Pokemon of the Week #4: Poliwag

Pokemon of the Week: Poliwag, the Tadpole Pokemon

1996 artwork, oh yeah.

We going back to Gen One! Let the 16-bit Gameboy music commence. It's no secret that I'm a Gen-One baby, and as much as I love the later generations, I readily remember so much more facts about Generation One, mostly because it's a generation that I played the games, watched the cartoon, read the comics, collected the cards as well as bought a lot of little trivia books about what the Pokemon can do and stuff like that. Back then the world was such a simpler place, with no real thought given to competitiveness and plagiarism and lazy design and whatnot.

Where was I? Ah, right. Poliwag.

Poliwag is a very cartoony rendition of a tadpole, with his body being spherical, standing on two legs, with a tadpole tail, prominent lips and a huge spiral on his belly. It's not until I'm way older that I realize that the swirl on Poliwag, Poliwhirl and Poliwrath are supposed to represent real-life tadpoles who have see-through skin to see their guts. I had always thought that it was a bit of a weird thing that the Poli line focuses so much of their pokedex entries on how their innards can be seen when it's just a dumb spiral.

FireRed/LeafGreen artwork, oh yeah.

Poliwag is a pure Water-type, and one of the many, many Water-types you can encounter in Kanto. There's a fairly large amount of spots where you can get a Poliwag, but you need a Good Rod at least to reel in a Poliwag, so I didn't actually use a Poliwag in my party until Generation Two rolled around, where Poliwags were encountered very early on in routes near that one long fishing spot near Violet City, and can actually be caught as the rare encounter on an Old Rod (instead of it being Magikarp 100% of the time). Poliwag, of course, is as weak as a real-life tadpole, only really being powerful when he evolves into Poliwrath or Politoed, and even then those are mostly middling, fragile Pokemon as far as competitive play go.

But I love the Poli line! I grew up reading the Pokemon Adventures comic, and the first protagonist, Red, had a Poliwhirl as his starter Pokemon, and while Poliwhirl (and later Poliwrath) very often spends his career in the comics basically being like a scouter that takes on a powerful Pokemon before being swapped out for a better answer or simply being knocked out to illustrate how powerful Koga/Sabrina/Giovanni/Bruno/Lance are, I still loved Poliwrath very much. I actually did a FireRed run with an almost-copy of Red's team (Aerodactyl can only be obtained in Cinnabar Island and that's a bit too late for a new party member) and Poliwrath kicks ass. The Water/Fighting typing and the large array of moves that is available to Poliwrath is very cool, far cooler than turning Poliwhirl into Politoed, who remains... pure water.

Heck, if Politoed didn't also have Poli in its name, I would be hard-pressed to realize that it's even related to Poliwhirl and Poliwrath. Politoed just looks so different, so frog-like, so green and so bereft of spirals that he doesn't even look like he's related to Poliwhirl or Poliwrath. 

But we're not here to talk about Poliwrath, damn it. We're here to talk about Poliwag, the little dude. 

I love Poliwag. Sure, the Poli line is a very lazy design -- it's a very stylized depiction of tadpoles and frogs, and honestly beyond the tail, I'm not even sure what part of the Poli line even resembles tadpoles or frogs at all as opposed to just, well, about anything else. It's a design that if it were released in the new generation people would cry foul. Well, I love the Poli line. Yes, Poliwhirl into Poliwrath is a bit lazy -- Poliwrath basically gains angry eyes and slightly bigger muscles, which in artwork isn't always apparent -- but Poliwag into Poliwhirl is pretty cool. Poliwhirl loses the tail and gains arms, which is similar to a real life tadpole's metamorphosis into a frog, how the tail regresses and it sprouts limbs.

Its pokedex entries are simple, focusing on its stubby legs that make it inept at walking, or the swirl on its belly, basically screaming at you to evolve this little stubby thing into a Poliwhirl, and at level 25 it's a pretty speedy route there. Poliwag naturally learns a lot of Water-type moves, but it's also got access to -- very memorably for me -- Hypnosis. Later generations give him some Ground-type moves like Mud Bomb via level up. 

Poliwag is notable for one of the few Pokemon to undergo a change in its design throughout the game's lifespan. The original design for the three Polis were fully black... which isn't that apparent in the original Gen-1 games due to their limited colour scheme, but unlike every other Pokemon, the Polis remained black even when colour was introduced to the games in the second Generation. But by the third Generation, they have adopted the anime's gray-blue paint scheme into the games, and never looked back. It's not a drastic change, but it's still notable to me. 

Poliwag is also notable for being the favourite Pokemon of one of Pokemon's creators, Satoshi Tajiri. And I don't blame him -- I evolve him into Poliwrath very quickly (my Generation III Poliwrath is 'Poli' after Red's Poliwrath, and my Generation II and IV Poliwraths are named 'King Bradley' after Wrath from Full Metal Alchemist), but Poliwag is very adorable. So yeah. A slightly shorter Pokemon of the Week from me, which is surprising since this is a Generation I Pokemon... but Poliwag doesn't really give me much talking material. He's a cute tadpole with swirlies.