks, as both are water themed attacks that do damage and can flip for paralysis¹, but the general trend they seemed to be going for was that Bubble only did some damage, and Bubblebeam did more damage. This instance of Bubblebeam really blurs the boundaries between the two attacks – by name it’s Bubblebeam, but it’s functionally Bubble.
I could point out Bubblebeam is バブルこうせん [𝐁𝐮𝐛𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐊𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐧] and Bubble is [あわ 𝐀𝐰𝐚], so they’re less related than they sound.. but I reckon they’re still the same family of moves, right? Like, Ember and Flamethrower are two names that don’t sound very similar in English but there’s still that mental connection between the two – and the two attacks also behave very similarly in the TCG.
If someone was working on like, a wiki, or a book, or something, would you want to see instances of Bubble and Bubblebeam listed together, or would you want the relevant entries to just cross-reference each other (“see also”)? Same question for Ember and Flamethrower, and so on and so on.
¹ Later on there *will* be Bubble attacks that do 0 damage, but the attack still does some damage more often than not, so it doesn’t really serve to differentiate so much as create a …subclass?