Pokemon of the Week #34: Xurkitree

#796: Xurkitree, the Glowing Pokemon

So let's talk about another Ultra Beast! And, well, this time around I wanna talk about Xurkitree. Whose name is perhaps the pinnacle of Pokemon punning. It's a pun of 'circuitry', but it's also like a twisted tree. And it's also weird, so let's have it start with 'X'!

So Xurkitree is one of the Ultra Beasts, a subset of legendary Pokemon that hail from the strange, strange alternate dimension that is Ultra Space. It's space, but also an alternate dimension, which accounts for the very, very bizarre appearances of these particular Pokemon. The Ultra Beasts is one of the biggest plot points of the Pokemon: Sun & Moon main story. Well, Nihilego does, anyway -- the other Ultra Beasts are glorified cameos until the post-game, where they keep invading our world and we got to take them out one by one.

And, well, the Ultra Beasts are meant to be completely bizarre looking. And Xurkitree honestly ranks up there. Like, I think Celesteela is the weirdest-looking motherfucker out of all these weird dudes, but Xurkitree? Jeez. 

Xurkitree's statline isn't particularly exciting, because, well, like most Ultra Beasts, he's a pretty one-trick pony. He's a huge, huge glass cannon, and emphasis on the 'cannon' part. He's got a monstrously high Special Attack stat, standing with a whoopingly massive base 173. To put that in perspective, Arceus (a.k.a. god) has a mere 120 and regular Mewtwo has 154. With all the legendaries and mega evolutions to compare with, Xurkitree sits at number six -- beaten only by Mega Mewtwo Y, attack-forme Deoxys, Primal Kyogre, Mega Rayquaza and Mega Alakazam. If you note, they're all alternate forms, so... yeah. Xurkitree's pretty damn insane.

Sadly, like most Ultra Beasts, Xurkitree's stat total is 570... which is damn high for normal Pokemon, but not that high for legendaries. And being specialized in Special Attack means that Xurkitree sacrifices a lot of other stats -- and that is mostly Defense and Special Defense, both of which Xurkitree only has 71. And with a respectable-but-not-super-impressive 83 speed, it does mean that if faced against other legendary Pokemon, if Xurkitree can't knock the enemy out with that massive 173 Special Attack, he's probably going to get whacked. 

Xurkitree's movepool is also pretty limited, with it mostly learning electric-type moves, being mono-electric-typed... and I suppose as far as Special sweepers go, Electric-type is decent. Xurkitree also naturally learns the Bug-type Signal Beam and the Grass-type Grass Knot, but more times than not he's going to be a one-trick pony. 

But still, at least he's a really weird-looking motherfucker. Just look at him! His 'head', if you could call it that, is a huge spiked ball. And from there five tentacles extend out... each tentacle made up of a cluster of wires held together by...clips? Christmas light bulbs? The 'arms' end up in those copper wires inside the insulator of a wire, and the three legs that just splay out from the moment they leave the head end in like sparkplugs or some shit. It's just a weird, dancing vine creature made entirely out of cables.

And while the official artwork has two tentacles serve as arms and the others as legs, if you played around with Xurkitree in Pokemon Refresh, you know that he's more like an octopus and all five can act as legs if Xurkitree wants to. Most weird is in Pokemon Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon, where we actually get to see Xurkitree's home habitat, and it's called 'Ultra Plant'... where you walk around on what appears to be the tentacles of a giant Xurkitree, and everywhere around you dormant Xurkitrees just jut upwards like a Christmas tree, with the 'head' forming the star and all five limbs spread out like a cone. It's just bizarre, and it really adds to the otherworldly alien abomination feel of this thing. 

And, well, if you don't already know, the base stats and all the levels that Ultra Beasts learn moves are all prime numbers. Which is a really cool little detail that adds to their general weirdness. 

Xurkitree is apparently codenamed 'UB-03 Lighting' (not lightning, mind you) by the International Police and the Aether Foundation. Apparently unleashed upon Alola after Lusamine opened portals to Ultra Space (in US/UM, a Xurkitree fought Hapu), they identified Xurkitree as a creature that can generate power, looks like electrical wiring, can discharge a million volts and when it runs out of power, it can 'stab its legs into the soil to enter a tree-like state as it absorbs electricity from the ground'. In Sun/Moon, two Xurkitrees can be captured as part of the International Police post-game storyline in Lush Jungle or Memorial Hill, and in Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon, you can travel to their home dimension of Ultra Plant and capture a Xurkitree. 

So yeah. At this point in time, the only real source for Ultra Beast lore is the Generation VII games, with neither the manga nor the anime really touching on this yet in any meaningful quality. Still, I do like Xurkitree. Out of the original seven Ultra Beasts, Xurkitree and Celesteela looked the most wrong perhaps because they're patterned after inorganic things while behaving like organic ones, which just doesn't compute quite as well as 'space jellyfish'. I really do think that with Xurkitree, they tried to really make him as weird as possible (and if you have any doubt from static images, go check it out in its writhing, moving form in the game -- also check out its running animation) and while I was a bit iffy on the Ultra Beasts initially, and I'd argue that it's exactly the intent of the designs... I've perhaps warmed up to Xurkitree a fair bit since then.