A Happy Chikorita Community Day

September 22nd, between midday and 3pm across the world, was Chikorita Community Day. The green, grassy, derpy, flowery, generation 2 starter Pokemon began spawning all over the place, with any third form evolutions gaining a unique attack if evolved during that time and a higher chance to obtain shinies. Chikorita basically replaced every other Pokemon, except for the odd Mankey or Meowth.

Of course, I had to go and catch some Chikoritas. I arrived at the town hall just before noon with my brother, meeting up with a couple of other players. Before noon, there were various Kanto Pokemon wandering around. After noon, the Chikoritapocalypse started.

“Woah, proto pou eida itan shiny!” The two other players exclaimed. The first Chikoritas they both saw happened to be shiny ones. Brother’s second Chikorita was also a shiny.

This was both good and bad. That meant there was a chance I could get a shiny. There was also a chance of my shitty bad luck striking, as it did on the Eevee community day in August. I expected my normal bad luck to plague me for the next couple of hours.

Boy, was I wrong.

I did find a Chikorita shiny. Several in fact. But it took a while. I’d caught about 30 Chikoritas with no shinies, while brother had found two. He suggested we swap phones. So we did. Literally ten seconds later, he hands me my phone back, having caught a shiny.

Fucking blew my mind how quick he caught that shiny.

But then, five minutes later, I caught not one, but two more shiny Chikoritas. We finished the event at 3pm, me with FIVE shinies and brother with a whopping EIGHT shiny Chikoritas. One of which I caught for him. I would have had one extra shiny Chikorita but I caught it at 3pm exactly and it turned into a normal one.

That doesn’t bother me though. I don’t even like Chikorita that much. It’s the derpiest of the generation 2 starters and its evolutions lack the bad-assery of its fellow starter Pokemon.

Still, shinies.

But more importantly, I got a lot of other stuff done too:

I got enough Chikorita candy to completely evolve a whole other Chikorita.

I managed to evolve a Pokemon with an item, with a Poliwhirl into a Politoad before the event, getting to stage 7 out of 8.

I succeeded in catching 40 grass or psychic types. 39 Chikoritas and one Abra.

I managed to do not one but TWO excellent curved throws. The first Chikorita I caught was with an excellent curved throw.

I caught enough Gastlies to evolve my lucky Haunter into a lucky Gengar.

I caught a Pinser, just in time for Mewtwo raids.

I got enough research completed to get another Entei in three days.

I caught my first non-event shiny, a Shuppet. Something brother was rather envious of.

I made some new Pokemon GO friends.

And most importantly… I CAUGHT A FUCKING DITTO.

A DITTO.

AFTER LIKE A WHOLE MONTH.

Worse, I caught four Dittos.

Turns out Pokemon GO freaked the fuck out after the community day ended, since the game doesn’t know what to do with all the leftover spawns, so you are left with weird, glitched Pokemon. Apparently it’s a new Pokemon GO (or even Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee) exclusive. But it really, really looks like some sort of placeholder Pokemon. Many of which turn into Ditto because people can catch these things and the game can’t just take legitimately caught Pokemon away from you.

In fact, after the event, there were loads of these weird Pokemon things. They still count as Pokemon and have the same flee/capture/etc. rates as whatever Pokemon they’re supposed to be, but they look really weird and fucked up. It’s clearly a Ditto with a nut and some sort of weird, Unown eyeball thing on it. It’s even more clearly a placeholder model, there when the game doesn’t know what it should be showing you. Four of the ones I caught turned into Dittos, but three of mine also turned into Chikoritas.

People have said they’ve seen shinies. That makes sense. Both of the Pokemon I saw them turn into have shiny forms, so it’s possible that this placeholder or new Pokemon also has a shiny version. Because why wouldn’t a brand new Pokemon have a shiny version, and why wouldn’t a placeholder have a shiny version for testing purposes?

Weirdly though, everyone else saw these AFTER the Chikorita event ended. I saw the one captured above in the middle of the event.

Creepy.

But anyway, now I have four Dittos. They’re all mediocre, but still.

On the flip side, I now have some work to do. I need 6 more Pokemon for my gold Johto badge before I can get a Celebi, and I gotta catch a good 70 more Magicarps…

Still, it was a good day. 10/10 would catch Chikoritas again.