Pokemon of the Week #31: Arbok

#24: Arbok, the Cobra Pokemon

We've done Normal, Fairy, Steel and Ground, so this time around, in honour of the newest released Pokemon, UB-Adhesive, we'll be randomizing her type. And that's Poison, which leads us to this week's choice, Arbok.

Arbok is one of those Pokemon from the original 151 that's just iconic thanks to the Anime. Arbok (after spending her first 10 or so episodes as an Ekans) was the Pokemon of choice of Jessie from Team Rocket, and as such had the honour of appearing in almost every episode with a mighty CHAAAAAAAAAA-BAHK and spitting out a couple of poison stings before being thunderbolted, flamethrowered, hydro pumped, solarbeamed and whatnot into oblivion alongside her buddy, James' Weezing. Yet perhaps it is simple familiarity of seeing Arbok over and over again, maybe it's Arbok's simple design and her colour scheme, and maybe simply because as an evil snake she just looks so damn happy, Arbok's always been a bit of a favourite to me.

Ekans and Arbok debuted in the very first games of the franchise, Red & Blue, and are based on a rattlesnake and an indian cobra respectively. And I think a generation 1 Pokemon is actually very appropriate in representing the Poison type in general. Because in the first generation, Poison is actually the go-to type for the Pokemon of most bad guys. In addition to half of the Grass-types and all the Ghost-types in the game having a Poison sub-type, there is a lot of Poison-types in Generation 1. Muk, Arbok, Weezing and Golbat are mainstays of Team Rocket's forces, mostly because, well, Normal-types are just kind of boring, I guess? Also the Poison status effect, dealing damage to your Pokemon with every step you take (they removed that in later games, but back in my day...) was particularly punishing.

Of course, the Poison type itself was... honsetly quite shit. They had very little attacks that actually deal STAB damage in the first generation, and relied only on their status effects to wear down the enemy. It's not until Generation II that they even had an attack with higher than base 50 damage in Sludge Bomb. Generation III would add some token attacks with Poison Fang and Poison Tail, but it's not until Generation IV that more poison type moves that are actually useful would be given to us.

Poison also has the distinction of being the very last type (even including Fairy, which came six generations late to the party!) to be represented in a non-Arceus Legendary, with Nihilego and the upcoming UB-Adhesive in Generation VII. Man, Poison, life's been rough on you.

Poison's honestly one of the crappier types in the game up until very recently, with its main benefits simply to allow other types to offset some of their weaknesses because it resists Fighting, Bug and Grass, but offensively it's only super-effective against Grass, and add their weakness to the very commong Ground and Psychic... and that's not worth running a Poison type for its poison typing, no matter how awesome that Nidoking might look. And Nidoking at least has a huge amount of moves to pick. Come Generation VI and the Fairy types, apparently these awesome dragon-slaying fairies have a crucial weakness... the long-forgotten Poison type. Which is honestly a godsend for the type, because now you'll see poison moves, if not poison types, being run here and there.

That's the Poison type. What about Arbok? Arbok's honestly a simple soul. She's not meant to be a high-tier Pokemon and doesn't quite have the stats that other poison-types like Nidoking or Nidoqueen boasts, neither does she have the bulk that makes Weezing or Muk useful, or the speed that makes Crobat awesome. She has a grand total of 448 base stats, and she's pretty balanced, geared somewhat towards the physically-offensive side. And until reccent generations gave Arbok the elemental fangs and Mud Bomb, her movepool consists almost exclusively of Normal, Poison and Dark moves.

So yeah, Arbok isn't a particularly weak Pokemon, but she's definitely far from being the best Poison type out there. She still has a special place in my heart, though. One of my first TCGs I remembered opening as a kid was a Dark Arbok from one of the Team Rocket expansions. And then there's Jessie's screechy Arbok in the anime, and I've always had a fondness for butt monkeys in cartoons. But most of all, it's the portrayal of Agatha and Koga's Arboks in Pokemon Adventures, where apparently their Arboks have been trained so that they can have special skills. Koga's Arbok can regenerate his entire body from being sliced up (early Pokemon Adventures was pretty brutal, with Koga's Arbok having to survive having its head literally sliced off, by a protagonist no less) while Agatha's Arbok has one of the coolest powers, able to change the face pattern on her Arbok, which allows her to basically assume what Deoxys would two generations later -- one pattern makes her Arbok faster, one pattern makes her immune to special effects, and so on.

Arbok (FRLG)

Arbok (RSE)

This particular bit is extrapolated from the original Pokedex entries in Red, Blue & Yellow, where they note that the 'ferocious warning markings on its belly differ from area to area', and 'six variations have been confirmed'. That is so fucking cool! And, looking at my Dark Arbok TCG card and comparing it to the Arbok from my Pokemon Blue game and the anime, indeed, the Arboks do have a different belly marking. Come Generation II, the Arbok sprite does have a different belly marking, which was repeated for Generation III with Ruby & Sapphire, and some of the older TCG sets also had fun with reinventing Arbok faces while still keeping true to the original, classic look. The FireRed/LeafGreen remake has the original Arbok, but of course. It's set in Kanto. And then come all further generations... and Arbok only gets the original belly marking with the all-black mouth, even in games that remake Generation II and III. It's a particularly frustrating point for me, because this would be something actually cool considering the literal dozens of patterns they gave Vivillon.

Oh well. Ekans and Arbok were, in the original Generation I games, found relatively early on, but exclusively to Pokemon Red. Blue got Sandshrew instead, while Yellow made it that all the evolutionary lines that the anime's Team Rocket uesd are unavailable. In Generation II, Ekans and Arbok were counterparts to Sandshrew once more, this time being exclusive to Silver. Arbok sat out most of the further Generations other than the Kanto/Johto remakes and being special post-game Pokemon, up until XY. But everyone shows up in XY anyway, so.

I suppose we have to talk a little about Arbok's basis, which, obviously is based on the cobra (Arbok, if you haven't caught it already, is kobra backwards), snakes of the Elapidae family with a special hood that it can extend outwards as a threatening gesture. And indeed, cobras do have eye-spots to make itself look like a larger, more threatening creature, to fool lesser beings. Most famous among the cobra family would be the Indian cobra (Naja naja), one of the Big Four snake species that is the most frequent cause of snake bites in Asia. Cobras are nonetheless venerated throughout various Asian countries, like India. And, just like Arbok used to, different species of cobra do have different-but-similar markings.

Pokedex entries note how Arbok uses her hood markings to confuse prey, and then crush it, which would be more appropriate for a constrictor-type snake... although Arbok is obviously several degrees larger than a real-life cobra. What Arbok and cobras have in common are their ability to secrete venom, with real-life cobra venom being a neurotoxin that causes respiratory failure and cardiac arrest. Arbok's venom causes your Pokemon to lose 1/8th of its health until it faints, but then doesn't kill it. What a nice snake, that Arbok.

Arbok, in Generation I, was the only Pokemon that is capable of learning Glare (Snake-glare in the original Japanese), which paralyzes the enemy. And in subsequent generations, the only Pokemon able of learning Glare are other Pokemon based on snakes (Seviper), or, well, snake-ish enough (Zygarde, Dunsparce and Drampa), which is a reflection of Arbok's pokedex entries as well. This might be based on the mythological Medusa or basilisk, craetures with elements of snakes that are able to turn those that they see into stone.

So, yeah. Arbok might not be the most exciting Pokemon out there, considering half the article ended up being me ranting about Arbok's neck pattern, but it's iconic and while never going to rank among my favourite Pokemon, I do have a soft spot for Arbok (and Weezing). She's a creature built more as an enemy mook more than someone you'd want in your team, but still. I also do like snakes and wait for the time when we get a couple more snakes in the future.