Pikachu’s normal shinies make it look like it’s been sunburnt, full stop. I think it’s supposed to just make it look more ... animated or something? But it’s not exactly a pretty look in my opinion, Raichu doubly so!

So, to perk things up with this lil guy, I took a look at one of the older animations for the Thunder attack in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald and noticed that at the tail of the animation, the attack takes on this beautiful purple/blue/white color and thought that it looked AMAZING and that’s the inspiration for the colors on Pikachu. It looks like it’s electrified and ready to battle!

Raichu’s more styled after stormclouds that are ready to drop their lightning, as the name can roughly translate to ‘Thunder Squeak’ -- the suffix ‘chu’ is an onomatopoeia for mice squeaking or kissing. The gray tone on the body is a cooler sort of gray and the normally brown accents take on the same purple-white as Pikachu to really make things pop out.