So you’ve talked about how some pokemon are defined by being near identical to real world animals, like how Krabby and Kingler are crabs that do crab things, and generally speaking, pokemon that are just trying to be real animals aren’t all that interesting. Do you think Girafarig falls into this category at all?

Well, not really – I mean, Girafarig’s ‘thing’ is the independent head on its tail.  Giraffes (and vertebrates in general) don’t really work like that.  It’s almost more of a pushmi-pullyu sort of thing, which you can see more clearly in the original concept art from the beta of Gold and Silver.

I kinda wish they had made more of that in the anime; from memory the Girafarig feature episode basically portrayed it as a generic Psychic-type, which is a little sad, really.   A lot more could be made of the contrast between the more cerebral Psychic-type end and the rather bestial Normal-type end.

Come to think of it, Girafarig would be a really good candidate for Mega Evolution – tail becomes a great big chomping head, turns to Psychic/Dark, gains powerful physical attacks… maybe some sort of custom ability too.  Not sure exactly what, though.