Pokemon of the Week #35: Crabrawler & Crabominable

#739: Crabrawler, the Boxing Pokemon & #740: Crabominable, the Woolly Crab Pokemon

So, to tie in with Christmas day, we'll try to be festive and talk about... well, an Ice-type! We're still in an Alolan/Hoenn deal going on at the moment, but I kinda wanna take a bit of a break and not do a Pokemon of the Week that had that much content. Originally I was planning to do the Snorunt evolutionary line, but that had like four members (Glalie, Mega Glalie, Froslass) and each is based on a different yokai from Japan which will take waaaaay too long. And I don't feel like talking about the Spheal line. So I went to Alola, looking for any ice-types... and there's a grand total of one in Generation VII, which is Crabominable -- my least favourite Alolan Pokemon. Or ranks up there, anyway. 

I mean, I suppose I could do a feature about Alolan Vulpix or Sandshrew, but eh. We'll do Crabominable and Crabrawler. 

So.... yeah. I'm not the biggest fan of these guys. Mostly Crabominable, really -- Crabrawler is just fine. Crabrawler's pretty cool, even! We'll talk about Crabrawler first, because I don't mind talking a lot about about it. While perhaps the combination of three bright neon colours -- purple, bright blue and yellow -- is a bit too much, and the oficial artwork adds a shade of blue onto one eye which is probably meant to be an eyelid, but the asymmetry adds into how mish-mash Crabrawler looks. And what's up with that weird yellow horn? 

But essentially, I did like Crawbrawler a lot more when I saw him in-game, and he's supposed to be a Pokemon that hides within the colourful berries that fall out of trees. (He also doesn't have a droopy eyelid in the game) And in that sense, Crabrawler's colour scheme, while not the most attractive thing, makes a fair bit of sense. Crabrawler isn't any more obnoxious than, say, Crawdaunt with his big-ass star on his head, and the fact that he seems to adapt three different species of crustaceans -- the coconut crab, the boxing crab and the mantis shrimp -- is pretty cool.

Coconut crabs

I'll talk about the mantis shrimp more if we ever actually get to talk about Clawitzer (hint for a future entry), but it's one of the coolest creatures in the world where thanks to a club-like organ that can be launched towards a prey or a predator with such powerful speed that it heats up the water around them. And indeed, Crabrawler's fists do look like boxing gloves -- essentially romanticized versions of the mantis shrimp's club-claw things. But for the most part, Crabrawler is based on the coconut crab (Birgus latro), which is the largest land-living arthropod in the world... that's a far-too-large variation of hermit crabs. People were confused that Crabrawler isn't water-type, but coconut crabs are actually almost entirely land-dwelling, and while not specifically endemic to Hawaii, it is a very common sight in many other tropical countries. And while it's clearly not as attractive as Crabrawler's colourful purple paint scheme, the real-life coconut crabs do live in a far less colourful world than Alola. Some actually do have a bluish tinge to them, which I picture here, borrowed from Wikipedia. And while they're not exclusive coconut eaters, they can climb up trees to break into coconuts and consume the coconut flesh. Oh, and they're pretty damn big, too!

Boxer crab (yes, those white
things are boxing gloves)

Of course, this is reflected in Crabrawler's lore and behaviour in the game. Crabrawler is found everywhere in Alola -- but not in the grass. He's only found in piles of berries under trees, hiding and feasting on them, and those are the only places you can find Crawbrawlers in.

Obviously, the coconut crab aspect is a good chunk of Crabrawler's lore and background, but let's not forget that the whole concept behind Crabrawler is that he's a fighting-crab. And there is actually a genus of crabs, the Lybia genus, that are commonly known as 'Boxer Crabs' or 'Pom-Pom Crabs'. The little buggers are pretty small, but they pick up sea anemones -- you know, poisonous plant-like creatures? -- and attach them to their claws, and use them as literal boxing gloves. Not just boxing gloves, either, because anemones sting. That's the equivalent to humans taping a taser to a boxing glove, and then going around bopping people in the head. They're even endemic in Hawaii, and Wikipedia tells me that the boxer crab has the local name of 'kumimi pua', the inedible flower crab. Obviously Crabrawler's lore weave more around the more famous coconut crab, but I was definitely delighted by the existence of the boxer crabs that Crabrawler is apparently also based off on. 

Pokedex entries characterize Crabrawlers as a particularly competitive fighter, jabbing and fighting with his claws and, quoting the Sun entry, 'foams in the mouth and faints' when it loses. Also, apparently, when it punches too much, its pincers fall off from overuse, but they can grow back quickly. Crabs who lose their limbs can, after multiple molting, regrow their limbs, so this is an adaptation of a real-world ability but on crack. They also apparently climb coconut trees in Alola (coconuts apparently exist in the Pokemon world?) and sometimes mistakenly climb Exeggutors... which are dragon coconut trees.

Crabrawler is notably used by the first Kahuna you fight, Hala, and is his signature Pokemon. And, well, that's pretty neat, right? As you could probably imagine, Crabrawler's a physical attacker, and he's got pretty thematic abilities like Hyper Cutter and Iron Fist. He mostly has fighting-type moves in his learnset and a bunch of dark and water-types. Overall, he's... well, a pretty cool, if boring crab!

Enter Crabominable. Who's pretty visually ugly. And he's our ice type for this Christmas-themed entry. I mean, just look at the fucker! Look at it. Its design is just a massive mess. He's conceptually based on a yeti crab (more on it later), so they took the 'yeti' pun and make him an actual yeti (but also a crab), because you bring a Crabrawler to the icy Mt. Lanakila, where it will evolve into Crabominable. Location-based evolution has been one of the weirder concepts that I really wished was added more after Generation IV, and we've got Crabrawler to show for it...

But, shit, look at it! I get that it's a Crabrawler that's grown a coat of white yeti fur, but look! Instead of being a neon hodgepodge of yellow, purple and turquoise, it's got white as the main colour, and where Crabrawler is mainly purple with the turquoise and yellow accenting its paint scheme, it's mainly white with random splotches of purple and blue all around its body. And it's got... a purple... bra? And its pincers, instead of looking like pincers, have these weird dog paw-print things, and the lower bit opens and closes like a missile pod? And it still has this absolutely stupid-looking doofus blonde hair? And it's got those... weird chunks of teeth? And the section of his face with eyes looks like a sticker on his face? Wow, this thing just looks absolutely... abominable. 

With many other poorly designed Pokemon, I at least can see what they're going for. The combined Kyurem forms are a mishmash of two already-complex dragons. Garbodor is ugly, but it works as a walking landfill. The elemental monkeys are shit, but they at least work as, y'know, fire and water monkeys. Crabominable is just a horrifying concept that I can't believe made it beyond the doodle stage. It's like someone went "hey, artist guy, draw a yeti boxing crab!" and this is one of the first drafts with the doofiest face ever that was meant as a joke, but somehow got accepted among the new Pokemon, and they made a 3D render for it.

Yeah, I thought that making a Pokemon of the Week article would endear Crabominable to me, but the more I look at it, the more obnoxious the design looks.

Like, jeez. He at least gets a wholly unique Fighting/Ice type, which isn't shared by anyone. He's actually quite decent too once you get past his ugliness, with a base 478 stat total, and a base 132 physical attack. Add that to his attack-enhancing abilities, and his wide range of physical moves... in addition to Ice Punch, Avalanche, Close Combat and Dynamic Punch, he also gets the brand-new signature move of Ice Hammer. He gets a fucking Crabominable-exclusive version of Hammer Arm! How stupid is that?

Yeti crab

And, well, looking at Crabominable's dex entries, it's pretty fucking dumb, too. "It aimed for the top but got lost and ended up on a snowy mountain"? Most of the other dex entries are generic stuff about how awesome his punches are and ho the can destroy avalanches. His Moon entry gives him the only smidgen of interesting information, where apparently in times of desperation, "it can lop off its own pincers and fire them like rockets". 

But it's still pretty dang ugly, though, which kind of makes me stop there. So let me talk about the Kiwa hirsuta, otherwise known as the Yeti Crab, and the only reason this Pokemon exists is because someone thought up of a pun for this Pokemon. There's so many ways to make a Yeti-Crab hybrid cool, but nope. The Kiwa hirsuta is a recently-discovered (2005, according to Wikipedia) species of crab with a white shell and bristles throughout its body that resemble, you guessed it, hair. It's found near deep underwater hydrothermal vents in the Pacific-Antarctic ridge. None of which are actually reflected by Crabominable's design.

(And besides, Abomasnow's just a lot cooler as a yeti pokemon)

And... well, that's about it for Crabominable, really. I have to acknowledge that Hala and Hau both use one, and it looks stupid as all hell every time I go up to the Alolan Elite Four and challenge him and it's just a design that just kind of pisses me off any time I see him. Blah. Still, it's Christmas, and Crabominable does look pretty damn happy even though he looks like an accident, so yay for that. Merry Christmas, you all, and don't let my brief moment of humbuggery in regards to a Pokemon's design ruin any of it for you all.