Pokemon of the Week #32: Yungoos & Gumshoos

#734: Yungoos, the Loitering Pokemon & #735: Gumshoos, the Stakeout Pokemon

So welcome back, after a hiatus, to another episode of Pokemon of the Week. The whole 'countdown to Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon' with a Pokemon of each type ended up not panning out because I'm just kinda bored of putting restrictions on myself, so yeah. Here's going to be a slight retooling. Instead of just talking about a single Pokemon, I'll talk about an evolution line, because I inevitably end up discussing the whole line anyway and this'll actually give me two Pokemon to talk about for the price of one.

Perhaps it's a bit late for one of these to come out, but here's my little tie-in with Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon, and for the next couple of weeks expect exclusively Alolan Pokemon (although I may do a Hoenn one to tie in with Pokemon Go's Hoenn update) to be covered in my Pokemon of the Week segments. 

And today, we're going to be discussing Yungoos and Gumshoos, otherwise known as the 'Donald Trump hair Pokemon', which is a joke that was 'eh heh' funny the first time I saw it on the internet, but at this point the joke has absolutely burnt the fuck out and I'm just going to acknowledge it briefly here in this opening segment before moving on. Ha ha, the ferret rat creature has hair like the president of the USA. All the game designers noted that, no, development for Sun/Moon began long before Trump had even became a candidate for presidency, and in any case it's a Japanese game that really couldn't be bothered with American politics anyway. 

So anyway, Yungoos and Gumshoos are the 'early rodent' Pokemon in the vein of Rattata for Generation VII, sharing this title with that of, well, Rattata himself, who returns with a brand-new swanky mustachioed Alolan form in this generation. The two of them are definitely counterparts for each other, with Yungoos and Gumshoos only appearing in the day, and Rattatas and Raticates replacing them in the night in all the routes that they appear. Also, in Pokemon Moon/Ultra Moon, a Raticate serves as the first Totem Pokemon when it's a Gumshoos in Pokemon Sun/Ultra Sun. 

Small Asian mongoose

So Yungoos and Gumshoos, as you can probably tell by their name, is based on the real-life animal, the mongoose. We previously had a mongoose Pokemon all the way back in Generation III, Zangoose, although Zangoose's whole deal focused a lot more on the rivalries that mongoose and snakes have, especially in Asian cultures. Yungoos and Gumshoos, on the other hand, is based more on the story of how mongoose became endemic in Hawaii, something that is lampshaded in all of the Pokedex entries on Yungoos and Gumshoos. 

So in real-life Hawaii, mongoose were imported during the 1800's to the Hawaiian islands to counter rat infestation on sugar cane plantations. Sugar cane was a huge export back then, and rats are a huge problem for sugar canes there, with the small Asian mongoose (Herpestus javanicus) being introduced multiple times into Hawaii to deal with rats... and then became endemic to nearly all islands of Hawaii other than Lana'i and Kaua'i. 

Yungoos and Gumshoos' dex entries make note about how they were not native to Alola, but were imported from another region. During the leadup to Sun and Moon, the Pokemon website published a more intricate writeup on Yungoos and Gumshoos, noting that they were introduced to the Alola region to control the Rattata population, doubtless a reference to the mongoose infestation in Hawaii. 

Yungoos is described to be, well, a rodent. Pokedex entries note how it will bite anything with its sharp fangs, and how it will wander around in search for food until collapses from exhaustion, and feeding it is expensive. Gumshoos, on the other hand, is far more patient, staking out its prey when hunting them, and often attacks Rattatas and Raticates. This behaviour, of course, contrasts that of the Yungoos -- who are voracious searchers of food. Oh, and Gumshoos can stand upright.

Detective Pikachu

One last note is the origin of Gumshoos' Trump-esque toupee... and it's not even meant to be a toupee! Gumshoos draws its name from Gumshoe, an old-style way to call a detective. And his original Japanese name, Dekagusu, is a combination of 'Deka', which is a slang term for detective in Japan, and -gusu, the back half of the English word mongoose. Likewise, all other localized versions of Gumshoos' name all make puns on police officers or detectives.

So Gumshoos is meant to be a police officer or a detective, staking out locations to ambush them nasty Rattatas and Raticates. And considering that Alolan Rattatas and Raticates have a mob-style motif to them, Gumshoos is meant to have a motif of policemen -- specifically, old-style traditional detectives which are often portrayed with hats. Look at Detective Pikachu (which I include a picture of here) and that's the style of hat that Japanese detectives often wear, equivalent to Sherlock Holmes' deerstalker cap in Western culture. Add the ugly spikes on Gumshoos' chest that splay out, which, once you realize that the bugger is based on a detective, now resembles an actual trenchcoat. 

Yes, perhaps the 'cop' part of Gumshoos and Yungoos isn't portrayed especially well, since they tend to just show up as vermin in the games and the actual policemen NPCs in Generation VII still use dog Pokemon like Granbull and Growlithe. And the whole deal about being stalkers and loiterers isn't exactly quite police-esque. But it's neat to see that Yungoos and Gumshoos have so much more in their design beyond just being a mongoose with a Donald Trump toupee stapled onto them.

Now design-wise... they're still pretty boring. And ugly. Gumshoos especially. They're also pretty underwhelming. Mind you, none of the early-game rodents are really any sort of good, other than Raticate (and even then it's because of a Generation I holdover where Raticates are able to learn almost every TM in existence) and Diggersby. Gumshoos has a respectable 110 physical attack, but crappy everything else. Its moveset is a generic pile of Normal and Dark moves, and it doesn't really get much via TMs, with only Earthquake and Rock Tomb really giving it any sort of coverage, although Ultra Sun/Moon does give it elemental fangs via move tutor. But early-game rats aren't really meant to be powerful creatures, so yeah. 

So yeah, I do end up liking Gumshoos and Yungoos a lot more now that I learn about their history. Gumshoos is still pretty obnoxiously ugly, but at least it's neat that the only thing that comes to mind when I see it isn't 'Trumprat'.