Pokemon of the Week #27: Minccino

#572: Minccino, the Chinchilla Pokemon

Countdown to Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon? Sure, why not. From this point on, we're going to have a couple of special 'Pokemon of the Week' segments where each week we'll be highlighting a Pokemon taken not from a pool of generation or the huge pool of 'ALL OF THEM', but we'll instead be talking of a Pokemon taken from each type. 

This week, we'll start with the most simple, most mundane type of all: Normal.

The Normal type is Pokemon's shorthand for 'everything else'. It doesn't have any fire properties, isn't based on an aquatic creature or a plant, can't do wacky psychic powers or shoot electricity, isn't a dragon or an insect or a robot? It's a Normal type. Some people have even joked that Normal-types are basically the 'animal' type, and for the most part they're right. Rattata's just a funnily-coloured cartoon rat. Ursaring is just an angry cartoon bear. Stoutland is just a poofy cartoon dog. And honestly, such a huge chunk of the Normal-type population is just Normal/Flying Pokemon. I'm not sure who really decided that all Flying-types without an elemental type must be part-Normal, but it's just like them insisting that, no, Pidgeot and Fearow and Toucannon and Staraptor are just... birds. They're not cool phoenixes and thunderbirds like Ho-Oh and Zapdos. 

In an essence, from a gaming standpoint, the Normal-type is just a shorthand for 'you could probably do better than this'. It's your most basic set of attacks. Scratch, Tackle, Pound... you'll be waiting for the day your Cyndaquil or Mudkip outgrows those lame-ass Normal attacks and start breathing fire or machine-gunning people with mud shots. And as such, many of the earlier-route Pokemon are boring Normal-types. There must always be a simple Normal-type Pokemon, the Rattatas and Sentrets and Zigzagoons and Bidoofs and Patrats and Bunnelbys and Yungooses, which you'll ideally switch out for something stronger as you progress in your journey. I mean, if you really like Raticate or Gumshoos there's no problem -- you can take your favourites to the top, you just have to put in more effort in training them and level-grinding them. It's Pokemon, after all. 

Chinchilla

Of course, there are exceptions. Even from Generation I we had the stupendously powerful (and rare) Kangaskhan, Snorlax and Tauros as pure-Normal types that can kick as much ass as any other powerful Pokemon in the game. Over the years we've also had Normal-type legendaries like the mighty (if gimped) Regigigas and the god of Pokemon, Arceus. And immensely powerful (if impractical) attacks like Hyper Beam and Giga Impact are Normal-type attacks.

So in selecting the Pokemon for this week, I went to a website that generates random Pokemon from a certain type, and kept clicking until I found something that truly embodies the Normal-type (so my first few choices -- Drampa and a couple of Normal/Flying types are out of the question), and it settled on... Minccino!

Ah, we finally can talk about the actual Pokemon, and not the type. 

Minccino is the epitomization of your generic Normal-type Pokemon. Introduced in the fifth generation, Minccino is based on the chinchilla. Which, for those of you who are uninitiated (like me), is a species of squirrel-esque rodents from South America with a very dense fur that is often used in the fur industry to make clothing and scarves and stuff. 

And, well, Minccino's design is basically a cartoon version of that. It's the boring basic-stage that's just, well, a cartoon animal that evolves into Cinccino, which is... a chinchilla wearing scarves. Y'know, scarves that real-life chinchillas are harvested for? Yeah. Honestly, not a very exciting Pokemon. Truth be told, with all the super-awesome and super-horrid designs in Generation V, Minccino is very, very forgettable. Even among the Normal-types introduced in that generation, barely anyone in the games use a Minccino -- with the only real time I remember a Minccino showing up is because it's the Pokemon that Professor Juniper pops out of the Pokeball in the 'World of Pokemon' introduction for Black and White.

Minccino's lore is... very, very minimal. They're tidy. And they rub things with their tails to clean them. Theres truly not much else more than that. (Wow, no wonder I don't remember them at all.)

Hell, let's cover their evolution, Cinccino. Let's see what lore they have... their scarf-like fur has a special oil that deflects attacks and dust. Cool, but it doesn't actually appear in the games in any meaningful way -- Cinccino has a standard defense, doesn't have any Furfrou-style ability, or learns any particularly blocking move. Wow. Oh, they evolve with a Shiny Stone, one of the currently four Pokemon to do so.

Cinccino

Add that to the fact that neither Minccino nor Cinccino are especially useful in battle beyond  being someone you can abuse Skill Link with. Hell, even in their home games, they don't really show up that much, only showing as rare encounters in three routes. I think Black 2/White 2 had a Minccino or Cinccino (I can't be arsed to find out which) that shows up in the initial Hidden Grotto tutorial?

Like, that's not entirely fair. Cinccino at least has some use as a Skill Link spammer. It learns Bullet Seed and Rock Blast, and with Skill Link they'll spam those attacks to hell and back. Plus it has its own STAB Tail Slap, a multi-hit Normal-type move that only Minccino and Cinccio can learn normally. But honestly? Still very, very boring outside of that. It's kinda like the Meowth of its generation, only a lot less interesting visually (and, let's be honest, not pushed by the anime a ton). A lot of the Normal-types from earlier generations end up becoming more interesting after Generation VI retconned them into Fairy-types, but Minccino didn't quite make it. 

But yeah. Other than that, Minccino doesn't really have much to it. Hell, after writing this article, I'll probably forget Minccino exists until I see a list of all Generation V Pokemon, go 'oh yeah, these things!' before forgetting them again. And, after a quick search down an older article I wrote about the most forgettable Pokemon, Minccino is one of those... and I forgot that I had once forgotten about these dudes. 

So, yeah. On one spectrum of the Normal-type, you have badass walls like Blissey or monstrous titans like Kangaskhan. On the other, you have completely forgettable cartoon animals like Minccino and Cinccino... who simply can't hold a candle to the other cartoon animals, because other cartoon animals shoot fire and ice and stuff.