Click here for the index.
________________________________
#132: Ditto
- Types: Normal
- Japanese names: Metamon
- Categories: Transform
Ditto is a Pokemon that many people end up dismissing after the novelty of its gimmick has worn off, since Ditto isn't actually as useful as its anime or manga appearances make it out to be. The ability to transform into anything at all isn't particularly useful when you're locked into that form for the rest of the battle. And Dittos have only one move, Transform. Back prior to the fifth generation, Ditto was absolutely useless in battle due to the fact that its speed is pretty low and it tends to get squished before it is able to transform. Generation V gave Ditto the hidden ability Imposter, which immediately allows Ditto to transform the moment it enters the battlefield... but, y'know, in competitive battle or even gameplay, it's just simply unreliable.
Of course, Ditto's main purpose in the game isn't to fight, because as anyone who plays Pokemon knows, Ditto's greatest asset is in fact to breed, a mechanic introduced in the second generation. As a fun nod to this, Ditto in the second generation is found reasonably close to the breeding location. So when you breed a Pokemon, the resulting child will be of the species of the mother. But what about an all-male species like Hitmonchan or Tauros? Or genderless Pokemon like Magneton and Starmie? Come Ditto to the rescue. Somehow, some way, Ditto will be able to produce an egg with whatever partner it is with. It raises all sort of weird questions -- so it just transforms into a perfect, ideal opposite-gender (or whatever passes for it in genderless species) copy of its breeding partner, passing down exact genes of its other parent (and no Ditto genes) down to its young. Two Dittos don't make a Ditto egg, so I really wonder where Dittos come from... and just how many species are sustained entirely by Dittos. Generation VII's Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon games even features a subplot where a gang of five Dittos impersonate humans... and... can humans breed with a Ditto? Some questions remain better unanswered.
And I've always loved Ditto even as a concept. Sure, it's just a glob of purple jelly with a minimalistic face -- able to rearrange its cell structure to replicate anything from the lowliest Caterpie to the mightiest gods of the world. The pokedex notes that Ditto will lose its transformation when it laughs, and trying to copy anything based on memory will get details wrong. The anime also popularized the fact that Pokemon that Ditto copies are near-perfect images, other than the eyes which are reduced to Ditto's dot-eyes. As shown here or here in the anime, or here and here in the trading card game.
Ditto's just pretty neatly unsettling. People speculate that it's some sort of adaptation of stem cells or amoebas or whatever, but the designers just state that it's based mainly on the smiley face. :) Eh. Speaking of Ditto's origins, in the original games, Ditto is found in the Pokemon Mansion, an area in Cinnabar Island that is an abandoned laboratorium where it's heavily implied to be the location where Mewtwo is cloned, or at least a facility where experiments on cloning Mew is done. Ditto and Mew are the only two Pokemon in the original 151 to be able to use the move Transform, so many people have postulated that Ditto were spawned from Mew cells, or original imperfect copies of Mew... or something. It works, I guess. Still love this blob. I own a plush of a Ditto, one of the few Pokemon I actually have physical merchandise of.
Of course, Ditto's main purpose in the game isn't to fight, because as anyone who plays Pokemon knows, Ditto's greatest asset is in fact to breed, a mechanic introduced in the second generation. As a fun nod to this, Ditto in the second generation is found reasonably close to the breeding location. So when you breed a Pokemon, the resulting child will be of the species of the mother. But what about an all-male species like Hitmonchan or Tauros? Or genderless Pokemon like Magneton and Starmie? Come Ditto to the rescue. Somehow, some way, Ditto will be able to produce an egg with whatever partner it is with. It raises all sort of weird questions -- so it just transforms into a perfect, ideal opposite-gender (or whatever passes for it in genderless species) copy of its breeding partner, passing down exact genes of its other parent (and no Ditto genes) down to its young. Two Dittos don't make a Ditto egg, so I really wonder where Dittos come from... and just how many species are sustained entirely by Dittos. Generation VII's Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon games even features a subplot where a gang of five Dittos impersonate humans... and... can humans breed with a Ditto? Some questions remain better unanswered.
And I've always loved Ditto even as a concept. Sure, it's just a glob of purple jelly with a minimalistic face -- able to rearrange its cell structure to replicate anything from the lowliest Caterpie to the mightiest gods of the world. The pokedex notes that Ditto will lose its transformation when it laughs, and trying to copy anything based on memory will get details wrong. The anime also popularized the fact that Pokemon that Ditto copies are near-perfect images, other than the eyes which are reduced to Ditto's dot-eyes. As shown here or here in the anime, or here and here in the trading card game.
Ditto's just pretty neatly unsettling. People speculate that it's some sort of adaptation of stem cells or amoebas or whatever, but the designers just state that it's based mainly on the smiley face. :) Eh. Speaking of Ditto's origins, in the original games, Ditto is found in the Pokemon Mansion, an area in Cinnabar Island that is an abandoned laboratorium where it's heavily implied to be the location where Mewtwo is cloned, or at least a facility where experiments on cloning Mew is done. Ditto and Mew are the only two Pokemon in the original 151 to be able to use the move Transform, so many people have postulated that Ditto were spawned from Mew cells, or original imperfect copies of Mew... or something. It works, I guess. Still love this blob. I own a plush of a Ditto, one of the few Pokemon I actually have physical merchandise of.
4/6.#133-136: Eevee, Vaporeon, Jolteon & Flareon
- Types: Normal [Eevee], Water [Vaporeon], Electric [Jolteon], Fire [Flareon]
- Japanese names: Ibui, Shawazu, Sandasu, Busuta
- Categories: Evolution [Eevee], Bubble Jet [Vaporeon], Lightning [Jolteon], Flame [Flareon]
Back in 1996, branching evolutions were absolutely a sight to behold, and only one Pokemon has the ability to do so -- Eevee, the Evolution Pokemon. On the surface, Eevee is a pretty decent Pokemon in and of itself. He's a neat little cartoon fox without a prominent snout, a neat little Normal-type animal... but look at the next three slots on the Pokedex and you realize just what Eevee is all about. Eevee doesn't follow the predetermined pattern of evolution that every other species out there does -- you actually choose what your Eevee want to be, by exposing him to either the water, fire or thunder stone, evolutionary stones that evolve a a multitude of other Pokemon species out there. Eevee's uniqueness is diluted somewhat by the sheer amount of branching evolutions that many other Pokemon species have (although by the time we reached the fifth generation we've calmed down on this facet). As the cute little fox that captured all our hearts in 1996, Eevee and his evolutions have remained one of the hands-down most iconic and popular Pokemon out there, and for good reason.
Eevee is just a generic-looking cute animal, and in by itself it's not bad. It's cute enough to appeal, but plain enough to highlight the gimmick that he has -- evolving into multiple different elemental forms. And the Pokedex notes how its irregular genetic code is susceptible to mutation, making Eevee's plainness actually an asset. Later generations would tell us that Eevee's easy mutation is actually a survival tactic that it does, using its easily mutable form to adapt to whatever environment it is form -- we just expedite it by using the unique radiation of elemental stones.
Very memorable to me, however, is the fact that the Eevee episode was one of -- if not the -- very first piece of Pokemon media I was exposed to, and the Pokemon Adventures tankobon volume 2 was the first one I owned, and there part of the plot was the protagonist, Red, having to investigate a mysterious Eevee who has been mutated by Team Rocket as part as their Mewtwo experiment to be able to freely transform back and forth between its three evolutions of Vaporeon, Flareon and Jolteon. Pokemon Adventures is a really cool manga.
So Eevee has three evolutionary lines, and its status as being a Pokemon with unstable genes means that the game designers are free to add additional Eevee forms over the years, each following the rule of sharing the same stat total and being a pure single-type. We've got Espeon and Umbreon in Generation II, Leafeon and Glaceon in Generation IV and Sylveon in Generation VI. As of the moment of writing, there are eight options that Eevee can evolve into, leaving 10 types (discounting Eevee's own Normal-type) that remain up for grabs. I personally think we've had enough Eeveelutions out there that make sense, although I won't mind for a Bug-type Eeveelution to show up just for the obvious pun of having a Scorp-eon out there. Eh?
First on the Pokedex is the Water-type Vaporeon, who I mentioned works so much better for a mermaid-based creature than Dewgong is. It does look like Eevee has adapted to live in water, with its skin turning a shade of blue, and it losing all those messy fur that will get wet on water. To replace fur, Eevee's gotten a long, fish-like tail with a spine of fins, her ears have transformed into aquatic fins and her neck hair has transformed into a weird... clown-collar thing that I've always found weird. Unlike the very fox-like Eevee or the catlike Espeon, Vaporeon doesn't look like any specific animal, but I've always thought that it added to Vaporeon's charm as this mammal with fish features.
Vaporeon, according to the Pokedex, has the ability of loosening its molecular structure and melting into pure water -- depicted amazingly by it literally trasnforming into a puddle in Pokemon Adventures but sadly remaining unseen everywhere else.
The second Eeveelution we're going to talk about is Jolteon, the Electric-type. Here Jolteon really embodies the spikiness of hwo thunderbolts tend to be depicted in fiction, and like most Eeveelutions doesn't actually resemble any specific mammal, looking more like an amalgamation of canine and feline features, as well as having a fair amount of rabbit and fox thrown in. Jolteon is undoubtedly the cool one of the bunch, and I've always loved how its collar is comparable to Vaporeon and Flareon, but spiked up due to all the electricity in Jolteon's body. Jolteon takes some parts of Eevee's design and emphasizes them, while downplaying others, and I've always loved that.
The lore behind Jolteon just notes that its hair has became as sharp as needles. And they're electrified, and it can shoot all these needles at enemies. I love it. I always loved how none of the Eeveelutions save Leafeon ends up actually becoming creatures of their elements, but have simply adapted to resist and utilize it. Take Flareon, for example, and compare him to other Fire Pokemon like Magmar and Charmander who are actually partially made out of fire.
Eevee is just a generic-looking cute animal, and in by itself it's not bad. It's cute enough to appeal, but plain enough to highlight the gimmick that he has -- evolving into multiple different elemental forms. And the Pokedex notes how its irregular genetic code is susceptible to mutation, making Eevee's plainness actually an asset. Later generations would tell us that Eevee's easy mutation is actually a survival tactic that it does, using its easily mutable form to adapt to whatever environment it is form -- we just expedite it by using the unique radiation of elemental stones.
Very memorable to me, however, is the fact that the Eevee episode was one of -- if not the -- very first piece of Pokemon media I was exposed to, and the Pokemon Adventures tankobon volume 2 was the first one I owned, and there part of the plot was the protagonist, Red, having to investigate a mysterious Eevee who has been mutated by Team Rocket as part as their Mewtwo experiment to be able to freely transform back and forth between its three evolutions of Vaporeon, Flareon and Jolteon. Pokemon Adventures is a really cool manga.
First on the Pokedex is the Water-type Vaporeon, who I mentioned works so much better for a mermaid-based creature than Dewgong is. It does look like Eevee has adapted to live in water, with its skin turning a shade of blue, and it losing all those messy fur that will get wet on water. To replace fur, Eevee's gotten a long, fish-like tail with a spine of fins, her ears have transformed into aquatic fins and her neck hair has transformed into a weird... clown-collar thing that I've always found weird. Unlike the very fox-like Eevee or the catlike Espeon, Vaporeon doesn't look like any specific animal, but I've always thought that it added to Vaporeon's charm as this mammal with fish features.
The second Eeveelution we're going to talk about is Jolteon, the Electric-type. Here Jolteon really embodies the spikiness of hwo thunderbolts tend to be depicted in fiction, and like most Eeveelutions doesn't actually resemble any specific mammal, looking more like an amalgamation of canine and feline features, as well as having a fair amount of rabbit and fox thrown in. Jolteon is undoubtedly the cool one of the bunch, and I've always loved how its collar is comparable to Vaporeon and Flareon, but spiked up due to all the electricity in Jolteon's body. Jolteon takes some parts of Eevee's design and emphasizes them, while downplaying others, and I've always loved that.
The lore behind Jolteon just notes that its hair has became as sharp as needles. And they're electrified, and it can shoot all these needles at enemies. I love it. I always loved how none of the Eeveelutions save Leafeon ends up actually becoming creatures of their elements, but have simply adapted to resist and utilize it. Take Flareon, for example, and compare him to other Fire Pokemon like Magmar and Charmander who are actually partially made out of fire.
The final option was Flareon, who perhaps looks the most unchanged out of the Eeveelutions. Flareon is primarily red and has tufts of yellow fur, but Flareon is essentially a bigger Eevee with a far bushier tail and mane. Poor Flareon just ends up looking perhaps the most under-appreciated out of the Eevees, and the pokedex don't actually offer any real interesting information about Flareon beyond that it's hot and breathes fire. It's also derided as the most useless Eeveelution and fully-evolved fire type competitively, too, which I won't be discussing a lot, but man, poor Flareon. Comparing all the subsequent Eevee evolutions, I've ended up always enjoying the ones that look the most derived out of Eevee, and Flareon, as being "Eevee, but fluffier" ends up easily being the least interesting out of Eevee's seven final forms. Sorry, man. You may be here first but you probably rank dead last. Still not a bad design overall, though.
A final note is that I really liked that the English translation added the "-eon" suffix for the Eeveelutions. The Japanese naming scheme is a bit more haphazard, with the original three being named with bastardized English words (Showers, Thunders and Booster respectively) and the next generations just having arbitrary names that sometimes ends with -ui. Good job, localization team!
They may enjoy far too much popularity, but I've always loved Eevee and his evolutions, turning these buggers into one of the most interesting Pokemon in the first generation and also one of my personal favourites. While my opinion about subsequent Eeveelutions is a bit more iffy down the line (and I still don't care for Flareon all that much, honestly) the inception of Eevee and the subsequent buildup it has through the next generations makes him a very cool concept.
5/6 as a set.#137: Porygon
- Types: Normal
- Japanese name: Porigon
- Category: Virtual
As we're rounding up the last few members of the first generation, before touching on the fossils, legendaries and pseudo-legendaries (also Snorlax for some reason) we have Porygon. And boy, Porygon's just a weird motherfucker, huh? I love this dude! Back in the 90's, 3-D animated movies, video games and TV shows are fancy stuff that people didn't quite get right just yet, but are cropping up everywhere. And they decide to make a Pokemon out of that very concept -- 3-D models. It's a pretty bizarre idea to turn into one of the very few Pokemon to outright be noted to be artificial. While some Pokemon have their own origin stories, Porygon was one that's stated to be man-made, created entirely out of programming code. Porygon was designed to fly into space (and it's noted that he couldn't) but he certainly is able to move freely in cyber-space. It doesn't breathe and can move into any environment it wants to, and it's, pretty hilariously, "copy-protected" so it can't be duplicated by copying. Breeding it with Ditto is fine, though. Amazingly, Porygon's copy-protection will actually come into play when we reach the fourth generation.
Porygon's simple concept, and the fact that it's a pure Normal-type makes it a very interesting delight as far as far-reaching concepts go. The way that you get Porygon in-game is also memorably one of the most downright bizarre. Many of the rare Pokemon are locked behind a small spawn rate, the Safari Zone mini-game, in-game trading, trading with other games, or straight-up only having a limited amount of in the game, like the legendaries. Not so for Porygon. Porygon is obtained by... winning a lot in Team Rocket's Game Corner in Celadon City. And by that I do mean a lot. It's a Pokemon notoriously insane to get and requires a lot of luck or patience to do so... and the result is this bizarre digital origami duck, who isn't even good in battle. It does gain access to some utterly bizarre moves, though -- its signature moves Sharpen (increases Attack), Conversion (changes Porygon's type into one of its moves) and Conversion 2 (changes Porygon's type to resist whatever the opponent uses last). It's just a bizarre thing trying to depict the trope of robot characters in anime or comics adapt to whatever enemies are doing.
And Porygon is always a delight to see in the 3-D games, where sometimes it's animated with parts of its polygons transforming into nothing but outlines, as if someone clicked 'show layer' in Photoshop or something. It also moves in such a weird, robotic fashion, and the idea that he's a computer program manifesting as a sentient hologram is just amazing. The Adventures manga interpreted this as Porygon being able to transform into a stream of data and move through computers and the internet. The anime interpreted this as Porygon being able to disassemble its individual polygons and transform into swords and shields and stuff. And sadly... that anime appearance is all people ever talk about -- episode 38 of the original anime, featuring Porygon prominently, used a flashing strobe effect that caused 600 children in Japan to be hospitalized due to seizure-like symptoms, causing the episode to be permanently pulled off-air (and often exaggerated and cited to be the proof that Pokemon is totally demonic and shit). While the scene that caused said seizure was actually part of a sequence with Pikachu and Team Rocket, the connotations with Porygon ended up with Porygon and his evolutions to never appear in any anime episode for the past 20 years, which is pretty egregious considering the original 151 are the veterans of the franchise and have shown up everywhere. Poor digital duck -- for my part, I really do like Porygon, but it's not until it evolves that it ends up being 'huh, pretty cool' to 'holy shit, this is an amazing concept. Taken as a set with its evolutions, it's an easy 6/6 for me.
6/6.#138-139: Omanyte & Omastar
- Types: Rock/Water [both]
- Japanese names: Omunaito, Omusuta
- Categories: Spiral [both]
These next batch are the fossil Pokemon -- as a love letter to Jurassic Park, three species (two of which evolve) can only be obtained by bringing fossil items to a special laboratory, and then resurrecting them there. And all of them are based on obscure extinct creatures. It's such an amazing idea, and such a great concept and being a huge, huge paleontology geek even as a child, it was just mind-blowing at the time. It's also one of the neatest payoffs in the original game, since you found the fossils very early on in Mt. Moon, while the lab is on Cinnabar Island, the second-to-last gym.
I also absolutely loved that the first generation gave us pretty obscure extinct animals, instead of going to the pretty simple trope of just using dinosaurs -- which we kinda already get with the likes of Lapras and Charizard anyway. And besides, it allowed Nintendo to make use of dinosaurs more frequently, while keeping fossils far quirkier and stranger. Also, as an amazing detail, all fossil Pokemon are part-Rock-type, showing us one of two things: either the resurrected Pokemon ends up having some of the rock it came from assimilated into it, or that it's the precise fact that they are part-Rock that allowed them to be fossilized to immaculately in the first place.
Omanyte is a Rock/Water Pokemon, and is based on the ammonite, a group of marine mollusks that thrived from the Devonian to the Cretaceous eras. They are ancient cephalopods (the class that includes cuttlefish, squid and octopi) that lug their shells around their back before evolution did away with the shells and moved them inwards. Ammonites are extinct, and only their distant relative, the Nautilus, survives to this day. And Omanyte is simple. It's just a stylized ammonite, with the helix-shaped shell, its googly eyes and its tentacles resembling a friendly mustache...
And then it evolves into the mighty Omastar, Lord Helix himself! (Omanyte and Omastar gained a bit of a meme level back in 2014 as part of the 'Twitch Plays Pokemon' series, that characterizes the Omastar in the playthrough as Lord Helix, a god-like omniscient being) Omastar is just so cool-looking, and it keeps so much from Omanyte. But gone are the cute googly eyes and the mustache-like tentacles. Omastar's tentacles are arranged in a more sinister-looking form with some being thinner than others, it has gained spikes on its shell, it's got these inhuman-looking eyes and that absolutely cool four-jointed beak. It just looks so fucking cool! And biologically accurate, since all cephalopods, including nautilus, do have beaks as mouths. A two-part beak, granted, but Rule of Cool presides.
Except that it's that cool huge shell which apparently made it became extinct, being too heavy and unwieldy to lug around. And while it's got powerful tentacles and a powerful jaw (which it used to prey on Shellder, apparently) it moves so slowly that it ended up not being able to hunt prey effectively. Generation VII's dex entry notes that Omastar is a distant ancestor of Octillery -- which isn't half-bad. Ammonites are sort-of distant ancestors of modern-day octopi. Omastar is just cool regardless, though, being such an alien-looking being that's just so appropriate for the Pokemon world's first cephalopod. And I've always got a soft spot in my heart for this dude for the simple fact that his original Red/Blue sprite makes him look like he's boogie-ing down.
5/6.
I also absolutely loved that the first generation gave us pretty obscure extinct animals, instead of going to the pretty simple trope of just using dinosaurs -- which we kinda already get with the likes of Lapras and Charizard anyway. And besides, it allowed Nintendo to make use of dinosaurs more frequently, while keeping fossils far quirkier and stranger. Also, as an amazing detail, all fossil Pokemon are part-Rock-type, showing us one of two things: either the resurrected Pokemon ends up having some of the rock it came from assimilated into it, or that it's the precise fact that they are part-Rock that allowed them to be fossilized to immaculately in the first place.
And then it evolves into the mighty Omastar, Lord Helix himself! (Omanyte and Omastar gained a bit of a meme level back in 2014 as part of the 'Twitch Plays Pokemon' series, that characterizes the Omastar in the playthrough as Lord Helix, a god-like omniscient being) Omastar is just so cool-looking, and it keeps so much from Omanyte. But gone are the cute googly eyes and the mustache-like tentacles. Omastar's tentacles are arranged in a more sinister-looking form with some being thinner than others, it has gained spikes on its shell, it's got these inhuman-looking eyes and that absolutely cool four-jointed beak. It just looks so fucking cool! And biologically accurate, since all cephalopods, including nautilus, do have beaks as mouths. A two-part beak, granted, but Rule of Cool presides.
Except that it's that cool huge shell which apparently made it became extinct, being too heavy and unwieldy to lug around. And while it's got powerful tentacles and a powerful jaw (which it used to prey on Shellder, apparently) it moves so slowly that it ended up not being able to hunt prey effectively. Generation VII's dex entry notes that Omastar is a distant ancestor of Octillery -- which isn't half-bad. Ammonites are sort-of distant ancestors of modern-day octopi. Omastar is just cool regardless, though, being such an alien-looking being that's just so appropriate for the Pokemon world's first cephalopod. And I've always got a soft spot in my heart for this dude for the simple fact that his original Red/Blue sprite makes him look like he's boogie-ing down.
5/6.#140-141: Kabuto & Kabutops
- Types: Rock/Water [both]
- Japanese names: Kabuto, Kabutopusu
- Categories: Shellfish [both]
I loved these two, a feeling that was particularly amplified when I actually used a Kabuto for my playthrough of Pokemon's latest game at the time of writing, Ultra Moon. If I did this massive undertaking half a year ago, Kabuto and Kabutops would probably get like a 4/5 out of design and not much, but at the moment they are one of my absolute favourite first-generation Pokemon. I've always been a Helix Fossil guy, for the simple fact that I liked cephalopods. They're so alien-looking. But Kabutops? Hoo boy. Kabutops is awesome. But before we get there, let's talk about Kabuto first.
Like Omastar, it's just such an inhuman-looking beast. It's got a rock-hard shell, it's underbelly is just a black mass with glowing, pupil-less red eyes, and two mean-looking pairs of claws. Just look at that sprite from the second generation -- Kabuto just looks like a menacing predator of the deep and not like the friendly-looking cartoon animals that most Pokemon are. Also as a neat touch, I always loved that Kabuto has a pair of... vestigial fake eyes on its dome? Or is Kabuto actually four-eyed?
Kabuto is based on two animals -- the first being the Trilobite, a sea-dwelling arthropod living in the Cambrian to Permian eras, and one of the most successful of the earliest mammals. However, their simple hard shell brings to mind the still-living horseshoe crab (themselves pretty weird buggers that aren't actually crustaceans themselves), which resembles Kabuto's dome far closer, except of course Kabuto doesn't have the iconic tail.
And then Kabuto evolves into Kabutops, which is just... holy fuck, man, this dude is just so cool. It's an ancient crab-man with sickles for arms, and its head is like a boomerang-esque blade. It's got armour plates on its chest, and its back is sideways-pointing spikes (just like trilobites!). I'm not sure how they went from 'let's design a trilobite monster' to this wonderful scythe-armed monster that can give Scyther a run for his money, but god damn if Kabutops doesn't look like a pretty awesome design, and honestly it makes Kabutops just cooler than Aerodactyl and Omastar in my book after considering it. Sure, Omastar and Aerodactyl are cool for adapting cool extinct animals. Kabutops took the trilobite and... ran wild with it, turning it into such an amazing design. And scythes isn't even that far off -- Megalograptus, a genus of eurypterid (ancient precursors to horseshoe crabs) apparently have giant appendages that somewhat resemble mantis claws, and, well, in Pokemon world that apparently just means scythe-arms.
Kabutops is even described as an insanely awesome underwater predator. It swims quickly, aided by its sleek body, then "slashes prey with its claws and drains its body fluids". Generation III even gave us the origin that Kabutops was perhaps one of the first forms of life that went on land, citing its legs as being the genesis of what may perhaps precipitate the aquatic-to-land-based migration in the Pokemon world... but Ultra Sun's dex notes that Kabutops' adaptation were inadequate and went extinct. Boo.
Oh, and you can totally see the creepy skeletal fossil of Kabutops in the original games. And trilobites don't leave skeleton, but Kabutops is pretty much its own thing anyway.
6/6.#142: Aerodactyl
- Types: Rock/Flying
- Japanese name: Putera
- Category: Fossil
My boy Aerodactyl! Aerodactyl is one of my all-time favourite pokemon. See, one of my absolute favourite animals in the world are dinosaurs. And one of my favourite dinosaur (well, ancient-reptile-related-to-dinosaurs) is the pteranodon and its ilk, because, shit, they're like dinosaurs, but they fly! And Aerodactyl just captures everything that's cool about pteranodons, but instead of a fragile-looking bird-like spindly creature, Game Freak decided to adapt the more obscure teethed pterosaurs, throw in some draconic inspiration in there and make Aerodactyl look like a powerhouse -- giant, square-like jaws; a prominently bulkier body than actual pterosaurs; and a tail that tapers off with a devil-horn point. She's resurrected from the Old Amber for maximum Jurassic Park homage, and she is just one of the most amazing-looking yet simple Pokemon out there. Her pokedex entries basically are all variants of the fact that Aerodactyl is the undisputed king of the skies. And yeah, look at that design. That just oozes power.
And she is just inherently pretty cool, even if it's more wyvern-esque (so much that dragon-game expert Lance in the games uses an Aerodactyl) than actually a pterosaur. I just love Aerodactyl. It's a simple design, it's got such a memorably large underbite with saw-blade teeth and I love those teeny-tiny fingers on Aerodactyl's wings. I've already loved Aerodactyl to bits, absolutely loving the anime episode where Ash's Charmeleon evolved into Charizard to fight against Aerodactyl, exacerbated by Red in Adventures having one too, using it to fight the legendary Moltres? And when I got one in my playthrough of the Kanto remakes, I grinded its sorry newly-reborn level up and took it all the way to the Elite Four... but my playthrough of Pokemon Y yielded a female Aerodactyl called Amber that's just amazingly fast, kicked all sorts of ass and was actually my de facto mega-evolver in that game. Aerodactyl is just awesome, and its faux-latin name of combining 'aero' and 'pterodactyl'... is actually legit enough that there is a genus of pterosaurs named Aerodactylus. So yeah. A fake fossil game character inspired the naming of real-life fossils. Good job, Aerodactyl.
6/6.
And she is just inherently pretty cool, even if it's more wyvern-esque (so much that dragon-game expert Lance in the games uses an Aerodactyl) than actually a pterosaur. I just love Aerodactyl. It's a simple design, it's got such a memorably large underbite with saw-blade teeth and I love those teeny-tiny fingers on Aerodactyl's wings. I've already loved Aerodactyl to bits, absolutely loving the anime episode where Ash's Charmeleon evolved into Charizard to fight against Aerodactyl, exacerbated by Red in Adventures having one too, using it to fight the legendary Moltres? And when I got one in my playthrough of the Kanto remakes, I grinded its sorry newly-reborn level up and took it all the way to the Elite Four... but my playthrough of Pokemon Y yielded a female Aerodactyl called Amber that's just amazingly fast, kicked all sorts of ass and was actually my de facto mega-evolver in that game. Aerodactyl is just awesome, and its faux-latin name of combining 'aero' and 'pterodactyl'... is actually legit enough that there is a genus of pterosaurs named Aerodactylus. So yeah. A fake fossil game character inspired the naming of real-life fossils. Good job, Aerodactyl.
6/6.#143: Snorlax
- Type: Normal
- Japanese name: Kabigon
- Category: Sleeping
Snorlax is just one of the Pokemon that are just so iconic and probably one of the most recognizable faces of the first generation. He's just a big, fat, happy-looking dude. People like to say that Snorlax's based on a bear or a panda or a gorilla or whatever... but I just say that Snorlax is just... Snorlax. The big fat lovable huggable dude that I really want to snuggle with. He's just a big fat monster that likes to sleep and eat, but when you send him into battle he's a strong motherfucker that, if Pokemon Origins is anything to go by, shoots hyper beams out of its eyes when it bothers to open them. Both the anime and the manga made great use of Snorlax as a comedic-looking bugger that can still put up an immense amount of fight, and he does! Snorlax shows up blocking your way back in Red/Blue, plopping his fat ass on the bridge slightly outside Vermilion City, refusing to be budged, fought or captured. It's not until you obtain the plot device, the Poke Flute, before you can go in front of Snorlax, play it and get it to wake up and rawr-fight you. And if you defeat Snorlax... it lumbers off elsewhere, never to be seen again. You have only two chances to capture Snorlax thusly. It's a hilarious way to make use of the actual characters as a roadblock, and as a Normal-type with an insane amount of stats, Snorlax is just a delight to use in-game.
Snorlax is just such a classic design, and its a gloriously dopey and happy-looking bugger. I've always loved how its sprites throughout the first five generations, if lined in progression, makes him look like he's slowly, slowly getting up... and it's not up until the conversion to 3D models in the sixth generation that Snorlax actually has an in-game sprite standing on his feet. Gotta love Snorlax.
5/6.
Snorlax is just such a classic design, and its a gloriously dopey and happy-looking bugger. I've always loved how its sprites throughout the first five generations, if lined in progression, makes him look like he's slowly, slowly getting up... and it's not up until the conversion to 3D models in the sixth generation that Snorlax actually has an in-game sprite standing on his feet. Gotta love Snorlax.
5/6.#144-146: Articuno, Zapdos & Moltres
- Types: Ice/Flying [Articuno], Electric/Flying [Zapdos], Fire/Flying [Moltres]
- Japanese name: Furiza, Sanda, Faiya
- Category: Freeze [Articuno], Electric [Zapdos], Flame [Moltres]
Oh, man, here we go. The legendaries. At the end of the Pokedex are a group of non-evolving, extremely rare Pokemon that you only have a single chance to capture. They are the absolute pinnacle of power, representing the elemental powers of ice, electricity and fire, and they are depicted as these regal, timeless god-like beings. They are the dragons and phoenixes and hydras to the dogs and bears and butterflies, and they have the stats and power to back it up. The term 'legendary' ends up being bandied about in the third through fifth generation so much that it ends up pretty bleh, but back then there were only the three Legendary Birds, plus the enigmatic Mewtwo and Mew, as our only legendaries, and by god they felt special. They perched deep within the Pokemon equivalents of dungeons, and unlike most powerful bosses in a game like Legend of Zelda, you actually are able to capture and bend these powerful beasts to your will. They were mighty forces of nature in the second Pokemon movie -- hell, the act of all three birds fighting nearly heralded the apocalypse! -- and were powerful beings that were huge plot devices in Adventures.
I'm going to review the three as a set because they kind of, well, are a set, even if they don't evolve to and from each other. The first is Articuno, the legendary bird of ice, is a pretty cool and regal-looking design. There's just something about Articuno's design that makes it look so much more cool-looking and more intelligent-looking than its comrades, and Adventures as well as many, many other Pokemon manga series out there love putting more focus on Articuno compared to the other legendary birds. And there's just something cool about Articuno. The crown on his head just communicates that it's an ice-type without going too far, and a combination of its flowing beard and his majestic gorgeous tail tapering behind him is just pretty regal.
Articuno heralds blizzards and snow with its arrival, and appears to those lost in snowy mountains, and in the original games Articuno is found deep within the Seafoam Islands, a dungeon populated with Water-types... and since many Water types evolve into Water/Ice creatures, it's somewhat thematic for Articuno to be there. Articuno is easily my favourite out of the birds. A simple, elegant design that makes it look absolutely cool.
5/6 for Articuno.
I'm going to review the three as a set because they kind of, well, are a set, even if they don't evolve to and from each other. The first is Articuno, the legendary bird of ice, is a pretty cool and regal-looking design. There's just something about Articuno's design that makes it look so much more cool-looking and more intelligent-looking than its comrades, and Adventures as well as many, many other Pokemon manga series out there love putting more focus on Articuno compared to the other legendary birds. And there's just something cool about Articuno. The crown on his head just communicates that it's an ice-type without going too far, and a combination of its flowing beard and his majestic gorgeous tail tapering behind him is just pretty regal.
Articuno heralds blizzards and snow with its arrival, and appears to those lost in snowy mountains, and in the original games Articuno is found deep within the Seafoam Islands, a dungeon populated with Water-types... and since many Water types evolve into Water/Ice creatures, it's somewhat thematic for Articuno to be there. Articuno is easily my favourite out of the birds. A simple, elegant design that makes it look absolutely cool.
5/6 for Articuno.
But if we're just talking about objective coolness, Zapdos probably takes the cake. Based on the mythological thunderbird, Zapdos takes all the menace and mean-looking sharp beak of Fearow, and combines it with the cool aesthetic of spikes-representing-electricity that Jolteon does... and it just works so well. Whereas Articuno's pose and general design shows the grace of ice, Zapdos just looks like electricity personified, all wild and frazzled and angry. Look at Zapdos. He just looks so angry. I've always loved how Zapdos's design has both yellow and black spikes as 'feathers', and Zapdos is just straight-up pretty damn awesome looking. He also kinda looks like a hummingbird. A big, giant god-of-thunder hummingbird that can murder you with one flap of its wings.
In the original games, Zapdos nests within the Power Plant, essentially becoming the boss of all the electric-types that are born and/or gathered there. Hell, maybe it's Zapdos's influence that the Voltorbs and Magnemites were created in the first place? And, well, just as Articuno creates blizzards by flapping its wings, Zapdos creates gigantic thunderstorms with its wings. Pretty expected stuff.
5/6 for Zapdos.
Moltres is perhaps my least favourite of the legendary bids, although I still like him a lot. He does look a bit simple, like a rubber chicken set on fire. I've always enjoyed Moltres's original artwork a lot more, which depicts the orange and red parts of its wings being part of the same wings-of-fire, whereas newer depictions tend to depict the orange parts as physical wings that are just on fire. It just makes Moltres just a bird-on-fire as opposed to the cooler-looking being made entirely out of fire. Hell, the first second generation even has the entire wings be simply... fire. That looked so much cooler. Add that to how the 3D games portrays fire, and Moltres's wings and body ends up feeling absolutely divorced from the fire parts, which just isn't as cool.
And add that to the fact the Nintendo team didn't actually bother putting Moltres somewhere appropriate and just plopped him in Victory Road... yeah, poor Moltres. It's still imposing due to its large wings, its expression and its status as a member of the legendary birds... but Moltres in both design and lore ends up just being eclipsed by its two brethren. There's an attempt in its dex entries to make it an analogue of the phoenix, where it can heal itself from injuries by bathing in volcanoes, but Ho-Oh ends up having a deadlock on being the badass Fire/Flying phoenix pokemon.
And add that to the fact the Nintendo team didn't actually bother putting Moltres somewhere appropriate and just plopped him in Victory Road... yeah, poor Moltres. It's still imposing due to its large wings, its expression and its status as a member of the legendary birds... but Moltres in both design and lore ends up just being eclipsed by its two brethren. There's an attempt in its dex entries to make it an analogue of the phoenix, where it can heal itself from injuries by bathing in volcanoes, but Ho-Oh ends up having a deadlock on being the badass Fire/Flying phoenix pokemon.
4/6 for Moltres, especially how it looks in modern games.
Oh well. I still love the three legendary birds for what they are, and while simple, I do enjoy these sort of legendaries over the intensely over-designed designs we get in later generations.
#147-149: Dratini, Dragonair & Dragonite
- Types: Dragon [Dratini/Dragonair], Dragon/Flying [Dragonite]
- Japanese name: Miniryu, Hakuryu, Kairyu
- Category: Dragon [all three]
Dratini, Dragonair and Dragonite are the only Dragon-types in all of the original 151, just as Gastly's evolutionary line was the only Ghost-type. And shit, man, Dragon is the most powerful type of them all, uncontested, until Fairy knocked it down a peg in the sixth generation. And as the first Dragon-type, Dragonite had immense stats rivaling the legendary birds, starting a trend of a 'pseudo-legendary' -- each generation will have at least one of these, being powerful three-stage evolutions found at the back-end of the pokedex (Dratini's line even shows up after the legendaries, which never happens again) that are rare to find and even harder to properly level up to its fullest. And, y'know, they're the only dragon-types out there. Someday somewhen I will talk about all the Pokemon types in more depth, but trust me that Dragon type was pretty super-special-awesome back in the day. It's so mythical, and the fact that all those other creatures that looked like dragons -- Charizard, Aerodactyl, Gyarados -- aren't actually dragons and don't have the sheer elemental power and stats that Dragonite had to back up... yeah.
Dratini, though, is an adorable, adorable little sea-serpent thing that does call to mind some sort of a dragon baby. From its adorable eyes to its big nose to the cute little fins and horn-nub on its head, Dratini does look so, so adorable. It's considered a 'mythical' Pokemon by the dex too, and is such a rare thing that only rare fishing accidents have discovered it. Hell, all its dex entries either made note of its skin-shedding and the difficulty and rarity in finding it underwater. And, of course, it's a serpentine being, which fits into how Asians perceive their dragons -- giant, serpentine beings with beards and tiny legs and immortal wisdom, not the roaring winged four-legged fire-breathing princess-kidnapping lizards of Western culture.
(Its original sprite was considerably less cute and looked more like a mutant hippocampus.)
Dratini, though, is an adorable, adorable little sea-serpent thing that does call to mind some sort of a dragon baby. From its adorable eyes to its big nose to the cute little fins and horn-nub on its head, Dratini does look so, so adorable. It's considered a 'mythical' Pokemon by the dex too, and is such a rare thing that only rare fishing accidents have discovered it. Hell, all its dex entries either made note of its skin-shedding and the difficulty and rarity in finding it underwater. And, of course, it's a serpentine being, which fits into how Asians perceive their dragons -- giant, serpentine beings with beards and tiny legs and immortal wisdom, not the roaring winged four-legged fire-breathing princess-kidnapping lizards of Western culture.(Its original sprite was considerably less cute and looked more like a mutant hippocampus.)
Dratini then evolves into Dragonair, and by god, it is just so sleek and beautiful. It's still cute like Dratini does, but its grown a fair bit. It looks so much mature, and has gained these weird beads on the tips of its tail and its neck. Its sea-animal-esque fins have grown into beautiful, angelic ear-things, it's got a pronounced horn, and it just looks majestic as all hell. The pokedex notes that it can control the weather and change climate conditions, just like dragons can in Asian mythology, and it's called the "divine Pokemon". It can fly without wings, it has an aura to change weather, and it lives underwater -- and the Adventures manga made Lance's twin Dragonair such a badass pair. Dragonair is such an elegant creature that's a combination of so many Japanese, Chinese and Korean myths about dragons and their ilk and combines it all in a majestic centerpiece.
Of course, all that goodwill sort of disappears with Dragonite. It's a Dragon/Flying, and it's Dratini and Dragonair's final stage. And don't get me wrong, I love Dragonite... as a standalone Pokemon. It's just got this lovable "hulloooo" design, it's just this big fat anthropomorphic dinosaur-man with cute little wings that couldn't possibly lift it up, and... yeah, it's a cute, friendly orange fat dragon, and such a brilliant subversion from either the wizened, ancient creature of Eastern myths or the raging forces of nature of Western myths, while still unmistakably looking like a proper dragon. The thing is... it's just so wildly divorced from Dratini and Dragonair that I honestly can't see what the connection is between Dragonair and Dragonite beyond the pretty tenuous one of the central forehead horn and the 'dragon' in their names. Dragonite and Dragonair are both pretty cool designs individually, but as an evolutionary line they just feel pretty disjointed.
Dragonite is such a unique facet of the first generation that it's pretty impossible to hate him (and just look at that hulloooo face, can you even say you hate him with a straight face?) but I don't like them as much as they do. If they had done a better job at communicating that Dratini, Dragonair and Dragonite are part of an evolutionary line, they would've gotten a 4 or 5 easily. As a set, though, they're just pretty weird and disjointed. I've had close to two decades to be familiar with them, so I've sort of just accepted that Dragonairs evolve into Dragonites, but reviewing them like this really makes me realize how weird this line really is.
4/6 as a set.#150: Mewtwo
- Type: Psychic
- Japanese name: Myutsu
- Category: Genetic
Mewtwo. The genetic Pokemon. The original Pokemon movie began with the boast of Mewtwo being the "most powerful Pokemon", and it is, amazingly, still true even now, even with the addition of some thirty new legendaries to the table. Mewtwo was the absolute strongest Pokemon back in the original 151, outclassing Dragonite and the legendary birds pretty easily. It hits hard, it tanks hits, and it is pretty dang fast. It's even Psychic typed, which is just broken in the original games. The plot behind Mewtwo's creation is scattered all throughout the original game, with hints to its creation being found in journals in Silph Co and the abandoned Pokemon Mansion. Both the original season of the anime and the original arc of Adventures, Team Rocket's role in genetically cloning the 'alpha' Pokemon and creating an imperfect copy, Mewtwo, is told pretty well as over-reaching arcs. Mewtwo's form is, according to the Adventures manga, thanks to head researcher Blaine injecting some human DNA strains to try and fill in the gaps in the Mew-hair strands that Team Rocket got. That's just Adventures, though, and most other canon is just content on just making Mewtwo an imperfect clone. The original games does note that Mew 'gave birth to Mewtwo', which is more in keeping with actual real-life cloning where the cloned fetus will have to stay in a womb... although evidently this bit of lore has been exorcised and turned to just Mewtwo being created in test tubes.
Whereas Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres are more content to portray elemental forces of nature and natural-looking beasts, Mewtwo is anything but. From its strange stance to its armour-plate-esque chest piece, to its undulating tail, to its strange nubbed fingers and toes, to its weird tube on the back of its head, Mewtwo is a genetic terror, a mutation, and, as the original pokedex notes: "it was created by a scientist after years of horrific gene splicing and DNA engineering experiments". But it gained sentience in all cases, blew apart its handlers, and flies off to rampage to its heart's content. It's the ultimate fighting machine, created only to fight. It has the 'most savage heart' amongst all Pokemon, and its personality is kind of that angsty anti-hero character so common in so many works of fiction... but by god, I loved it. It's a failed clone of the real "strongest" Pokemon, and it's developed a far more human (read: more savage) mentality because of it. And because of how much humanity has hurt Mewtwo, it has resolved to hate humans.
And the scene where we're first introduced to him in the anime -- Team Rocket trying to test out Mewtwo's powers -- remain perhaps one of the most vivid images from the anime in my impressionable head. It's an easy example of the 'Worf effect' or 'jobbing'. How do you establish the new villain to be strong? Have it beat the previous villain, or a supporting character who is an established badass. Oh, look, Cell just beat Vegeta effortlessly even with him powering up, holy shit Cell is such a huge threat! Speaking of Dragon Ball Z, it's no mistake that Mewtwo definitely draws a fair bit from iconic DBZ villain Freeza design-wise, and from Cell backstory-wise.
After the very unsettling scene of Mewtwo being created in a lab, and destroying said lab, Mewtwo is given a set of power-suppressing armour by Giovanni, team Rocket leader, and then is pitted against multiple known badasses. The giant Onix? Telekinetically slammed against the wall. A herd of Tauros? Lifted into the air with a wave of his hand, helpless. Alakazam, the most powerful Psychic-type? Well, not anymore, both your spoons and you are bent. Magneton? Nidoking? Arcanine? Mewtwo just effortlessly one-shots everything, and it's just so whoaaa to my young, imprsesionable eyes.
And, shit, I loved Mewtwo. I kind of feel that it loses something from its original sprite and concept artwork, becoming less Frankenstein-y and more 'clean', but shit, I don't care. Mewtwo's cool. I'm trying to limit myself to like five or six paragraphs here to not talk too much -- I can easily go on and on and on about Mewtwo. But honestly, the world's strongest Pokemon (still technically true if you mega-evolve him) is just one of those designs and concepts that is just so iconic and amazing. It's fucking Mewtwo. Everyone loves Mewtwo, myself included.
And the scene where we're first introduced to him in the anime -- Team Rocket trying to test out Mewtwo's powers -- remain perhaps one of the most vivid images from the anime in my impressionable head. It's an easy example of the 'Worf effect' or 'jobbing'. How do you establish the new villain to be strong? Have it beat the previous villain, or a supporting character who is an established badass. Oh, look, Cell just beat Vegeta effortlessly even with him powering up, holy shit Cell is such a huge threat! Speaking of Dragon Ball Z, it's no mistake that Mewtwo definitely draws a fair bit from iconic DBZ villain Freeza design-wise, and from Cell backstory-wise.
After the very unsettling scene of Mewtwo being created in a lab, and destroying said lab, Mewtwo is given a set of power-suppressing armour by Giovanni, team Rocket leader, and then is pitted against multiple known badasses. The giant Onix? Telekinetically slammed against the wall. A herd of Tauros? Lifted into the air with a wave of his hand, helpless. Alakazam, the most powerful Psychic-type? Well, not anymore, both your spoons and you are bent. Magneton? Nidoking? Arcanine? Mewtwo just effortlessly one-shots everything, and it's just so whoaaa to my young, imprsesionable eyes.
And, shit, I loved Mewtwo. I kind of feel that it loses something from its original sprite and concept artwork, becoming less Frankenstein-y and more 'clean', but shit, I don't care. Mewtwo's cool. I'm trying to limit myself to like five or six paragraphs here to not talk too much -- I can easily go on and on and on about Mewtwo. But honestly, the world's strongest Pokemon (still technically true if you mega-evolve him) is just one of those designs and concepts that is just so iconic and amazing. It's fucking Mewtwo. Everyone loves Mewtwo, myself included.
6/6. I grew up with gen one, what can I say.#151: Mew
- Type: Psychic
- Japanese name: Myu
- Category: New Species
See, back when Pokemon was the hit, I've got this poster with all 150 Pokemon. And all the games, supplementary material, manga and anime all talked about how there are 150 Pokemon in the Pokemon world. (Oh how wrong they would be) But as far as the original Kanto games, it was true... yet at the same time proven untrue almost instantly. The original anime opening's first showed Mewtwo flying in space over Earth... and then Mew flits in for a bit. Whuh-wha? Who is this dude? Why is she not in the poster with all 150 Pokemon? Why do the guidebooks make no mention about him? And shortly after I began to realize how Mewtwo... must have a Mew-one. It only makes sense that way. And both the games, manga and anime drops hints about an enigmatic Pokemon called "Mew" captured in South Africa (no, really -- it's back when the original game made references to real world places), the mythical, godlike, elusive being that Mewtwo is cloned imperfectly from. And she's portrayed beautifully in that original movie. Mew is an innocent, animal-like being who mews about, flying around creating psychic bubbles. And Mew is a very stark contrast to the more human Mewtwo, driven by his twisted logic about extinguishing mankind.
And Mew, the "New Species" Pokemon, is a creature whose DNA contains the genetic code of all Pokemon, meaning that this weird cat-fetus-deity is very likely the origin of all Pokemon. She is Psychic type, she's of equal power with Mewtwo, very elusive and never appears in front of anyone, and is stated to be the 'ancestor of all Pokemon'. Oh, and she can learn every move via TM's, and can hypothetically become any Pokemon with Transform -- the only other Pokemon other than Ditto to be able to do so.
Mew is apparently originally based on an embryo, which ties into the whole genetic cloning aspect of the Mew/Mewtwo duo... and the very original sprite does look pretty nightmarish, like some sort of cat fetus, as opposed to the far cuter one that Mew appears in almost everywhere. Mew was not meant to be in the original games at all, only meant to exist as part of the backstory, and ends up being just as elusive as he's supposed to be. After a debugging process, they found out that they had enough space to add in one more Pokemon, and they snuck in Mew -- programmed him with a cry, a sprite, movesets and all that, but no real way to get him. The idea was for Mew to be a 'secret' Pokemon that could be obtained via real-life public distribution, which, back in the day, never actually happened all that often. These days, the distribution-only Pokemon have gotten the nickname 'Mythical' Pokemon, a subset of legendaries. This would lead to a lot of people thinking that there is a secret way to obtain Mew (bizarrely often including a truck), adding a layer of mystery and elusiveness to the originator of all Pokemon whose whole shtick is being an elusive little prankster.
And really, the origin of all Pokemon is pretty much the sort of thing that something 'legendary' would do. The introduction of the Arceus mythology in the fourth generation puts this into question... but really, we'll get there when we get there. We're here to talk about Mew and... really, can you not like this little bugger? From its oversized jerboa rabbit feet to its adorable cat-face to its long tail, Mew just looks pretty neat even if it's rather simple.
And Mew, the "New Species" Pokemon, is a creature whose DNA contains the genetic code of all Pokemon, meaning that this weird cat-fetus-deity is very likely the origin of all Pokemon. She is Psychic type, she's of equal power with Mewtwo, very elusive and never appears in front of anyone, and is stated to be the 'ancestor of all Pokemon'. Oh, and she can learn every move via TM's, and can hypothetically become any Pokemon with Transform -- the only other Pokemon other than Ditto to be able to do so.
Mew is apparently originally based on an embryo, which ties into the whole genetic cloning aspect of the Mew/Mewtwo duo... and the very original sprite does look pretty nightmarish, like some sort of cat fetus, as opposed to the far cuter one that Mew appears in almost everywhere. Mew was not meant to be in the original games at all, only meant to exist as part of the backstory, and ends up being just as elusive as he's supposed to be. After a debugging process, they found out that they had enough space to add in one more Pokemon, and they snuck in Mew -- programmed him with a cry, a sprite, movesets and all that, but no real way to get him. The idea was for Mew to be a 'secret' Pokemon that could be obtained via real-life public distribution, which, back in the day, never actually happened all that often. These days, the distribution-only Pokemon have gotten the nickname 'Mythical' Pokemon, a subset of legendaries. This would lead to a lot of people thinking that there is a secret way to obtain Mew (bizarrely often including a truck), adding a layer of mystery and elusiveness to the originator of all Pokemon whose whole shtick is being an elusive little prankster.
And really, the origin of all Pokemon is pretty much the sort of thing that something 'legendary' would do. The introduction of the Arceus mythology in the fourth generation puts this into question... but really, we'll get there when we get there. We're here to talk about Mew and... really, can you not like this little bugger? From its oversized jerboa rabbit feet to its adorable cat-face to its long tail, Mew just looks pretty neat even if it's rather simple.
5/6.
_________________________________________________________________
Missingno (more accurately, Missing Number, denoting that the game can't actually figure out which one of the 151 numbered Pokemon it is supposed to show) isn't actually an official Pokemon, but rather a glitch in the original Red/Blue games that results in the creation of a data file that the game treats as a weird Pokemon with a bizarre moveset made out of all the random itsy-bitsy pieces of data that isn't actually supposed to interact. Most glitches tend to be simply catastrophic, shutting down your game or corrupting the save file, but Pokemon Red/Blue/Green ran on a simple enough engine that sometimes the glitches take the form of a somewhat stable, albeit corrupted, creature called Missingno. I won't go into detail as to the nature of the Missingno glitch, and for anyone interested in re-creating Missingno, I'll direct you to Bulbapedia. But back then, before the internet started to obsessively collect these data, Missingno was a very cool urban legend in the playground. Is it this strange, 'hidden' Pokemon that's even more hidden than Mew or Generation II Pokemon? It doesn't have a Pokedex entry, it appears in one of five possible forms, two of which is just a horrifying jumble of pixels, it corrupts your game sometimes and gives infinite items and stuff... the fact that its other three sprites are respectively the unidentified "Ghost" of Lavender Town and the two skeletal Kabutops and Aerodactyl in the Pewter City museum is a happy coincidence that this thing is so goddamn nightmarish. It's like this weird creature that exists beyond the rules of the world, but unlike its more harmful ilk, Missingno ends up being docile and can actually act as a party pokemon, and can sometimes evolve into other weird glitch monsters. It's been since exorcised from future games, what with it being a glitch and all, but the community and especially the fanfiction community has latched on to Missingno as being some sort of eldritch extra-dimensional being that warps reality itself by existing. It's not a real Pokemon, but I thought it was a cool enough glitch and a neat part of the community that I'll acknowledge its existence here.
/5. / /
/5 /????????? /? -- ---- -
#0̛̳̘̜̼̜̗̕0̬̤̤̲͓̩̳̦͝ͅ0̘͎̜̀͘ Missingno.
- Types: B̩́i̷̬̠̩r͈͚̤̹͕̮͕̟d̶̗̻̠̣̘͡/̨͓͉͍Ǹ͏̰͔̬̩o̡̖̳͉̼͙̕͜r̴̢̝͙͍͎̩̙m͢͏҉͔a̶̢͓̳̕l̷̖͓͉̼̭/̶̧̯9̸̹̺̼̙9̭̗̞͇͓̹̻̯9̣̪̭̻̫̜/̡̢̼͙̯?҉̠͖̥?̵͓͓̻͞?̘͢͠͞
- Japanese name: K̳͕̜̭͔̖̀et̘̥̖̮̗̀ͅs̠̯̱̼̩̘͜u̟̘̰̺̖̫b̜̼a҉̤̯n̮
- Category: ?̢ͦ̽ͮ̓̃͋͛͗̀̄̇͞?̛̍̌̃̎͊̈̎ͩͮ͝?͛̓ͭ̎̉ͪ̐ͥͭ͂̍͢҉̷ ̡̛̾̒͆̽̈ͪ̉ͦ͋̽̅ͧ̚͘?̷͐̃̊̚͠͏ ̨̢̢̂ͨ͐ͣ͋͗͟?̧́ͪ̓̋͐̈́ͩ̑ͦ̍ͫ̓͝͏̡̢?̧̋̏ͤ̐̉̿͊ͯ͑́́͏?̢̃̈ͤ͐͆͆̂̎̽ͨ̿ͮ̀͐̇̌̍ͬ̕͘͠ ̨̔̿ͩ̿̈͊̚͟?̀ͮ̆ͯͮ̑͗̃͛̽̔͊̅̃ͤ̿͢?ͨ̃͌̍͋͐͒ͥ̈͜͏ ̛ͣͩ̾͆͑̀͢͞?̷̷̅̾ͧ̌ͫͥ̌͑ͪ͐́ ̷̷̨̧ͩͮ̿̀͋̍̍̀ͪ͐̅ͬͦ́̿̍ͦͪ͢?̢̛ͪ̒͊̋̂ͫ̎̊ͥ̌͐̇̋̈́͞?̷̸̓͒̄ͩͯͤ̐ͩ͑ͮͧ̍̓̓̿̒ͦͩ̐̀̀͘?̢̐̂̍̄̍͊ͬͯ͜
/5. / / /5 /????????? /? -- ---- -
_________________________________________________________________
Holy hell, we did it! We went through the original 151, and I'm not burnt out yet! It's been so much fun exploring these designs, thinking about all the classics and all the pokemon I don't generally think or talk about. The first generation do have some missteps, but it's overall pretty awesome and the original 151 features a very great balance of simple animal creatures, weird kaiju-esque monsters, and just plain weird monsters. They made a pretty wonderful world and ecosystem out of the original 151, and while I'm not going to go in-depth about how well-designed Kanto was as a game device, the missteps and poorly-designed Pokemon in the first generation were the exception rather than the norm, and even oft-reviled ones like Muk do have some who unabashedly like them... like me! The original 151 have a neat ratio of cool to awesome to cute, and hey, there's a reason it became an international sensation.
I may be definitely biased for a lot of the 151 -- but it's kind of understandable, isn't it? I grew up as a child with many of these, and I've had way, way longer time by a factor of decades to get used to many of these designs.
See you around for the second generation!
Holy hell, we did it! We went through the original 151, and I'm not burnt out yet! It's been so much fun exploring these designs, thinking about all the classics and all the pokemon I don't generally think or talk about. The first generation do have some missteps, but it's overall pretty awesome and the original 151 features a very great balance of simple animal creatures, weird kaiju-esque monsters, and just plain weird monsters. They made a pretty wonderful world and ecosystem out of the original 151, and while I'm not going to go in-depth about how well-designed Kanto was as a game device, the missteps and poorly-designed Pokemon in the first generation were the exception rather than the norm, and even oft-reviled ones like Muk do have some who unabashedly like them... like me! The original 151 have a neat ratio of cool to awesome to cute, and hey, there's a reason it became an international sensation.
I may be definitely biased for a lot of the 151 -- but it's kind of understandable, isn't it? I grew up as a child with many of these, and I've had way, way longer time by a factor of decades to get used to many of these designs.
______________________________________________________________
See you around for the second generation!
No comments:
Post a Comment