Pokemon of the Week #3: Audino

Pokemon of the Week: #510, Audino, the Hearing Pokemon

Alternate name: "XP Bucket"

Aaaah, Audino. I really wished this week's random number generator fell on an Alolan Pokemon, but it landed on 510, Audino. Which means we'll going to talk about Mega Audino as well. Whenever we land on a Pokemon with a Mega or Alolan form or whatever the hell Gamfreak and Nintendo decides to add in the future, we'll talk about both of them so this week you guys are getting a slightly longer episode of Pokemon of the Week.

Audino is a Pokemon that... I honestly just flat out don't care about. I don't hate her the way I do some Pokemon, but she's just... so... there. She's a pink rabbit-esque Pokemon that takes up the slot for Chansey as the super-bulky heal-oriented Normal-type Pokemon in Generation V (along with multiple other suspiciously-similar substitutes introduced in Unova) and while I don't necessarily prefer Chansey to Audino... I just don't really care about Audino. She's just a very plain design, which is probably what she's meant to be. She doesn't look strong, and she's meant to gear towards the cuter side of the spectrum... but in my opinion doesn't quite manage that.

She's meant to embody the Pokemon Center nurse Pokemon even moreso than Chansey does, with the pink portions of its fur design to resemble a doctor or a nurse's coat, and those weird tentacle feeler things on her ears being apparently extendable and used as stethoscopes. Okay, Audino's flesh-ear things are... the slightest bit disturbing. But okay.

Other than that, though, Audino is absolutely boring. Her Pokedex all talk about her good sense of hearing with her stethoscope ears, and her portrayal in both the anime and games are basically, well, Chansey v. 2.0. In the games, Audino isn't even as rare as Chansey, which was Chansey's gimmick in her original generation. Audino's found in every single route. Generation V had this 'shaking grass' gimmick where every patch of grass has a chance to have a single patch suddenly shake in indication of a rare Pokemon, but two times out of three it's just going to be a boring ol' Audino instead of that Leavanny or Cinccino you're hoping to capture.

What Audino lacks in being a special snowflake, though, she makes up for it in her XP yield. Wild Audinos are notoriously weak, since half of her natural moveset are healing moves, and the XP she gives? Whoo, Audinos are easily the ticket to make your Pokemon level up quickly. And it's something I abused to no end in XY, where some of the daily repeat trainers are guaranteed to have Audinos.

She's got a huge amount of TM learnset, though, enough to give Raticate envy. A brief look through her TM learnlist: Psyshock. Blizzard. Solar Beam. Thunderbolt. Dig. Shadow Ball. Fire Blast. Dazzling Gleam. Surf. Theoretically she can have a wide range of types in her moves, but Audino's stat is so geared towards HP and defenses that she's just not that useful in battle, and besides the presence of other bulky normal-types like Snorlax, Lickilicky and Blissey who have more of an offensive presence makes Audino just forgotten.

Then game Generation VI with its new type: Fairy-type. And Audino shot up in the short-list of Pokemon that everyone thought was going to be given the new Fairy-typing, or at least become Normal/Fairy like Jigglypuff and Azurill. I mean, Audino is pinkier and more fairy-esque than Chansey, right? At least it'll give Audino something that sets it apart, plus adding another Fairy-type Pokemon into the mix. But no. Granbull became Fairy, Whimsicott became Fairy, motherfucking Mr Mime became Fairy, but Audino remains that boring Normal type she's always been.

Doctor's in the house.

Then came Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, the second half of Generation VI, which gave a lot of Hoenn Pokemon Mega-evolutions... and Audino! Finally making her Normal/Fairy, and turning her pink parts almost entirely white to resemble a doctor's labcoat. She becomes fluffier and puffier, and gains another set of flesh-stethoscope-tentacles under her neck. It's... a design that doesn't really make her stand out that much, to be honest, and the stat increases isn't exactly impressive either. Her ability is locked into Healer, which has a mere 30% chance of curing an ally's status condition.

Mega Audino's stats are given a fair boost, with her two defenses reaching the 125's, and her special attack given a slight boost from 60 to 80 which means her unexpected Flamethrowers hit ever so slightly harder... though she's still ultimately geared towards walling up and healing allies. Which isn't terribly exciting and definitely not what you want to do with a Mega Evolution. I mean, even if you don't go for the obviously game-breaking ones like Kangaskhan, Rayquaza, Lucario and Gengar, there are a lot cooler-looking mega evolutions out there. So yeah, poor Mega Audino just gets left in the dust and she's one of the few Mega Evolutions that I wonder why they didn't just make this a straight-up evolution so you can have Mega Audino (which isn't overpowered at all) as a regular Pokemon, and have someone else mega evolve in your party. Not that every Pokemon has to be equal, but come on. Mega Audino's barely five points more than Milotic and Snorlax if we're going by stat totals, and those two are relatively offensive tanks.

Design wise I just don't care? It's not that I don't like the cute Pokemon, but Mega Audino tries so hard with the frilliness yet not hard enough, so she doesn't look absolutely fun and crazy the way Mega Altaria does. I think it's the combination of the white and the fleshy colour that makes her just look so boring. I dunno. I just don't care about Audino that much.

So yeah. It's a bit of a boring Pokemon. I'm not a big fan. But I did manage to talk a fair bit about it here. Hopefully next week we'll roll a more interesting one.