Holy shit, this series kind of fell by the wayside in the face of so many superhero TV shows and cartoons that I'm doing, didn't it? With Pokemon Sun and Moon coming quite soon, I really kind of need to get my game on. Anyway, I missed out Generation IV and V almost entirely, playing them around half a year before VI was released. It's not that I hate the designs or anything, I just simply didn't have the time nor the DS to play it. And, well, I put in more time into my copy of Pokemon Platinum than any other Pokemon game, I think, and I really liked Sinnoh. It's a very cool region, with a lot of new Pokemon both fresh and updated versions of older Pokemon.
Eh, let's quickly get on with it, shall we?
Honourable mentions. Lucario and Piplup aren't actually in it, despite being super-duper popular dudes in the fandom. Piplup's cute but I didn't really like him that much, and while Lucario's cool-looking I didn't really like him more than any of the names in this list.
- Drapion: I like arachnids, and while Drapion isn't quite a realistic depiction of a scorpion, he's very weird and cool-looking, and definitely looks like he can fuck you up. And he can, especially since I can't keep it straight that Drapion is Poison/Dark and not Poison/Bug back when playing Platinum. I don't think I've ever used a Drapion in my party, but his design is definitely cool.
- Floatzel: Buizel/Floatzel is the very first Shiny Pokemon I encountered in a non-ROM-hacked game, and while it's not the best shiny out there (Floatzel looks anemic more than anything, though at least neon yellow is very distinct compared to the normal orange shade). I don't have a lot of love for otters, and I didn't give much of a shit to the line before I caught the Shiny Buizel, but he holds a special place in my heart now.
- Honchkrow: Crows are cool. Honchkrow is a mafia boss (or priest) version of one. He's just a cool-looking bird with style that eclipses Staraptor's emo-hairdo as the coolest bird in Sinnoh.
- Carnivine: Predatory plants have always fascinated me, which is why I liked Victreebel so much. But venus flytraps are a lot cooler than pitcher plants... it's a pity that Carnivine is so darned useless in battle, but hey, he at least has a pretty unique design.
- Froslass: Snorunt and Glalie were a bit forgettable in Generation III, but throw in Froslass. Holy shit, Froslass is awesome. Based on the mythical yuki-onna, she's a floating icy kimono ghost demon, and an Ice/Ghost typing is pretty cool. Forget Let It Go, Froslass preys on travelers lost in the snowy woods like a goddamned ice demon. And she's actually pretty strong in battle too. Definitely far cooler than Glalie, and that's saying something since Glalie isn't a bad design himself.
- Dusknoir, Gliscor, Weavile, Glaceon: No real reason other than they're very cool updates of already cool-looking older Pokemon.
#10 Spiritomb
In addition to the metal design of an absolutely insane-looking ghostly face with swirly eyes and a spiky grin popping out of a sealed stone, Spiritomb's lore is just fucking creepy. 108 spirits chained into a single stone, creating a gestalt monster without any weaknesses (pre-Gen-VII)? Spiritomb is not the strongest Pokemon out there, but as an adaptation of a Legion-style demon, she's definitely got points in style. Shame catching a Spiritomb is a royal pain in the ass in Generation IV, making use of the stupid Underground mechanic. But just look at, er, them! Such a cool design, that flattened 2D demonic face looks so much cooler in Generation VI's 3D graphics, and if my little essay on Sableye in the Gen III list is any indication, I really liked the creepy factor of the Ghost/Dark dual type, being near-untouchable with super-effective moves... and Spiritomb just being the composite chained souls of the damned just makes it a fair bit cooler.#9 Vespiquen
I like bugs, and I can't lie. I can't stand actual real-life bugs and I will murder any that get close with a rolled-up newspaper -- Beedrills in the Pokemon anime probably fostered my fear of stinging insects -- but I really am fascinated by the little buggers. Combee is the weirdest thing in all of Sinnoh, but Vespiquen? Oh, what a cool design. She definitely looks regal with that wide skirt that doubles as a honeycomb for her bee minions, and she has this very cool insectoid face that just looks like she's going to fuck you up. Aaron's Vespiquen in the Elite Four also gave me a fair amount of trouble, really giving me some respect for the bug type. Vespiquen's a pretty defensive lady, with her signature moves Attack Order and Defense Order allowing Vespiquen to just set up all day before unleashing her swarm of servants to do battle. Vespiquen's just this queen bug with style, and I really like both the concept and the design behind her.#8 Palkia
But I really ended up liking Palkia while doing a randomized Nuzlocke of a ROM of Pokemon Black 2. The randomizer absolutely hated me, giving me weak shits as my first encounters, while gym leaders challenged me with Meloettas, Deoxyses and Ho-Ohs. Deaths were very, very frequent... until I met a Palkia in Route 8. Which I quickly lobbed a Master Ball at. The sorry state of my team was definitely helped out with Palkia, and the randomizer hating me isn't a joke either -- the very first trainer I fought after catching Aether the Palkia had a Tyranitar and a Rayquaza and I very nearly lost my new god of space. But survive Palkia did, and I now understand just why people say Nuzlocke can give you an appreciation for Pokemon you didn't really care about before. Because now Palkia ranks among my favourites. It's still not the best designed Pokemon in my opinion, but I've grown to like the dude more. I mean, it's a dinosaur, which makes it a lot cooler than Dialga the Time Pony.
#7 Gallade
I have talked about how much I liked Ralts' evolutionary line, and how it's one of my all-time favourites, but Gallade kind of fell short next to Gardevoir in the design standpoint. It's a very cool update, don't get me wrong. It adds some masculinity to the line while still maintaining the gracefulness of Ralts and Kirlia, but where Gardevoir is a very cohesive design with her dress and whatnot, Gallade just feels weird. Mostly from the waist down, where he's got this huge weird UFO disc for a waist and two weird stumpy legs. But Gallade more than makes up for it with his badass expression and his arms, which are extendable elbow blade things. Gallade trades in Gardevoir's more special-oriented attacks to being a physical attacker that's also part-Fighting, and he's definitely a very cool customer. I didn't really care that much for Gallade until I raised my Ralts into one in my playthrough of Alpha Sapphire (it's Adamant, like, the perfect nature for a Gallade, plus it's a male), and I really like him. He's like this cool psychic knight that just murders people with psychic blades of justice. I still find Gallade's UFO hips weird as all hell, and I'd rather they have given him a different lower body, but I've grown attached enough to the design to not bitch about it too much. Gallade's cool, is all I'm saying.#6 Togekiss
What the fuck, Togekiss? Yes, Togekiss is one of my favourite Pokemon. See, Platinum was one of the first games that I actually built up an entire party to fight for me instead of relying on a starter and one or two others. One of the members of that team was Togekiss, which ended up just growing because I was too lazy to deposit the egg that hatched into a Togepi into a box. I remembered Togepi's Metronomes being super-awesome in the anime, but Togetic is the mother of all disappointments, being weaker than other Normal/Flying types. But Togekiss? He's a tank. Sure, his initial sprite kind of made it look like this weird deformed airplane with Togepi markings on it, but future sprites and anime portrayals show its more bird-like qualities, and, well, I just like Togekiss enough because he gives me type coverage and just looks so chill. I have these very tense-looking Pokemon like Crobat, Espeon and Torterra in my party and Togekiss is just there with a 'chill, we got this' expression. Plus while Metronome isn't the best move to equip to a Pokemon, Togekiss has such a wide movepool that it's really cool to have him just launching Water Pulses, Aura Spheres, Flamethrowers and Shock Waves here and there. Having Serene Grace as an ability causes him to paralyze, flinch and burn a lot more, which is just an added bonus to having this small tank.Togekiss, Venusaur and Crobat are probably the only Pokemon that I used as a major party member in more than two playthroughs -- which honestly surprised me a little when I considered this since I tend to like to try and use Pokemon that I've never used before.
#5 Rotom
Oh, how I loved Rotom. I honestly am a bit disappointed he isn't considered a Legendary, but I guess his stats isn't high enough. Rotom is such a weird dude with such a mischievous expression. Its design is very simple, just this bolt of orange energy surrounded by blue lightning, with the cheekiest grin on its face. Rotom's Electric and Ghost, a very unique and cool type combination, and getting it is a fun little side-quest where you have to investigate a malfunctioning television in a haunted mansion. It's a nice subversion of the Japanese 'ghost in a television' trope while still keeping some measure of cuteness. Rotom gets an upgrade in Platinum that allows it to possess various appliances, a very awesome take on ghost lores of possession and poltergeists.And the various Rotom types are very cool! Fan Rotom is kind of m'eh, and I have grown to have a love-hate relationship with the extremely competitive Washing Machine Rotom... but Oven and Freezer Rotom just looks fun, and Lawnmower Rotom has this gigantic shit-eating grin that makes me absolutely love him. Rotom is just this weird electric ghost that likes pranking people, and I kind of like that. Rotom's cool.
#4 Darkrai
Oh, man, how can Darkrai not be on this list? And I just recently acquired a Darkrai from the distribution thingies from the 20th Anniversary, too. Darkrai is a rather standard 'cool' design. He's a ghost, all black with a little red and white, a shadowy wraith that I thought was 'okay, cool, but it's kind of an obvious legendary' which I felt didn't quite have the same weird uniqueness that other legendary Pokemon has. Mind you, it is a cool design. Black wraith body, claws, wispy shoulder blades, glowing eyes, blood-red collar, white hair thing... and he's the lord of nightmares. But Darkrai just has so many things going on for him. He's got one of the coolest movies, where he takes on both Dialga and Palkia at the same time, and he's revealed not to be actually evil despite being so obviously monstrously evil in design. And I like that.While nominally being an event-exclusive Pokemon, Darkrai's actually got quite a fair amount of appearances in the games themselves. In Diamond, Pearl and Platinum, Darkrai is the cause of a minor character's son being beset by dreams that are so horrifying that he's unable to wake up, and you need to find Darkrai's archnemesis and counterpart, Cresselia, to get a Lunar Wing to wake the kid up. If you get the event to fight Darkrai, you can enter an otherwise inaccessible locked house, only to have a person force you to sleep in a bed and then you wake up in a strange island with only Darkrai in it. Of course, no one's lived in that house for decades, as you learn from locals later on.
In the fifth generation, Darkrai gets to be so much more sinister without even putting in an actual appearance. Black and White had this Easter Egg with a ghost girl that disappears on a bridge, but their sequels, Black 2 and White 2, had you explore the ghost girl's very haunted house, and find out that she died due to dark dreams, and a Lunar Wing (Cresselia's item) can be found nearby her house. It's all but spelled out that Darkrai flat-out killed this girl. What the reason it may be, something accidental or far more malicious, is never established. But man, Darkrai, you're just a cool looking nightmare demon thing.
#3 Torterra
Starter Pokemon get to show up here, yeah? Torterra is like a mixture of my two favourite starters a a child, Venusaur and Swampert. It's four-legged and a huge dinosaurian reptile with plants on its back, like Venusaur, and it's a tank (with a sole 4x weakness) defensively that's able to launch powerful Earthquakes like Swampert. I absolutely love Torterra, despite not really caring for Turtwig (Piplup's definitely the cutest of the Sinnoh starters) and tolerating Grotle at best. But Torterra is just such a cool looking beast with its gigantic snapping turtle beak, and the World Turtle allusions with having a small bonsai garden on its back. I've always loved it when Pokemon references Asian legends, and Torterra referencing the World Turtle (well, tortoise) while taking a unique spin with being a Grass-type instead of the obvious Water-type, is very cool indeed. I think I have a thing for awkward slow-looking starters, yeah?
In any case, my Torterra is a monstrous physical tank. Wood Hammer! Earthquake! Stone Edge! Crunch! All the Sinnoh starters are very awesome, but Torterra is just a juggernaut and I really love my Torterra. What can I say? I like dinosaurs.
#2 Garchomp
Garchomp is a very obvious choice to put in here, isn't he? He's a very cool design, growing from the awkward 'waddling mouth' Gible into the uncontested coolest Pseudo-Legendary dragon ever in Pokemon's history. (Well, Salamence and Hydreigon might give Garchomp a run for his money) And what a cool design he has! Garchomp is a desert dragon, and also a landshark, with blades under its dagger-pointed arms. It has got a very velociraptor-esque build while still looking tough, with shark fins and a hammerhead shark-esque head. It's a design that screams power and speed, and, well, it is quite powerful. Anything that isn't Ice or Fairy will absolutely get fucked up by Garchomp just swooping in like a fighter jet and taking names and murdering everything in its path. Garchomp's just cool. I really don't have much to say beyond fifteen different variations of 'Garchomp looks like a boss'.Also I'm 100% sure that Garchomp is my favourite pseudo-legendary. Well, maybe not, but it's either Garchomp or Metagross. Salamence, Tyranitar and Hydreigon are very close calls, though. They be cool monsters too. But none of them are hammerhead-shark-dragon-jet-raptors living in the desert. So.
#1 Giratina
Platinum's mascot is Giratina, and I have heard his monstrous cry hundreds of times considering the amount of time I logged into Pokemon Platinum. Giratina's original design in Diamond and Pearl is cool enough, this weird demonic undead dragon that kind of resembles the Pit Lords from Warcraft. Multiple legs and a centaurian body, this weird clawed shadowy wings, riblike protrusions, a very cool gray/black scheme with yellow and red highlights... and then Platinum established its backstory. It's banished by Arceus in a thinly-veiled Satan analogy, though unlike the demon Giratina isn't quite evil. It's just a renegade, and rules over the anti-matter world that's a mirror of the real world which explains why the weird eldritch dungeon he's found in is so screwy. And Giratina is so pissed off at Cyrus trying to destroy the world that it just kind of drags Cyrus off to Poke-Hell. Er, the Distortion World. In addition to having a very memorable world with no NPCs and a very platform-screwy thing with floating islands and waterfalls (water-rises?) in a swirling vortex of nothingness, Giratina is reimagined in his natural form in the Distortion World, this giant legless worm with a very cool new mouth that opens sideways, giant tendril-wings that thread behind its body and a very cool stat redistribution to make it an even more powerful tank than it already is.
Even his movie is one of the better efforts that Pokemon has. It probably needed to explain Giratina's motivations a bit better and not just make him a generic rampaging monster of doom... but he's still entertaining whenever the plot moves away from Shaymin (who I don't hate... but he's not an eldritch wyrm from the reverse world). And honestly the whole concept of Giratina as this supremely evil monster -- plus his cool tendril wings and ribcage things -- just makes him look cool.Giratina is an undead shadow worm dragon from a parallel dimension that happens to be the god of antimatter. How can you not love him? Compared to his fellow 'gods', Giratina actually feels like a Lovecraftian design and, yeah, I like Arceus but he's ultimately kind of a majestic horse with a golden ring. Giratina is, again, an undead worm dragon. That breaks reality. He's just cool.
___________________________________________________________
With a Top Five Favourite, let's go through my bottom five. It's a staple that I list my five least favourite Generation IV Pokemon...
#5 Probopass
I don't hate Probopass the way so many other people do. In the comics Probopass is actually pretty cool, with the mini moai things being actually drones that Probopass controls. But while Nosepass is an innocent enough design, Probopass just looks weird. They're just trying way too much, adding the magnetic drone thing, the Moai Easter Statue thing, the compass thing, the metal filling mustache/nose hair and just generally making a really weird design. It only ends up in this list by process of elimination -- Electivire and Magmortar are two other super-ugly designs that could've ended up here, except those two I've grown to really like due to them kicking all sorts of ass. Probopass is just kind of, well, an ass.
#4 Buneary/Lopunny
Yeah, I never liked these two. I mean, you gotta have useless Normal-type two stages in a game, but did they have to make these? Buneary is kind of innocent enough, but I just don't like it. Lopunny, though, is the type of design that's absolutely weird with a bland brown colour scheme, a main body that's thin as a stick and two weirdly huge poofy ear things that just look ugly. And then you realize it's supposed to be a playboy bunny to cater to those Furry members of the community... ugh. I don't think I would've hated Lopunny this much if not for the community, and it's otherwise just a "m'eh" Pokemon in my book, but still.
#3 Glameow/Purugly
I hate cats. I'm definitely a dog person through and through, and I absolutely hate cats. It's not universal, however... I don't mind cute kittens, and anything that looks like a predatory cat that can fuck me up are cool. Which is why I didn't mind Persian (who looks more like a panher than a housecat) or Meowth (this one is definitely the anime's fault), the graceful Espeon is actually one of my favourite Gen II Pokemon, and other cat Pokemon like the cute Litten, the sleek Liepard and the weird Espurr are all cats I've grown attached to. But Glameow and Purugly are just... ugly cats. Purugly probably intentionally so, but damn Purugly is such a horrifyingly ugly design. Look at that fat shit! Glameow also has this very weird spring-tail and annoying frills and whatnot latched on to her design that makes me absolutely loathe the two.
#2 Lickilicky
Oh man, I hate Lickilicky. My hatred for it has subsided since I first played Platinum, which is purely out of hatred for his design. Lickitung is one of the worst things in the original 150, and they made it... chubbier, into this overweight pink kid with a stupid spit-curl, a fucking bib and a stupid Wi-Fi signal on its stomach. What? Add that to Lickilicky being absolutely irritating in the otherwise pretty cool Darkrai movie, and I just ended up having nothing but dislike for the thing. I've grown to tolerate it... until my attempts to conquer XY's Battle Maison surfaced, and holy fuck Lickilicky is annoying. It's one of those annoying tanky Normal-types, but it has such a wide array of movesets that doesn't even make sense. It can use Ice Beam! Solarbeam! Thunderbolt! Earthquake! Flamethrower! Focus Blast! Rock Slide! Dragon Tail! Surf! Shadow Ball! Honestly the only types that Lickilicky doesn't have in his arsenal are Fairy, Psychic and Bug, and how the fuck does it make sense for an obese lizard with an oversized tongue to launch balls of ghostly shadow or to summon thunder from the skies?
#1 Ambipom
I'm pretty sure I listed Ambipom among the top 10 Pokemon I hate the most. And, yeah, I hate Ambipom. I'm not very fond of monkeys in real life, and Ambipom doesn't even look like a cute monkey. In-between its weird udder ass-tail-hands, its annoying-as-all-hell hairdo, its irritating Fake Out movesets and generally just being annoying... Lickilicky at least looks like it can be a tanky problem. Ambipom is just kinda shit and annoying.
No comments:
Post a Comment