Pokemon: The Three Kingdoms Pokegijinkas

So I drew Xerneas and Yveltal in Korean historical clothes (more or less) for a twitter Pokemon gijinka collab! Sort of like the Three Kingdoms in China, there also were Three Kingdoms in Korea. If there wasn’t a two-Pokemon limit on the collab reservations, the Zygarde would have been included but alas...I just drew one for fun here for completionist's sake.

For Xerneas I picked 신라 (Silla) fashion, mostly because the royal ceremonial crown has points shaped like deer antlers. And Yveltal was sort of supposed to be of 백제 (Baekje) fashion since those two Kingdoms were historically always in conflict with one another; their crown also fits the Pokemon better (the gold leaflets of the crown were supposed to be put at the sides of the silk cap to resemble wings). And funny enough, Silla was ultimately the stronger of the two, eventually bringing down the the Baekje Kingdom (sort of how Fairy being strong against Dark)

Finally for Zygarde, I tried to base the design off of Goguryeo (고구려)’s traditional clothing for royalty, but there isn’t much to be had so I took some liberty and may or may not have taken designs from Korean historical drama costumes. Again, this is influenced by the Three Kingdoms in Korea. Out of the three, Goguryeo is the northernmost kingdom, and was seen as the “gatekeeper” of sorts, inadvertently defending the other two Korean kingdoms from China during various battles. And one of the most famous Goguryeo kings, King Gwanggaeto the Great (광개토대왕) is known to have expanded the Korean territory up to  Russia’s Primorsky Krai and Inner Mongolia. Despite being a prominent military power, they did fall under the Silla-Tang alliance (again, fits the Fairy type being strong against Dragon). 

Enjoy!

EDIT: I am VERY aware Kalos is a French-based region. But for the sake of challenging myself with character design, I purposely did not pick France as the theme for this trio.