As promised, today I present you the famous Magikarp evolution – Gyarados! Pretty, mighty, and very red 😀

You can see it’s called a Lucky Pokemon. It’s because it was traded in a Lucky Trade with another trainer. So how this works is that you can trade your Pokemon with other trainers and usually they will have random IVs assigned to them as a result. They can get pretty bad! But in a Lucky Trade you get a Pokemon with IVs no lower than 12/12/12 and as high as 15/15/15, which is the maximum a Pokemon can get. Lucky Trades happen randomly and rarely, and you can’t know about them in advance, only after it happens, but you can also get a Lucky Friend with a fellow trainer with whom you’re on a Best Friend level, and when this happens you get a guaranteed Lucky Trade. So that’s how my friend and I got a Lucky Shiny Gyarados each ;). Lucky Pokemon are also powered up more easily because they require less Stardust. And as shinies are very rare generally, it’s also even rarer to get a shiny with good IVs that’s useful for anything else than flexing in gyms – and that’s where Lucky Trades get really good indeed ;).

This time around, another of classic First Gen Pokemon – Magikarp. A totally useless, defenseless Pokemon that just hopelessly splashes around with its silly open mouth, looking as if it’s going to suffocate any moment now, Magikarp doesn’t really engender any warm feelings. It’s a fish flapping on the ground. It’s been a running joke of the anime and manga for years. Alas… those in the know meticulously catch all of these pathetic Pokemon and collect candy necessary to evolve it (400, not a negligible amount ;)) – because the evolution is no other than mighty Gyarados, one of the most powerful Pokemon of all 😉 So here it is, without further ado: shiny Magikarp (Gyarados coming up next week)!

Okay, so I promised a photo of a shiny Pikachu… Pikachu is definitely one of the most popular and liked Pokemon, especially after the live-action movie few years back. Alas, my shiny Pikachu has already been evolved into Raichu 😉 But it has a New Year’s hat on, so hopefully it’ll pass muster ;). The difference between a shiny and non-shiny is in this case somewhat slight – normal Raichu is a bit more yellowish while the color of this one is more of a burnt orange. By the shape of the tail, you can tell this one’s a female (well, there’s also the symbol on the right side of the name, but whatever ;)).