Miraidon's robotic tongue
Miraidon is a large, robotic, reptilian Pokémon with a primarily metallic, violet body. Its face, neck, abdomen, tail, and knee joints are silver, while its claws are white. A distinctive feature of Miraidon is the gular sac on its throat, which changes appearance across its various forms. Its head features a small, dark purple casque reminiscent of a motorcycle windshield and circular, purple cheek markings. Miraidon's eyes resemble an LED display, with black sclerae and pupils and pixelated irises that can change pattern to simulate blinking. Each eye is bordered by two connected silver plates that resemble eyelids, from which long blue and yellow plasma-like antennae extend, resembling eyebrows. Miraidon's shoulders are equipped with backward-curving, handlebar-like structures. A black, fender-like structure is positioned on its lower back just above the base of its tail. Each of Miraidon's feet has three claws, with the central one marked by a vertical black line. Both its tail and gular sac have grooved surfaces, resembling tire treads. In the Pokémon Adventures manga, Miraidon is shown to possess a robotic tongue that visually resembles its gular sac.
Despite its mechanical appearance, Miraidon displays behavior that suggests an advanced level of intelligence and perceptiveness. It carefully evaluates a person's character using keen insight before deciding to accompany them. Miraidon's calm and enigmatic nature makes it difficult to discern its thoughts or emotions, with subtle hints only visible in its eyes. Miraidon also exhibits biological traits such as the ability to consume food, specifically Herba Mystica sandwiches, to regain strength and power, allowing it to access its transformations after being weakened.
Miraidon can achieve high speeds and unleash powerful, electrically charged attacks, utilizing the advanced engine within its body to amplify its abilities, especially when surrounded by Electric Terrain. In battle, Miraidon can also race at ultrafast speeds to pierce its targets with futuristic electricity. It shares similarities with Cyclizar, a contemporary Pokémon, though Miraidon is notably more powerful and aggressive.
The origins of Miraidon in the present day trace back to a time machine constructed by Professor Turo, which brought two specimens to Area Zero a decade ago. These two individuals displayed contrasting temperaments: one was friendly and curious, while the other was aggressive and territorial. According to AI Turo, it is a futuristic relative of Cyclizar, though a version of Turo that appeared at the Crystal Pool suggests it may come from an alternate timeline. It was referred to as the "Iron Serpent" in the Violet Book, with its current name, Miraidon, attributed to Professor Turo, potentially due to a bootstrap paradox.
Miraidon is the only known Pokémon capable of learning the move Electro Drift. It is also the only known Pokémon that can have Hadron Engine as an Ability.
Forms
Miraidon has five forms: Ultimate Mode, Low-Power Mode, Drive Mode, Aquatic Mode, and Glide Mode.
Ultimate Mode
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Low-Power Mode
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Drive Mode
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Aquatic Mode
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Glide Mode
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- Ultimate Mode
Ultimate Mode Miraidon shooting electricity from its jet engines
In Ultimate Mode, Miraidon's body becomes charged with purplish-yellow energy. Its gular sac inflates and glows with a bluish-white light, while its antennae flare with electricity, taking on the appearance of lightning bolts. The middle and tip of its tail also emit this energy. Miraidon's back legs fold into its thighs, forming jet engine-like structures that enable it to hover and fly. Its irises display a unique combination of light blue outer rings and yellow inner rings. Areas on its cheeks, arms, handlebars, and thighs are filled with light purple energy. When Miraidon enters sleep, it deactivates, causing its glowing features to turn silver, similar to its appearance in Low-Power Mode.
In battle, Miraidon floats to maintain a strategic position, applying pressure to grounded foes while predicting their movements and striking at their weak points. It uses electricity generated within its body to charge its claws, fangs, and tail, with one strike from its charged tail said to knock out even the most resilient opponents.[1] Miraidon can unleash lightning from its mouth, neck, or jet engines, powerful enough to scorch the land. According to Arven, this is considered Miraidon's true form.
- Low-Power Mode
In Low-Power Mode, Miraidon adopts a quadrupedal stance. It lacks the intense purplish-yellow energy seen in Ultimate Mode, resulting in a monochromatic silver appearance on its gular sac, antennae, and tail. Its irises remain light blue, and areas on its cheeks, antennae, handlebars, and thighs retain subtle light purple energy. Miraidon assumes this form when weakened or not engaged in battle.
- Other forms
Miraidon can shift between different forms for specialized travel:
- Drive Mode: Energy is channeled to its tail and throat, creating wheel-like rings that enable high-speed movement and cliff climbing.
- Aquatic Mode: The rings expand to help Miraidon float and propel itself in water, using either the rotation of the rings or its jet engines.
- Glide Mode: Its antennae extend to spread an energy membrane, allowing it to glide or fly through the air.[2][3]
In all travel forms, Miraidon's tail stays tucked in, and its back legs remain folded, exposing its jet engines for propulsion.
- Miraidon and Koraidon are the only Paradox Pokémon:
- Whose names follow regular Pokémon naming conventions.
- To not have different names between languages.
- To each have their own unique Abilities.
- Miraidon is the tallest Paradox Pokémon in the Paldea Pokédex and the only known future Paradox Pokémon to be taller than both its present-day and ancient relatives.
- It is also the only future Paradox Pokémon not to have the word "Iron" in its name. However, its previous name according to the Violet Book is "Iron Serpent".
- Miraidon is also the only Dragon-type Paradox Pokémon to be a Future Pokémon rather than an Ancient Pokémon.
- Miraidon has the highest base Special Defense stat of all Electric-type Pokémon.
- Of all Pokémon, Miraidon and Koraidon have the highest number of forms that are obtainable in some capacity yet unusable in battle, as they each use three forms solely for travel and are obtained in their fourth 'low-power' forms, yet can only battle in their 'high-power' forms.
- Curiously, the forms are fully usable in battle when hacked into the game, albeit with various glitches and oddities.[4]
- In its unused Pokédex entry, the Ride forms of Miraidon are smaller than its Ultimate Mode, at 9'2" / 2.7m tall.
- Rotom has five forms that are unusable in battle (Pokédex, Phone, Bike, Rotomi, Drone), but Rotomi and Rotom Drone are completely unobtainable.
- The modes of Miraidon in Japanese and Korean use borrowed words from English, showing modernity, while the builds of Koraidon in the same languages use Sino-Japanese and Sino-Korean words respectively, showing tradition and the past.
- In Generation IX, prior to the Version 2.0.1 update of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Miraidon was able to learn Power Gem at level 49. After updating the game, it can only learn it via TM.
- Despite being able to swim and fly with the player on its back, Miraidon can't learn Surf or Fly. It shares this trait with its counterpart Koraidon.
Origin
Miraidon's appearance may be based on a robotic serpentine dragon and various lizards, such as the anole or the genera Sitana and Sarada — the latter two are collectively known as fan-throated lizards. Its robotic look might also be a reference to how futuristic cultures are often depicted with the overuse of machines and robots, as opposed to Koraidon's traditional look. Some elements of its design may be based on parts of various motorized vehicles (such as a sport bike and other super bikes designed with maneuverability in mind for city streets and highways), with its casque resembling a motorcycle windshield, its shoulders being similar to handlebars, its rear looking like the backrest of a vehicle seat, its throat and tail resembling wheels when active, and its legs resembling jet engines or exhaust pipes. Miraidon's ability to rearrange itself when changing between forms may be inspired by transforming robots. Miraidon's color scheme, along with the name of the game it debuts in, possibly stemmed from violet being on the opposite side of the visible spectrum of light from red (a prominent color associated with Pokémon Scarlet and Koraidon) as well as violet occasionally being associated with space (which is often considered the "final frontier", tying to Miraidon's hypothetical future motifs).
Given its serpentine body and its Electric type, it may take inspiration from Sugaar in Basque mythology. Originally venerated as the god of storms and thunder in pre-Christian Basque beliefs, Sugaar takes the form of a serpent and embodies lightning.
Name origin
Miraidon may be a combination of 未来 mirai (future), ライド raido (ride), and dragon, don (Spanish for lord), or -don (common suffix in dinosaur names derived from the Ancient Greek word for tooth).
Miraidon's name may have been intentionally designed to sound phonetically like me ride on, referencing how the player rides around the Paldea region on it.
Its alternate name, Iron Serpent, is literally iron serpent.
Tetsuno'orochi, its alternate name in Japanese, can be taken literally as 鉄の大蛇 tetsu no orochi (iron serpent).
Due to a bootstrap paradox involving a version of Professor Turo time traveling from the past, it is possible that the player in Pokémon Violet may be responsible for indirectly coining Miraidon's name.
For other sprites and images, please see Miraidon images on the Bulbagarden Archives.
