Character · Pokemon
Togepi
Half a creature and half an eggshell, carried everywhere by a trainer who declined to put it down.
In Otakana the clue reads: Baby creature that stays in its shell
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Ash finds the egg, the group argues about who owns it, and it hatches in front of Misty and imprints on her, which settles the argument permanently. Togepi never leaves the shell. It walks on two small legs with the patterned top half still on, waves its arms, and is carried for most of the journey through two regions.
Its signature move is Metronome, which selects a random attack from every move in the game and fires it. In the anime this is played for luck, and the results range from a puff of air to something that ends the episode. In the games it is exactly as unreliable as it sounds and about as much fun.
It appeared on television before its own generation of games reached most players, which made it the first look anyone got at what came after the original 151. A baby Pokemon that cannot fight, introduced as a preview, and it worked.
Spelling TOGEPI
TOGEPI is six letters and three beats, to-ge-pi, with a hard G. The front comes from toge, the Japanese word for a thorn or a spike, which is what the red shapes on the shell are supposed to be. No doubled letters and no long vowels, so nothing goes missing between the kana and the alphabet. The middle is the risk: GE, not GI and not JI.