Click here for the index.
___________________________#096-097: Drowzee & Hypno
- Types: Psychic [both]
- Japanese names: Suripu, Suripa
- Categories: Hypnosis [both]
Drowzee and Hypno are another pair of pure-psychic types, based on the mythological Baku, mythological Japanese beings that are 'created out of the spare pieces left over after the gods finished creating all the other animals'. Portrayed as an ambiguous chimaeric beast with a prominent elephant trunk, Bakus are stated to devour nightmares, allowing children in particular to be able to sleep peacefully if they're hounded by nightmares. However, Bakus that are still hungry may devour actual dreams, as in hopes-and-dreams style of dreams, leaving the children an empty shell. In modern terms, the term 'Baku' has been used to refer to the tapir, which coincidentally fits in with many descriptions of the mythological Baku. The FireRed pokedex entry even postulates that Drowzee is a 'descendant of the legendary animal Baku'.
And Drowzee is just this happy, tapir-nosed humanoid that wanders around eating dreams. The Drowzee line is highly associated with hypnosis, because they put people to sleep and then eat their dreams. Drowzee does this by sucking them out of the nostrils of sleepers, leaving your nose itchy if Drowzee eats your dreams. Drowzee's cool, he's a fat jolly dream-eating monster, and I've always loved Drowzee's eyes and how they seem like the fat dude's high all the time, which is equal parts sleepy and happy.
Then Drowzee evolves into Hypno, one of the most unsettling entries in the Pokemon world. On the surface it's, well, a slimmer Drowzee that exchanged his tapir nose for a hooked nose, exchanged the brown pant-like markings for a neck-fur, and has obtained a hypnotist's pendulum. It's some sort of strange... humanoid creature that just screams 'yokai'. It likes to put its prey to sleep. While it still feasts on dreams, the pokedex entries take a turn for the sinister, as starting in FireRed, we get more disquieting notes of how "there was an incident where it took away a child it hypnotized" and "it carries off anyone having a good dream", making descriptions of Hypno "searching for prey" sound far more horrifying than just hypnotizing people to eat their dreams. The fandom took this and ran with it, making Hypno out to be some sort of creepy chronic child kidnapper/molester, although the fandom's views on Hypno as a molester is definitely highly exaggerated with fan games and creepypastas. I've always thought that it kidnaps children and keep them asleep to use them as an indefinite dream-food-source, which is equally creepy without the disturbing pedophile implications.
Still, there is just something inherently horrifying about creatures that can make you fall asleep immediately by waving its pendulum, and while newer dex entries insists that it "rarely harms people" and gives us fun notes about how Hypno are used to help people with insomnia, it's still inherently some kind of creepy creature that fits with a lot of fairy tales both oriental and western about child-kidnapping fairies and goblins. I've always thought that the pair form a weird evolutionary line that really work as creepy antagonists. And even the games took it and ran with it, with the FireRed/LeafGreen Island subplot having you investigate a missing child who is menaced by a Hypno you must defeat, and in UltraSun/UltraMoon the haunted school subplot involves a Hypno creating illusions and apparently kidnapping a girl in the past (although it turns out that Hypno is innocent and actually the girl's friend). Overall, though, while these weird dudes will never rank highly among my most-favourite pokemon lists, I don't mind them. They sure do exist.
2/6.#098-099: Krabby & Kingler
- Types: Water [both]
- Japanese names: Kurabu, Kingura
- Categories: River Crab [Krabby], Pincer [Kingler]
Krabby and Kingler are two of the Pokemon that people really like to point as being 'oh it's just a crab', but I dunno. I've always liked the duo. Even if they're just cartoon crabs, they just have a lot of personality to them, from their huge lower jaws to their gigantic claws to Kingler's awesome portrayal in the anime as a sudden badass. Their design is just so much more interesting than the 'just a seal' Seel and Dewgong pair, and while it perhaps just comes from my own love for arthropods in general, I've always liked Krabby and Kingler.
And since fishing and aquatic pokemon are a major theme and gimmick in the first generation, it does have a fair amount of water-type Pokemon compared to any other typings... which makes sense, considering how the sea contains such a huge portion of the world's biodiversity. And while I wish they had done something more unique with the crab Pokemon, I kinda feel that there's just some neatness in Krabby and Kingler's simplicity. Their dex entries just note that they're, y'know, crabs. Krabby can regrow broken claws. They live on beaches. They walk sideways. Kingler has a 10,000 horsepower crushing size, but easily tires from waving the large claw around.
Kingler's huge claw, of course, is based on the Uca genus of crabs, known colloquially as fiddler crabs, where male variants of the genus have one oversized claw to use in courtship rituals, because a larger claw would allow the male to make bigger burrows, apparently. Although instead of being a tiny rockpool dwelling creature like the fiddler crab, Kingler is, y'know, a big-ass king crab monster. I do like the design behind the two, there's just something somewhat appealing about Krabby and Kingler, even if I'm hard-pressed to talk too much about them for being just, y'know, 'animals without a twist'. Note that the original Red/Blue Kingler sprite erroneously gave him two gigantic pincers that was fixed in other Generation I games and even Kingler's back sprite in the same game. I like Kingler, though, I think far more than most people do.
4/6.#100-101: Voltorb & Electrode
- Types: Electric [both]
- Japanese names: Biriridama, Marumain
- Categories: Ball [both]
Ah, Voltorb and Electrode! I've always loved these two buggers. And I've always found them hilarious! They are Pokemon that resemble Pokeballs, the items you use to subjugate these creatures and befriend them. Why? Why would they make a Pokemon out of balls? Well, it's because in the games, the overworld items are all represented with a Pokeball, and both Voltorb and Electrode essentially serve the role of the classic D&D monster Mimic. Mimics in D&D are monsters that are just treasure chests with teeth, eating adventurers who are too happy to walk up to chests with no preparation and open them, only to be eaten by the chests. Voltorb and Electrode are monsters that resemble pokeballs. And they are a simple design. Voltorb is an angry Pokeball with eyes. Electrode is upside-down, far bigger (it's 1.2 meters tall!) and has grown far less angry and look so much happy and cheeky. And in evil team hideouts and Power Plants, Voltorbs and Electrodes masquerade as Pokeballs just to bwaaa surprise you.
Voltorb and Electrode also feature more in common with explosions and its tendency to self-destruct or explode more than it takes advantage of its pure-Electric typing. In fact, up until the third generation, Electrode and Voltorb don't learn any Electric-type moves naturally, making me think if they're not originally meant to be Steel-type if the Steel typing exist in the first generation.
The pokedex entries also make it pretty clear what Voltorb and Electrode are based off on -- Pokeballs -- and make their origin ambiguous. According to the third generation pokedexes, Voltorb was "first sighted at a company that manufactures Poke Balls" and that the link between the two still remain a mystery, although Alpha Sapphire notes that Voltorb is rumoured to be "first created when a Poke Ball is exposed to a powerful pulse of energy". Whether Voltorb and Electrode are pokeballs that gained sentience, Pokemon that simply evolved to resemble Pokeballs or just pokemon that happen to look like Pokeballs is a mystery. I do love these volatile fuckers that find it so funny to just explode or unleash blasts of electricity at the slightest provocation.
Electrode is also described as eating lightning and feeding on electricity, which is the reason for its volatility. I don't remember the finer details of my high school Physics, but it is kind of appropriate for at least one of the Electric-types to be as volatile as electricity itself. And, well, I've always found it hilarious that Electrode was the absolute fastest of all pokemon with a base speed of 150, faster than even legendaries, and the only ones to dethrone Electrode was Ninjask and speed form Deoxys in the third generation. Not bad for a ball! I've also found it pretty fun that shiny Voltorb and Electrode have the coloration of a Great Ball as opposed to a Poke Ball. Also, the Adventures manga had Lt. Surge show up with a Zapdos-powered bazooka that shoots out Electrodes. You read that right, the manga was pretty cool.
4/6.#102-103: Exeggcute & Exeggutor
- Types: Grass/Psychic [both]
- Japanese names: Tamatama, Nasshi
- Categories: Egg [Exeggcute], Coconut [Exeggutor]
Oh man, Exeggcute and Exeggutor has such punny English names, don't they? And I've always found this pair to be insanely weird. Exeggcute is, as its name indicates, a bunch of eggs. Six eggs clustered together, in fact, each egg with its own expression and one always with its head cracked and yolk exposed (the 3D model in the sixth generation onwards shows that it has a face that is facing backwards). And they are... Grass/Psychic types? Um, okay? I guess the psychic type refers to the fact that the six Exeggcute heads are like a hive-mind telepathically linked together, and they're just so bizarre. Grass/Psychic is a really strange set of typing and as of the moment they share this typing with the equally-unique forest pixie Celebi. Pity the type combination actually is one of the worst possible ones defensively, having such a large amount of weaknesses.
And apparently, they're also seeds, judging by the fact that it evolves into a coconut tree. And I always found it hilarious that various Pokedexes over the years insist that Exeggcute are eggs (Generations III, IV, V, X) and some insist that they are seeds that are often mistaken as eggs (Generation I, FireRed, Y). It's noted that six Exeggcute units must be around, and if one disappears they will summon each other together via telepathy.
Also check out that original Red/Blue Exeggcute sprite where instead of one cracked egg, the anomalous egg is a gigantic egg dude that towers all over the others. Why? What is that giant egg? Is it something that the other eggs orbit around? Is it the main head? Always bothered me as a kid, although like many generation I sprites it turned out to just be a bit of an error.
And Exeggcute is still a Grass/Psychic, except now it resembles a squashed-down coconut or palm tree, with a huge fat trunk and two chubby legs, three dopey-ass heads resembling coconut fruits that have the goofiest, derpiest expressions on their faces. One of them have no fangs for some reason. There is just something so utterly bizarre about Exeggcute and Exeggutor that I've always liked them. And the Pokedex entries highlight just how bizarre Exeggutor's biology is. One of its three heads can drop off and transform into an Exeggcute, like real-life plant seeds... except there's a twist that these dropped-off heads will emit a telepathic call to summon more detached heads until six form an Exeggcute. Each head thinks independently, just like Dodrio and Hydreigon, but unlike them Exeggutor's heads are cool with each other, presumably due to their psychic bond, and they never squabble. The Emerald pokedex entry, all the way back in the third generation, foreshadow that Exeggutor has an alternate form by noting that in 'tropical regions' where it originally came from, it has larger heads, which will actually come true come Alolan forms in the seventh generation, but we'll keep that until later.
Unlike Exeggcute, Exeggutor actually has some basis in Japanese culture, as the yokai Jinmenju, literally a human-face tree. Where, well, it's a tree that has fruits that appear to be permanently-smiling-or-laughing human heads that drop off their branches. There's actually not many stories surrounding the jinmenju, but really a tree with human-face fruits is creepy in and of itself. And that's exactly what Exeggutor is... creepy, but at the same time also goofy as all hell. It's original Generation I sprites are all nightmarish, though, with gigantic fruit-heads and disturbing expressions. Still, I've always loved Exeggutor for the simple reason that it's so fucking weird.
4/6.#105-106: Cubone & Marowak
- Types: Ground [both]
- Japanese names: Karakara, Garagara
- Categories: Lonely [Cubone], Bone Keeper [Marowak]
Cubone and Marowak are an evolutionary line that is most well-known for their tragic and honestly somewhat nonsensical backstory. On the surface, Cubone is a cool creature, a cartoon dinosaur-man holding a bone club and having a helmet out of a ceratopsian dinosaur skull. Dinosaur bones are as cool as the dinosaurs themselves, so Cubone mixes the two of them. I'm not sure why they're pure-Ground types, but eh. Look at Cubone! He's adorable. He's so adorable, he's a baby dinosaur that waves around a little bone club! How can you not love him?
And then you read the Pokedex entries, which gets... pretty dark. It wears the skull of its own dead mother, and it cries all the time, and the cries sound even sadder because of the echoes of the skull-helmet. No one knows what it looks like underneath the skull of its dead mother. As if Cubone isn't sad enough already, the seventh generation adds the fact that Cubone's crying makes it ideal prey for the vulture-esque Mandibuzz. Come on, GameFreak, give Cubone a break! And it makes no sense that all Cubones apparently wear the skull of their dead mother, making us believe that all Cubones' mothers die... and it's particularly nonsensical since you can breed a Cubone and it still gains a skull helmet even though the parent is still alive. I'm not sure how to really make out Cubone's backstory properly, but I dunno. Maybe it just inherits the shape of its mother's skull in-vitro or something?
A lot of people speculates that Cubone is originally meant to be the child of Kangaskhan, due to both Pokemon having a fair bit of similarities, being bipedal theropodal dinosaurian Pokemon, and Kangaskhan being the 'mother' Pokemon whose skull, while not identical, could conceivably fit the profile of Cubone's skull-helmet. The fact that apparently the first generation's game data contains some indication of a scrapped pre-evolution for Kangaskhan appear to support this theory... but GameFreak has always kept mum on that. As a hilarious in-joke to this, though, when wild Cubones can summon Kangaskhans to help them in Sun/Moon.
That's all just theories, though, becuase in the final product Cubone evolves into the cooler looking Marowak, who has a head that actually is made up of a skull instead of being a brown-skinned creature with a skull around its head. Its bone has became bigger, its eyes a lot harder, and it's called the very cool sounding 'Bone Keeper' Pokemon. Apparently Marowaks guard a mysterious Marowak graveyard where maybe that's where all Cubones get their skull helmets? Marowak's backstory states that it's overcome the sadness of losing its mother and has became hardened, all Batman style.
Marowak's a neat cool design that gives us a spin on the 'obligatory bone monster' and 'obligatory Yoshi-esque dinosaur monster', and ends up being pretty unique. I've always loved that Cubones and Marowaks are found on the Pokemon Tower graveyard in the original Generation I games, and that a vengeful Marowak ghost -- one of the few wild Pokemon that you can't capture -- ends up being the final boss that stops you from progressing through the Pokemon Tower until you appease her spirit because Team Rocket killed her. Dark, dude. In any case, even without the melancholic backstory, Cubone and Marowak are just pretty cool designs overall.
4/6
Marowak's a neat cool design that gives us a spin on the 'obligatory bone monster' and 'obligatory Yoshi-esque dinosaur monster', and ends up being pretty unique. I've always loved that Cubones and Marowaks are found on the Pokemon Tower graveyard in the original Generation I games, and that a vengeful Marowak ghost -- one of the few wild Pokemon that you can't capture -- ends up being the final boss that stops you from progressing through the Pokemon Tower until you appease her spirit because Team Rocket killed her. Dark, dude. In any case, even without the melancholic backstory, Cubone and Marowak are just pretty cool designs overall.
4/6#107-108: Hitmonlee & Hitmonchan
- Types: Fighting [both]
- Japanese names: Sawamura, Ebiwara
- Categories: Kicking [Hitmonlee], Punching [Hitmonchan]
Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan are a pair of 'rival' Pokemon. They are both pure Fighting-types, and they are aesthetically different from each other. Hitmonlee is based on kicking, and Hitmonchan is based on punching, two different 'schools' of martial arts, so to speak. And while they were just two standalone Pokemon with similar names with no relation to each other, the second generation would reveal that they evolve from the same 'baby' Pokemon, Tyrogue, and add a third member to the family, Hitmontop.
Personally while I kinda like the idea that Tyrogue will evolve into one of three final forms depending on how it trains, I've never liked the designs of either Tyrogue or Hitmontop, so... um... call me a genwunner, but I've always found Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan to be cooler when they are just individual rival Pokemon with different fighting styles. Hitmonlee just looks so weird, with spiky toes with spring-like or vacuum-hose-like legs and arms that can stretch out and reach enemies further than you'd think. I've always loved Hitmonlee's strange face-chest-head, too, just a pair of eyes in a huge cephalothorax, giving Hitmonlee an appearance somewhat similar to the Greek blemmyes, headless men whose faces are on their thorax. It's just kind of a generic monster look, though, and Hitmonlee borrows his English name from Bruce Lee, and its Japanese name from Tadashi Sawamura, both famous martial artists.
Hitmonlee always has a special place in my heart due to it being one of the most badass members of the Elite Four Bruno in Pokemon Adventures, where it is shown to be able to transform those legs into long springs that allow it to stretch super-far and sometimes pull off a Monkey D. Luffy style of fighting, wrapping up his enemies or pulling them back and forth to slam down onto the enemy.
4/6 for Hitmonlee.
Hitmonchan, borrowing his name from martial arts Jackie Chan in English and Hiroyuki Ebihara in Japanese, isn't quite as weird as Hitmonlee, being a more straight-up based on a proper boxer with boxing gloves and a uniform. Hitmonchan has a weird chunk of cool shoulder armour and weird skirt-things and slippers, which always makes his design a bit less cool to me than Hitmonlee's wacky spring legs. Hitmonchan has really strong punches, which is kind of redundant compared to most other Fighting-types. There's a fun little joke about real boxing matches that Hitmonchan needs a break every three minutes, the length of a boxing round. Hitmonchan is also stated to possess the 'spirit of a boxer working towards a world championship'... which makes me wonder if it's supposed to be something possessed by a ghost? Eh. Hitmonchan's never been my thing, but as a set with Hitmonlee, showing how two Pokemon with very weirdly different designs can be counterparts of sorts to each other (compare it to Throh and Sawk from generation V) is decent. Ultimately Fighting-types and humanoids aren't my jam, but I respect Hitmonchan.
Oh, and when genders were introduced in the second generation, Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan both are 100% always male, one of the few species who is always one type of gender, so the only way to get your Hitmons to breed is for them to breed with a Ditto.
2/6 for Hitmonchan.#109: Lickitung
- Type: Normal
- Japanese name: Beroringa
- Category: Licking
Lickitung is... well, a licking Pokemon. It's a Pokemon whose entire concept is a monster with a long tongue. It's an okay concept as a monster, I guess, but it also isn't cool or quirky enough to catch my appeal. It's definitely weird, but it's ultimately a bipedal fat pink lizard-dinosaur thing with a long tongue. I've always liked the yellow markings and the prominent bony thumbs, too. It's more than likely that it's based on lizards with extending tongues like skinks and chameleons, but it's one of those 'ambiguous monsters' that is so commonplace in the first generation. It's one of those non-evolving Pokemon that as a kid I thought was related to Slowpoke in some way or form, being all pink fat vaguely-reptilian dudes. But other than the fact that you get Lickitung from trading away a Slowbro in the original Generation I games, they're completely separate. Lickitung's just a boring old pure Normal-type, after all, and its whole deal is that it has a long tongue with paralytic saliva, and like a dog's sense of smell Lickitung will memorize things by taste. Also, apparently when Lickitung stretches its tongue, its tail quivers, so the base of the tongue muscle is in the tail? Interesting. Also Lickitung apparently uses its tongue more than it does its hands.
Hilariously, though, in the original Generation I games Lickitung cannot learn Lick, making the whole joke kind of fall flat back in the day. Eh.
Lickitung's design is... decent, I guess? Its body communicates a humanoid lizard creature similar to Charmeleon or Cubone, but it's pink and looks slick similar to the whole tongue thing. Some people note that Lickitung may be based on Akaname, the filth-licking yokai that sneaks into people's houses and licks bathtubs clean (and also has one toe on each leg, like Lickitung) but I feel that it's a far stretch. It's ultimately a bit of a m'eh design, though, and would be far more forgettable if not for its brief appearance in the anime as one of Jessie's Pokemon... but even then I forgot Jessie has a Lickitung and its replacement, Wobbuffet, is so much more iconic. So yeah... not a big fan of Lickitung, and I really wish they did something more with the concept that made a licking Pokemon more appealing. He's neat, and while he's not my thing, I've gained an appreciation for him thanks to a lot of recent game and media.
2/6.
Hilariously, though, in the original Generation I games Lickitung cannot learn Lick, making the whole joke kind of fall flat back in the day. Eh.
Lickitung's design is... decent, I guess? Its body communicates a humanoid lizard creature similar to Charmeleon or Cubone, but it's pink and looks slick similar to the whole tongue thing. Some people note that Lickitung may be based on Akaname, the filth-licking yokai that sneaks into people's houses and licks bathtubs clean (and also has one toe on each leg, like Lickitung) but I feel that it's a far stretch. It's ultimately a bit of a m'eh design, though, and would be far more forgettable if not for its brief appearance in the anime as one of Jessie's Pokemon... but even then I forgot Jessie has a Lickitung and its replacement, Wobbuffet, is so much more iconic. So yeah... not a big fan of Lickitung, and I really wish they did something more with the concept that made a licking Pokemon more appealing. He's neat, and while he's not my thing, I've gained an appreciation for him thanks to a lot of recent game and media.
2/6.#109-110: Koffing & Weezing
- Types: Poison [both]
- Japanese names: Dogasu, Matadogasu
- Categories: Poison Gas [both]
I really like Koffing and Weezing. They're just lovable, and I can credit the anime for making Koffing and later Weezing just such a happy pair of dudes. Look at Koffing! Look at it. It's just so fucking happy. It's a happy ball of weird sphere with little piipes all around it, spewing poisonous gas and having that little toxic sign on its body and it's just grinning with that dopey-ass grin on its face. Koffing is based on air pollution in general, the way that Grimer and Muk represents water pollution, and they are pure-Poison types. Koffing also resembles a flying naval mine, which also explains why they're explosive, similar to Voltorb and Electrode. Of course, anything carrying with poisonous, volatile gas within them is liable to explode, so. Koffing has always been one of the most memorable Pokemon as a child, and I vividly remember one of the very first episodes of the anime I watched -- the one with Eevee -- and I've always thought the weird fire-breathing animals and the ink-shooting seahorse and the electric cat-rat-thing are all cool... and then Weezing comes out and I was instantly smitten with this floating orb shooting gunk and gas all over. I think that's what drew me to Pokemon in the first place -- the mixture of slightly-twisted animals and absolute outliers in the weird zone like Weezing and Magneton and Exeggutor.
Koffing, of course, just floats around happy and shooting gas all over, sometimes exploding due to its thin skin. It's just such a strange, grotesquely adorable-and-ugly monster that felt pretty unique to me.
Koffing, of course, just floats around happy and shooting gas all over, sometimes exploding due to its thin skin. It's just such a strange, grotesquely adorable-and-ugly monster that felt pretty unique to me.
Koffing evolves into Weezing, and I thought that Koffing's evolution into Weezing is the best implementation of the 'multiple base forms combining together' the way that Dugtrio and Magneton are. Weezing is two Koffings, but their expressions has grown so morose and miserable-looking, and the second head is deformed and tiny (even the little toxic symbol is reduced to just the skull head!) And I've always loved the touch of having a smaller third vestigial orb connected to two heads with stalks, really embodying that Weezing is a pretty unwell creature. Or is it spawning off a third Koffing head? Is it supposed to be a pastiche on how pollution and smoking causes lung cancer? And the second Weezing head is a cancerous growth? In any case, I really like Weezing's design, even if it loses the goofy happy charm that Koffing has. The original dex entries note that Weezing is formed 'where two kinds of poison gases meet' or when 'two small Koffing twins becoming conjoined'. They still go around spewing and eating pollution, stinking up the place with nasty smell and pollution.
Also you must adore their English names, which are such bad puns on coughing and wheezing. Koffing also has a large amount of odd early appearances, all of which ends up standardized when Koffing ended up having a main role in the anime. The earliest Japanese sprites and the original Sugimori artwork and some miscellaneous early artwork show that the smog around Koffing's top forms a pair of gaseous hands, which ends up being dropped by every other piece of media. It's a bit of a shame, since a ball of tumour-pollution being manifesting hands out of gas would be a cool concept, but they ended up dropping the smoke hands, which is a shame. The localized Red/Blue games, and the Blue version in Japan, gave Koffing a wacky sprite that flips the jolly roger and the face upside down, giving us a very strange look. Unlike most other 'erroneous' sprites I've talked about, this is one that went from right to wrong, so I'm curious if Koffing is intended to be far more variable in appearance. Also you've got to love Weezing's original Red/Blue sprite that looks so much more malformed and stuck together as opposed to the official artwork.
So yeah, Koffing and Weezing are a pair of fun polluted mutants, and I've always loved how Koffing mutates into this grotesquely asymmetrical abomination that is Weezing. People tend to like the cool dragons and majestic birds and all that jazz, and while they are cool, I'm the sort of dude that really appreciate these grungy, icky monsters that tend to just be lumped together as 'evil team Pokemon'. So yeah, pretty big fan of Koffing and Weezing.
5/6.#111-112: Rhyhorn & Rhydon
- Types: Ground/Rock [both]
- Japanese names: Saihon, Saidon
- Categories: Spikes [Rhyhorn], Drill [Rhydon]
Rhyhorn and Rhydon are another pair of Pokemon that I feel are just 'classic' from the first generation. And I've always loved Rhyhorn's feel as a monster that felt complex, but at the same time doesn't feel over-designed or made as a toy first the way that some of the third and fourth generation Pokemon feel like. Rhyhorn has a lot of lines and a lot of armoured plates overlapping each other, but it just looks damn cool. Sadly Rhyhorn and Rhydon are a pair of Pokemon that, like Golem and Onix, are burdened with the crappy Rock/Ground dual-type with its multitude of weaknesses, which made using them rather difficult and risky... but I've always loved Rhyhorn's design. It's whole concept is a dumb charging animal that even forgets why it charges in the first place... but it's a scary charging beast. And Rhyhorn is an awesome combination of a rhinoceros and a ceratopsian dinosaur, as you can tell from the long-swept skull and the horn on the tip of its nose makes it somewhat analogous to any Ceratopsian with a single horn-nose like the Sinoceratops. It's missing the ceratopsian genus' distinctive beak, however.
Still, I always loved Rhyhorn, having written a fair amount of words for it on a Pokemon of the Week piece. Rhyhorn's a pretty amazing design, and I still count it as the best-looking one out of the entire evolutionary line, and a surprisingly complex creature among the simpler designs of the original 151. I love Rhyhorn, a rock rhino-dinosaur thing that can charge you and run you down. Rhyhorn gets an unexpected bit of love in the sixth generation, too, as a Pokemon you can ride because your in-game mom in X and Y is a professional Rhyhorn-back rider.
Still, I always loved Rhyhorn, having written a fair amount of words for it on a Pokemon of the Week piece. Rhyhorn's a pretty amazing design, and I still count it as the best-looking one out of the entire evolutionary line, and a surprisingly complex creature among the simpler designs of the original 151. I love Rhyhorn, a rock rhino-dinosaur thing that can charge you and run you down. Rhyhorn gets an unexpected bit of love in the sixth generation, too, as a Pokemon you can ride because your in-game mom in X and Y is a professional Rhyhorn-back rider.
Rhyhorn evolves into Rhydon, who joins the Nido royalty and Kangaskhan as one of the many kaiju-inspired Pokemon from the first generation. And Rhydon is apparently the first-ever Pokemon ever designed, according to interviews with the Game Freak team. Not Pikachu, not the starters... good old Rhydon. And it's a simple looking monster whose appearance is a neat fixture as the sprite of the pillars leading to any Pokemon Gym.
And Rhydon loses the cool overlapping rock armour plates that Rhyhorn has, but gains an upright stance, a gigantic tail, a bunch of spikes on its back and... a gigantic drill on its nose. There's no real-world inspiration for Rhydon, honestly, other than handwaving it as kaijus being inspired by the old upright posture of theropodal dinosaurs. And Rhydon, despite not looking as cool and badass as Rhyhorn in my books it's still got its own respectable aura of coolness to it. I've always thought the forehead-horn looked weird, although anime and mangas tend to have it jut straight up instead of angled forwards, a better look in my opinion. Still, all attention is drawn to Rhydon's iconic and distinctive drill-horn. Which, if the anime is anything to believe, is somehow a weak spot that allows plot-armour Pikachu to damage a Ground-type with electric-type attacks by "aiming for the horn", a meme in the Pokemon fandom. The anime does many stupid things. Anyway, I love Rhydon. His Pokedex entries paint a pretty cool picture of how he lives, too, where it lives in molten lava, unharmed due to its rocky skin, and its drill is so tough that it can even crack diamond. And apparently standing up straight has made its brain developed? Huh. In any case, I like Rhydon. Rhydon's cool, and the pair form one of the first generation's most iconic designs.
4/6.#113: Chansey
- Type: Normal
- Japanese name: Rakki
- Category: Egg
Ah, Chansey. Popularized in the anime as the 'partner' of all Nurse Joys working in Pokemon Centers all over the Pokemon World, Chansey has been iconically immortalized as the 'nurse Pokemon'. She's (Chansey is 100% female in the games) a happy-looking pink blob in the vein of Jigglypuff and Clefairy, and like them, Chansey is Normal-type, and, much to my shock and surprise, remained so even while other pink blobs became retconned into Fairy-types. And Chansey is... what the fuck is Chansey, even? I suppose it combines the concept of... kangaroos and other marsupials, except Chansey... has an egg instead of an infant? She has a sharp tail, too, and weird ear-hair-things? The Pokedex calls Chansey the 'Egg Pokemon', and the original Japanese name calls her "Lucky" (Rakki) in a reference to how absolutely and insanely rare it is to even get a Chansey in the original generation I games -- Chansey has an insanely low 1% spawn rate in a specific part of the Safari Zone. And for those uninitiated, the Safari Zone is a location where catching a Pokemon is down to luck, and they have a chance to escape from you at any time when they feel like it -- you can't lock the Pokemon into battle, and you can't weaken them at all. Yeah, it is really chance-y to catch a Chansey. Eh?
Later games that feature Chansey as a capture-able Pokemon have sort of eased back on the rarity of Chansey, making her rare but not that difficult to find... although they did that with other previously super-rare Pokemon like Dunsparce or Tauros too. So. In any case, Chansey used to just be a Pokemon that brings happiness to those who manage to get it, but with the anime and Yellow, the generation I game that takes cues from the anime, Chanseys show up in every Pokemon Center in the game as an assistant of Nurse Joy, and it's established that it shares its nutritional eggs with any injured Pokemon it sees, embodied by its signature move it has had since the original games, Softboiled, which heals a chunk of Chansey's own huge amounts of health. (And oh boy, Chansey and her evolution Blissey are a nightmare to fight in competitive gameplay)
I'll... I'll just assume that the eggs that Chansey protects that contains her young and the eggs she uses to heal itself and its allies are different eggs. Apparently she lays multiple eggs every day, and maybe the eggs she lays are the sort of infertile eggs that many bird species lays? The idea that Chansey feeds its unborn young to anyone injured that comes across her way is way darker than Cubone's backstory, really. So yeah, despite the oddness of just what Chansey is supposed to be based on... I kinda like her. She's neat, even if I never really use her at all in the games.
3/6.#114: Tangela
- Type: Grass
- Japanese name: Monjara
- Category: Vine
I like Tangela a lot! She's just this mass of blue noodle vines with a pair of funny red boots sticking out, and a mass of darkness with two eyes poking out of it. It's a simple design and I found her so adorable when I first laid eyes on her. She's honestly a pretty forgettable Pokemon in practice, being a pure-Grass type (was Tangela the only pure-Grass in the first generation? I think so) that is severely outclassed by your Venusaurs, Victreebels and Vileplumes.
I don't really have much to say about Tangela other than it's a design that I've always loved and I always thought that it was pretty under-appreciated. It's a Pokemon I love based on design alone, and true to its status as a mass of walking vines, it learns a lot of whip and binding moves. Tangela's dex entries note how no one's ever seen what's inside of Tangela, and that it uses its vines as something similar to a gecko tail, snapping off vines painlessly to allow it to run away, and growing new vines by the next day. I guess it's based some sort of tumbleweed, but the blue vines are reportedly similar to seaweed (which comes in multiple colours, including, yes, blue) in multiple dex entries. It's just a mass of vines, and I really like it for its simplicity and weirdness.
4/6.
I don't really have much to say about Tangela other than it's a design that I've always loved and I always thought that it was pretty under-appreciated. It's a Pokemon I love based on design alone, and true to its status as a mass of walking vines, it learns a lot of whip and binding moves. Tangela's dex entries note how no one's ever seen what's inside of Tangela, and that it uses its vines as something similar to a gecko tail, snapping off vines painlessly to allow it to run away, and growing new vines by the next day. I guess it's based some sort of tumbleweed, but the blue vines are reportedly similar to seaweed (which comes in multiple colours, including, yes, blue) in multiple dex entries. It's just a mass of vines, and I really like it for its simplicity and weirdness.
4/6.#115: Kangaskhan
- Type: Normal
- Japanese name: Garura
- Category: Parent
Kangaskhan is a Pokemon we've mentioned earlier when talking about Cubone, and it's a cool mommy Pokemon. As a pure-Normal type, Kangaskhan is one of Generation I's many non-evolving Pokemon, and, like Chansey, is another rare encounter in the Safari Zone (albeit not as rare as Chansey). The whole gimmick is that Kangaskhan is a good mother, and keeps its baby in a marsupial-esque pouch. But instead of being a mammal, Kangaskhan is a big dinosaur kaiju monster with horn-ear things, a plated forehead, gigantic Rhydon-esque arms, and what appears to be... organic armour plates of sort on its body? Its English name is particularly awesome, too. She's a loving mother, but mess with her kid and she will go all Genghis Khan on your ass. That's pretty awesome.
Every single Kangaskhan is a mother with a baby in her pouch and when you hatch one from an egg in the games, each baby Kangaskhan is a full-grown mother with a little baby in her pouch, in one of those moments of 'durrr GameFreak didn't think this through'. Really wished we had a proper pre-evolutionary stage for Kangaskhan, to be honest. Or maybe it's actually a reference to how some insects, like aphids, are born carrying young -- so a newborn aphid already have more young gestating on its body. Or scale insects, some of which are hermaphrodites where the male species will leave genetic material in its daughters so they can fertilize the next generation after that. It's definitely weird to see this reflected in a mammal-reptilian large creature like Kangaskhan, though.
Still, I like the design of Kangaskhan, and especially what they do with her mega evolution -- which, oh boy, is one of my favourite concepts. Kangaskhan, like Slowbro or Parasect, is essentially two beings that form a single Pokemon, which I always thought interesting.
4/6.
Every single Kangaskhan is a mother with a baby in her pouch and when you hatch one from an egg in the games, each baby Kangaskhan is a full-grown mother with a little baby in her pouch, in one of those moments of 'durrr GameFreak didn't think this through'. Really wished we had a proper pre-evolutionary stage for Kangaskhan, to be honest. Or maybe it's actually a reference to how some insects, like aphids, are born carrying young -- so a newborn aphid already have more young gestating on its body. Or scale insects, some of which are hermaphrodites where the male species will leave genetic material in its daughters so they can fertilize the next generation after that. It's definitely weird to see this reflected in a mammal-reptilian large creature like Kangaskhan, though.
Still, I like the design of Kangaskhan, and especially what they do with her mega evolution -- which, oh boy, is one of my favourite concepts. Kangaskhan, like Slowbro or Parasect, is essentially two beings that form a single Pokemon, which I always thought interesting.
4/6.#116: Horsea & Seadra
- Type: Water [both]
- Japanese names: Tattsu, Shidora
- Categories: Dragon [both!]
I like these dudes. They're not the most interesting of water-types in the first generation, and is eclipsed by the sheer amount of Water-types in the first generation. Being pure-Water also makes Horsea and Seadra perhaps nowhere as appealing as, say, Cloyster or Slowbro. But Horsea's absolutely cute, a cartoon seahorse that can shoot water out of its snout. Or ink, for some reason, which it is prominently shown doing in the anime and its first TCG which I own. I guess they just mix up cephalopods and seahorses for having siphon-mouths? Seahorses are really cool animals in and of itself, though, being pipefishes that are bent to look like weird... aquatic horse-headed worms with coral plates. Having kept many seahorses as pets myself over the years, I can talk a lot about seahorses... but I won't. This is a long article enough as it is.
Horsea evolves into Seadra, who just looks mean and cool, with a more angular snout and its head-fins and dorsal fins turning into awesome looking spikes. Its body also look far more layered and spiky, too, which is just flat-out cool looking. I've always liked Seadra in the same way that I like Kingler up above -- they don't do much with the real-life animal basis, but change it enough to make them unique and look cool, despite my disdain with 'eh, it's just a funny X animal' Pokemon at times. Older dex entries note that Seadra's fin-tips leak poison... although Seadra can't actually learn any poison-type moves. This is only given a nod in one of Seadra's possible abilities, Poison Point... and it's interesting. So Seadra's poisonous attributes (which seahorses don't actually have, as far as I know) are something that's more... natural, as opposed to actually weaponizing poisonous stings the way that real Poison-type Pokemon do? Fascinating! I also love how Seadras are noted to "have a gene not found in Horsea", which presumably is the genesis for Seadra's final form, which we'll talk about in the next generation.
Note that Horsea and Seadra were never known as the seahorse Pokemon, but as the Dragon Pokemon. This will be realized in the next generation when that unknown gene appears to allow Seadra to evolve into Kingdra, a dual Water/Dragon type Pokemon. Oh, when the Dragon-type meant something special and not handed out wily-nily to anything. The whole concept of seahorses being associated with dragons isn't just a reference to seadragons, a close relative to seahorses (we'll have a proper seadragon Pokemon with Dragalge in the sixth generation) but also because the word for seahorses in Japanese can be taken to mean "Dragon's child", and in Japanese mythology, apparently seahorses that live for a century will ascend into dragons. Which is a very, very cool chunk of lore for a very cool animal.
3/5.
Note that Horsea and Seadra were never known as the seahorse Pokemon, but as the Dragon Pokemon. This will be realized in the next generation when that unknown gene appears to allow Seadra to evolve into Kingdra, a dual Water/Dragon type Pokemon. Oh, when the Dragon-type meant something special and not handed out wily-nily to anything. The whole concept of seahorses being associated with dragons isn't just a reference to seadragons, a close relative to seahorses (we'll have a proper seadragon Pokemon with Dragalge in the sixth generation) but also because the word for seahorses in Japanese can be taken to mean "Dragon's child", and in Japanese mythology, apparently seahorses that live for a century will ascend into dragons. Which is a very, very cool chunk of lore for a very cool animal.
3/5.#118-119: Goldeen & Seaking
- Type: Water [both]
- Japanese names: Tasakinto, Azumao
- Categories: Goldfish [both]
Goldeen and Seaking are, unfortunately, a pair of Pokemon that is really just forgettable. I love fishes, and I can talk for days about fishes... but unfortunately, unlike most other categories of animals, generic fishes just don't have the same kind of appeal as, 'oh, cool, a wasp!' or 'oh, cool, a seahorse!' Add that to the fact that there are so many more interesting types of fishes with distinct visual looks (sharks, rays, seahorses, catfish, anglerfish, eels, flounder, oarfishes, mola-molas... and those are the ones that have a Pokemon counterpart) that 'just-a-fish' isn't anywhere as interesting as just-a-seahorse or just-a-crab. Goldeen is just... well, a goldfish-koi hybrid thing. It's a pretty fish and seems to be a neat freshwater fish compared to the more marine look of most other Water-type Pokemon in the first generation, but at the same time... there's nothing really outstanding about Goldeen. It's no more spectacular looking than a real-life goldfish. Sure, it's got a horn, but my reaction to that detail is a resounding 'eh'. It's cool that Goldeen exists. It's graceful, it's neat, but it's also kinda boring.
Seaking is a lot more interesting, being a more attractive combination of reds, blacks and whites, but it's still just kind of a fat goldfish with a horn. And cute vampire fangs. Breeds of goldfish with colour palettes similar to Seaking are pretty popular in Japan, which is kinda neat, I guess? The Japanese name, Azumao, is a reference to the Azuma Nishiki subtype of the Oranda goldfish. It's pretty, again, and it's kind of a neat 'flavour' Pokemon to fill up the ecology... but really, considering the sheer amount of other fish Pokemon that do far more interesting things both lore-wise and in-game mechanics wise... hell, none of their pokedex entries even give me anything to talk about! Goldeen and Seaking are a pair that just didn't really end up being anything but 'oh yeah those pretty horned goldfishes exist'. I don't hate Seaking and Goldeen, but I cannot say that they rate anything more than 2 stars.
2/6.
Seaking is a lot more interesting, being a more attractive combination of reds, blacks and whites, but it's still just kind of a fat goldfish with a horn. And cute vampire fangs. Breeds of goldfish with colour palettes similar to Seaking are pretty popular in Japan, which is kinda neat, I guess? The Japanese name, Azumao, is a reference to the Azuma Nishiki subtype of the Oranda goldfish. It's pretty, again, and it's kind of a neat 'flavour' Pokemon to fill up the ecology... but really, considering the sheer amount of other fish Pokemon that do far more interesting things both lore-wise and in-game mechanics wise... hell, none of their pokedex entries even give me anything to talk about! Goldeen and Seaking are a pair that just didn't really end up being anything but 'oh yeah those pretty horned goldfishes exist'. I don't hate Seaking and Goldeen, but I cannot say that they rate anything more than 2 stars.
2/6.#120-121: Staryu & Starmie
- Type: Water [Staryu], Water/Psychic [Starmie]
- Japanese names: Hitodeman, Sutami
- Categories: Star-Shaped [Staryu], Mysterious [Starmie]
Speaking of stars... how cool are Staryu and Starmie, really, conceptually? Like, I've been talking about how many of the first generation's Water-types are just an animal drawn well, and sometimes it ends up in something that looks cool like Kingler or Seadra, and sometimes it's underwhelming like Seaking and Dewgong. And then you have Staryu and Starmie, who are unmistakably based on starfishes, but are at the same time just so utterly bizarre. This is what I really want my Pokemon to be -- sure, there is a place for more animalistic ones, but Staryu and Starmie are such weird creatures. The anime, manga and games associate Staryu and Starmie as the iconic Pokemon of Misty, the second gym leader in the original Generation I games and also, y'know, the main female lead of a huge chunk of the anime. And maybe because of that Staryu and Starmie are sometimes taken for granted, and even I had to take a step back while doing this review to actually appreciate just how fucking weird these are.
Starfishes are just lumps of spiky fleshy echinoderms that bloop around the sea-floor, eating coral and fish poop, and the most common starfish is the Asterias rubens, the iconic five-point starfish. But Staryu and Starmie are very strange creatures that honestly look like they're made out of metal or rock or something completely artificial-looking. It's all sharp angles that you don't associate with organic creatures, and Staryu plays up the alien feel of some invertebrates by maintaining the lack of facial expressions, one of the few Pokemon not to have them It's got a beautiful red jewel at the center of its body, and a golden frame around it. On Staryu, the golden structure wraps around one of Staryu's limb like some sort of a ring.
And the red jewel acts as Staryu's core, and as long as Staryu's core remains unharmed, it can apparently regenerate from being ripped up to bits (Staryu's one of the few Pokemon that can learn the Recover move). And it's such an enigmatic core, where it flickers with the same rhythm as a human heartbeat, and is apparently drawn by stars that flicker in the night.
Also, kudos to Staryu's amazing voice in the anime, which is just... HYAH. Like, Staryu and Starmie just shout HYAAAH loudly when they pop out of their Pokeballs, a stark contrast with everyone else who repeat their names. In fact, out of the original 151, I think only the two of them and Victreebel make weird noises as opposed to everyone else, who either speaks their names or, in the case of Charizard and Onix, retain their original Japanese-name sound effects.
Staryu then evolves into Starmie when exposed to a water stone, turning purplish-grey, losing the ring mount and having a beautiful octahedron as its central jewel that apparently glows in 7 colours. It also seems to have a second Staryu-shaped being stuck onto its back, and it kind of seems like both five-point star can spin independently of each other. Starmie is also Water/Psychic, which adds to the sheer mystery around Starmie, and apparently Starmie is able to send "strange signals into space", and some people suspect that Starmie is alien in nature. Oh, and it's also known as the gem of the sea, too. There's just this beautiful, elegant mystery around Starmie's design.
We won't get an actual organic starfish Pokemon until two decades down the line in the seventh generation, but I really love this bizarre HYAH-ing alien stars that's a tribute to the stars themselves as they are to starfishes.
5/6.
Staryu then evolves into Starmie when exposed to a water stone, turning purplish-grey, losing the ring mount and having a beautiful octahedron as its central jewel that apparently glows in 7 colours. It also seems to have a second Staryu-shaped being stuck onto its back, and it kind of seems like both five-point star can spin independently of each other. Starmie is also Water/Psychic, which adds to the sheer mystery around Starmie, and apparently Starmie is able to send "strange signals into space", and some people suspect that Starmie is alien in nature. Oh, and it's also known as the gem of the sea, too. There's just this beautiful, elegant mystery around Starmie's design.
We won't get an actual organic starfish Pokemon until two decades down the line in the seventh generation, but I really love this bizarre HYAH-ing alien stars that's a tribute to the stars themselves as they are to starfishes.
5/6.#122: Mr. Mime
- Type: Psychic/Fairy [Psychic prior to Generation VI]
- Japanese name: Bariyado
- Category: Barrier
And here we reach the point of the pokedex where we have a gaggle of non-evolving, single staged Pokemon. Well, at least initially in the first generation. We open up with Mr. Mime, a Pokemon that used to be a pure-Psychic type. It's a weird mime-clown humanoid monster... and then in generation VI, Mr. Mime becomes a Psychic/Fairy dual type, surprising everyone when it gained the Fairy typing. Why is this a Fairy? I dunno, to be honest. And it's... based on a mime, with the twist that because it's a Psychic Pokemon, when it pantomines a wall it really creates real invisible walls in place -- something that was shown amazingly well with Sabrina's Mr. Mime in the Adventures comic where Mr. Mime with his stupid-goofy-looking place creates an invisible labyrinth during a battle. I also love the little detail that Mr. Mime doesn't actually create walls, but rather uses his fingers to stop the vibration of molecules in the air.
With its spindly arms, its creepy constant-pantomining animation in the 3D-era games, its pasty-pink face and its general weird clown-mime persona, it's easily one of the more unpopular designs in the first generation, and it's not hard to see why. It's a humanoid but one that looks so utterly bizarre. Mr. Mime straddles that line between creepy and cute, and depending on the artist it can easily go either way. He's a design I never ever liked, but one I never hated as much as many others. I don't really have much to say about him. He used to have four fingers before the fourth generation gave him a fifth finger. Oh, and Mr. Mimes can be males and females at a 1:1 ratio because his Japanese name is actually "Bariyado" (roughly translated into Barriered) with no indication of gender, and the localization team gave him the "Mr." honorific before the inception of genders into the game.
2/6. A creep!#123: Scyther
- Type: Bug/Flying
- Japanese name: Sutoraiku
- Category: Mantis
Oh man, Scyther's awesome, and it's perhaps one of the most popular creatures in the first generation due to its simply cool conept. It's a Bug/Flying, but it's a fierce looking bug-flying. Instead of being a straight-up praying mantis as it is based on, Scyther has a design that borrows from dinosaurs (especially its head, which does not look buggy at all), with his blades being more similar to scythes as opposed to mantis claws. Scyther has many parts that call into mind a real-life praying mantis, from the wings to the distinct abdomen to the blade-arms, but at the same time just looks equal parts reptilian and equal parts insectoid that it ends up being its own thing. Scyther is just one of those designs that looks cool-for-cool's-sake and it definitely works amazingly well in that regard.
Scyther's also the first pokemon that is characterized as a ninja, moving with such speed that it leaves afterimages that make its enemies think there is more than one of him. It's also described as an ambush predator like real mantises, and, y'know, it has motherfucking giant scythes for arms. You think Jurassic Park was scary? Well now the over-sized Velociraptors have wings and giant scythes for arms (screw little sickle-toes!), and also have ninja skills. Scyther ends up being a bit of a counterpart to Pinsir in the first generation, being the big Bug-type that is a very rare encounter in the Safari Zone in Pokemon Red (Pinsir is exclusive to Blue) and being a non-evolving powerful Bug-type. This would end up getting dropped as Pinsir gets a new rival in Heracross in the next generation, while Scyther gets an evolution... and we'll talk about Scizor when we get to him.
Scyther is one of those designs that are just amazingly well-done, communicates a creative design out of an already-cool basis. I doubt I'll complain if they just make a funnily-drawn-praying-mantis Pokemon, but they went the extra way by making it a ninja mantis dinosaur. Scyther's just badass, and I love him and I can't lie.
6/6.#124: Jynx
- Type: Ice/Psychic
- Japanese name: Rujura
- Category: Human-Shape
Oh yeah, Jynx. Back when I was a kid, I didn't realize what a 'blackface' or a 'racism' is, and even as a kid I disliked Jynx a lot. What is this? It's an ugly-as-fuck weirdly drawn humanoid. It's got huge, grotesque lips, weird boobs and a gonk blob body that is supposed to be like a dress, but ends up looking more like a slug foot of sorts. Oh, and its arms look malformed and all. It's easily one of the weirdest humanoid Pokemon out there, and one of the most poorly-designed, in my opinion. At least with Mr. Mime it still looks somewhat cute. Jynx would be unpopular even without the obvious racial connotations, and Nintendo responded by changing... the black face to purple. Which isn't that much better, but at least it's not as blatantly an obsolete, racist caricature.
Add that to descriptions of how Jynx will "seductively wiggle its hips as it walks" and talking in a strange, incomprehensible language, and its removed-from-international-screening anime appearances tending to play her up as a slapstick "oh, ugly bitch just kissed you!" joke, and you can see why Jynx is easily one of the most culturally-insensitive designs in Pokemon. Obviously, cultural sensitivities are different in Japan and the US or UK, and the 'blackface' phenomenon might not be as racist as it seemed to those making the game back in the early 90's. After all, one need not look further than Japan's inarguably most famous manga/anime juggernaut, Dragon Ball (which was produced at the same time), and see their characters Mr. Popo and minor villain Staff Officer Black to realize that, yeah, it's possibly the same design choices that led them to make Jynx. Why they decided that an African-American woman that waves her hips seductively is a good idea for a Pokemon, a game where you capture creatures and have them fight... yeah. Especially when Game Freak and Nintendo had to leave out many potential designs in making the first generation of games (half of Generation II are meant to be in the first games) and think that this is a good idea to include... it's definitely a huge fault on the game makers' part.
Many people try to come up with a possible origin, especially considering Jynx's utterly bizarre typing of Ice/Psychic. It's role in the original games is one of the few Pokemon to only be available through trades, making her original intended role in the Pokemon World ecology somewhat strange (later games would place her in ice places). Bulbapedia has a great and lengthy article discussing possible origin stories. One possible origin is the Ganguro fashion, a delinquent-female style that is a mixture of dark tan and bleached hair started in the mid-1990s (Pokemon was in the early 90's), so that is out of the question. People posit that Jynx is inspired by the snow-controlling yokai yuki-onna, oh-so-popular in anime and manga, and would receive a more proper adaptation in Froslass. The closest thing is he yokai yama-uba, a yokai with a red kimono, white hair, dark skin and the control over snow, and apparently is played with blackface in theaters... which fits what Jynx is. Of course, it also does end up a shitty choice to keep the 'dark skin blackface' deal when other mythology-inspired Pokemon don't have any sort of racial designs. Yeah.
The Adventures manga tries to make Jynx look cool, used by Elite Four member Lolerei by focusing on her as an ice-manipulating powerhouse that also has psychic powers, but not even that is enough for me to have that much goodwill towards her. So, for the first time in this review series, we're giving a Pokemon a big fat zero.
0/6.#125: Electabuzz
- Type: Psychic/Fairy [Psychic prior to Generation VI]
- Japanese name: Erebu
- Category: Electric
Electabuzz is a pretty cool creature! Some sort of humanoid that controls electricity, Electabuzz seems to be based on a generic oni (equivalent to ogres in western culture if you don't know what they are), translating the tiger-skin loincloths and caveman-garb that the oni are often depicted to wear into tiger-esque lightning bolts all over Electabuzz's body. It's this cool-looking bestial humanoid with a memorable head that's equal parts weird and cool, from those weird antennae to the weird spikes. Many people posit the theory that Electabuzz, Magmar and Jynx are meant to form an elemental oni trio, to parallel the ice/fire/electric theme of the legendary birds... but eh, I dunno. Electabuzz ends up being far more of a rival to Magmar. Electabuzz is exclusive to Red and Magmar to Blue, both being rare encounters. Both received pre-evolutions in the second generations, and a trade-with-item evolution in the fourth generation.
And Electabuzz is just this vaguely ape-like creature that launches electricity, renowned on sucking electricity out of power plants and causing blackouts. Electabuzz is also apparently sometimes used as lightning rods. I've always liked Electabuzz, although in no small part due to Adventures' Lt. Surge making Electabuzz look really, really cool... not that it needed much help in doing so. Beyond that, I don't really have much to say... Electabuzz is just a cool, nondescript electric-shooting oni, and it's certainly a neat one. I've vacillated between really liking Electabuzz and really disliking him, so yeah, I guess a neutral rating of 3/5 works here.
3/6, bordering on 4/6.#126: Magmar
- Type: Fire
- Japanese name: Buba
- Category: Spitfire
I like Magmar a bit less than Electabuzz, if we're being honest. It just looks like it's trying a bit too had, being this wacky fat duck-man creature with, um... a butt on his head? Which is on fire? And a duck-bill, and bands on its neck and legs? It's got cool scalloped arms, and back spikes, and a Charmander-esque flame tail, and overall other than the weird face it's honestly a pretty neat design for a monster that the Pokedex tells us is "born in a volcano". Like Electabuzz, Magmar is just meant to be a nondescript fire oni creature, and unleashes fucktons of flame from its body. Some people note that Magmar may be based on the Karura from Japanese Hindu-Buddhist mythology, a version of the Garuda race. Karuras are said to be enormous fire-breathing bird-men that feed on snakes... although clearly Magmar has dropped any signs of being a bird beyond the duck-bill.
Magmar's original Japanese name is called "Boober", a reference to the booby bird, which... honestly doesn't give us much explanation about its association to fire, really. It's just all sorts of weird, and you know what? At least it's weird in the cool sort. I don't mind Magmar all that much, and while it's not my jam, it's still a weird-looking magma monster and I'm okay with that.
3/6.#127: Pinsir
- Type: Bug
- Japanese name: Kairosu
- Category: Stag Beetle
Yo, guys, Pinsir is awesome. I first saw this badass pure-Bug-type, as most people probably did, in the second (?) episode of the anime, where a random samurai bug catcher sent out this screeching abomination into the battlefield. Pinsir is based on the Lucanidae family of insects, a.k.a. stag beetles. And if you're not already familiar with Japan, you know that stag-beetle fighting is very, very popular with the previous generation. Any work of fiction is likely to have a stag beetle and a rhinoceros beetle in them, and Pinsir, of course, is the more 'villainous' stag beetle (kuwagata-mushi in Japanese), judging by how monstrous it looks like compares to the more docile and heroic-looking build of Heracross, Pinsir's "rival' introduced in the next generation. I just really fell in love hard with Pinsir, for taking everything from the stag beetle and creating a monster that is faithful to the source material yet looks so visually distinct and bizarre.
The stag beetle's prominent mandibles are now reimagined as horns, and instead of antler-like things they end up looking like thorny brambles that you'd find in a plant. Pinsir has angry eyes and my favourite part of its design, a vertical mouth lines with long, individual teeth that, while not a perfect depiction of an insect's mouth, communicates how inhuman insectoid mouth parts look. People have told me that Pinsir's mouth resembles like an open rib cage, which makes it look so cool. Its stumpy body still calls to mind the body of a beetle grub, and I've always loved how it has long, gangly arms and huge powerful-if-stumpy legs. And, well, Pinsir's design is just awesome. All it lacks are the wings that all beetles have (they don't fly around that much, but they have wings) and I've always thought that it was a missed opportunity, but Pinsir will get Pinsir's mega-evolution later down the road... but this isn't the place to talk about that yet. We're just talking about base-form Pinsir, and base-form Pinsir is just fucking awesome. Its dex entries, in-between telling us how badass Pinsir is in squeezing and crushing its enemy, also details its biology, how it makes burrows to sleep or hibernate, and I absolutely love how the seventh generation pokedex entries note that Pinsir have a rivalry with Vikavolt (Nintendo's second stag-beetle-inspired Pokemon) in Alola, and has gotten along well with Heracross as a result. Huh. Anyway, Pinsir's just awesome, and hands-down easily one of the best designs in the first generation. I think the amount of cool bugs in Generation I might be the reason I developed such a huge appreciation for arthropods in real life.
6/6.#128: Tauros
- Type: Normal
- Japanese name: Kentarosu
- Category: Wild Bull
Oh yeah, Tauros. Tauros is one of those dudes that I never really hated, but I've always forgot that it exists until it's reminded to me, and then I promptly forget about it again. Tauros is a Normal-type and it's... it's just a big bull with some extra accessories like those weird circular things on its forehead and three whiplike tails. It whips itself with its own tails, and it's... it's a herd animal, basically. And have I mentioned that it's a bull? It's one of the many, many rare encounters in Generation I's Safari Zone, but when you can get the likes of Chansey, Dratini, Kangaskhan, Pinsir and Scyther... Tauros just isn't super-exciting. It's one of the straight-up most powerful Normal-types out there, but, y'know, it's just a cow. It has some moments of badassery as one of Ash's pokemon in the anime, which is cool, but there's honestly not much to it. Tauros is 100% male, which is to make it a counterpart to the 100% female milk-cow Miltank in the second generation, but Miltank can't actually make Tauros babies. Um. I guess they're somewhat prominent in the seventh generation for essentially being your Bicycle, and it's sorta cool that they're giving a pretty boring Pokemon a bit more prominence.
2/5.#129-130: Magikarp & Gyarados
- Types: Water [Magikarp], Water/Flying [Gyarados]
- Japanese names: Koikingu, Gyaradosu
- Categories: Fish [Magikarp], Atrocious [Gyarados]
Yeah, Magikarp! I love this dude. Magikarp and Gyarados are a pair that showcase just how violently transformative Pokemon evolution can be, and Magikarp is just... a very plain fish with a long mustache. It's based on the Asian carp (or koi, as it's called in Asia -- Magikarp's Japanese name is Koiking), an invasive, common species. And Magikarp is everywhere in every single game outside of Unova. They're in every lake, pond and sea, especially if you're in a game with the Old Rod -- you'll only ever be able to fish up Magikarp, which is hilariously pathetic. It's got a vacant expression, and most of the time all it can do is Splash. An attack that literally does nothing. Slightly later in its life it learns Tackle... which is a pretty shit attack, to be honest. It can't learn anything from TM's, so you are stuck with this dumb fish that you must evolve with experience sharing items.
And Magikarp's dex entries note how "horribly weak", "famously unreliable" and "useless" it is. All it does is jump and splash around, making it easy prey for Pidgeotto to catch it, and it can't even swim properly against strong currents! The only real advantage it has is how it can survive in any body of water, and the Diamond dex entry is the most hilarious one, stating that Magikarp is "the world's weakest Pokemon. No one knows why it has managed to survive."
The 3D games in particular are amazing at emulating this, where instead of showing Magikarp as hovering in the air like all other fishies, Magikarp just flops around helplessly on the ground. Magikarp's pretty worthless, is everywhere, and in the Kanto games some jackass tries to sell you one for a lot of money.
And Magikarp's dex entries note how "horribly weak", "famously unreliable" and "useless" it is. All it does is jump and splash around, making it easy prey for Pidgeotto to catch it, and it can't even swim properly against strong currents! The only real advantage it has is how it can survive in any body of water, and the Diamond dex entry is the most hilarious one, stating that Magikarp is "the world's weakest Pokemon. No one knows why it has managed to survive."
The 3D games in particular are amazing at emulating this, where instead of showing Magikarp as hovering in the air like all other fishies, Magikarp just flops around helplessly on the ground. Magikarp's pretty worthless, is everywhere, and in the Kanto games some jackass tries to sell you one for a lot of money.
Despite all odds, if you manage to raise Magikarp up to level 20 (which is a relatively low level) it will evolve into the mighty Gyarados. And just look at that angry fucker! Gyarados is awesome. Hell, even its name is awesome! It's the atrocious Pokemon, and it's a monstrous sea serpent that destroys entire cities if it's angry, being vicious, powerful and there's just a lot of great description of the brutality and violence that Gyarados unleashes in its wake. "A tale is told of a town that angered Gyarados. Before the sun rose the next day, flames utterly consumed the town, leaving not a trace behind.", claims the Sun Pokedex, and some others call it the Deity of Destruction.
Holy shit Gyarados is cool, is basically what I'm trying to say here.
So yeah, the tale of Magikarp and Gyarados is your average tale of an abused and mocked piece of shit useless being gaining so much power that it becomes a mighty creature. It also draws some tale from a myth about how a carp that can jump (or splash) high enough to overcome a waterfall can ascend and become a dragon. And, well, Gyarados is equal parts sea serpent and oriental dragon, really. And look at it! It's face is just full of anger and rage, it's got a cool segmented body, and it retains the whiskers from its days as a Magikarp. Gyarados is, by the way, a Water/Flying Pokemon, despite it looking and acting like a dragon, and learning a lot of dragon moves. Again, like Charizard, Gyarados is a byproduct of an era where the dragon type is reserved for the most special and rarest creature, and not something you can get at level 20. It's a bit of a shame, although being more based on oriental dragons I guess flying is a neat enough type to give Gyarados. One nitpick is that Gyarados is never actually shown flying in the air, and while 3D games show it hovering over the ground, it's always shown to just undulate in the ocean and never actually, y'know, fly. I've come to accept this as one of the stranger bits of the first generation.
Oh, and there's the Red Gyarados, of course, the original 'guaranteed shiny' Pokemon that shows up as a boss in Generation II's Lake of Rage, where it was forcibly mutated by Team Rocket and goes around rampaging until you capture it. What's better than the most badass blue serpent-dragon? A red one.
And despite honestly not being that rare (once you get Super Rod, Gyarados ends up being a pretty common sight) and the dex entries highly exaggerating its power... Gyarados does boast a very respectable attacking stat, especially considering how early you can get him in most games. I've always loved how Gyarados just explodes from useless to a nightmare creature, and I love it. Needless to say, Gyarados has been a staple of my team many, many times due to its sheer power and how satisfying it is to have a dumb little 'karp transform into an engine of devastation.
6/6.#131: Lapras
- Type: Water/Ice
- Japanese name: Rapurasu
- Category: Transport
Lapras is a Water/Ice Pokemon based on the order of plesiosauria, aquatic reptiles that live during the era of the dinosaurs (they're not actually dinosaurs, despite looking similar). And it's apparently a Pokemon that was overhunted to extinction by us (indeed, the only Lapras you can get in the original game is a gift), human bastards. Lapras is also used as a ferry Pokemon, particularly in the anime and in spinoff games like Pokemon Ranger, although in the games Lapras's role explicitly as a transport Pokemon wouldn't come until the sixth and seventh generations. There's also a slight bit of the Loch Ness Monster going on, with the second generation games having Lapras as an easter egg encounter, appearing on a specific day in the underground pools of Union Cave.
While visually Lapras is a plesiosaur-esque dinosaur with extra details like a hard, spiky shell on her back (some people compare this to turtles, or ancient relatives like placodonts), and a horn and weird curly ears, the description of Lapras's behaviour seems to call to mind intelligent cetaceans like whales and dolphins, where they communicate with enchanting cries, understand human speech and are endangered due to poaching. I do love how after so many years of pokedex entries telling us that Lapras is overhunted to near-extinction, by the time of the seventh generation apparently "following protective regulations, there is now an overabundance of them." so much that they're used as ride Pokemon in Alola. Lapras is pretty cool, even if her design is somewhat simple. It's not going to reach any top-whatever lists in my head, but Lapras is a neat design.
3/6.
While visually Lapras is a plesiosaur-esque dinosaur with extra details like a hard, spiky shell on her back (some people compare this to turtles, or ancient relatives like placodonts), and a horn and weird curly ears, the description of Lapras's behaviour seems to call to mind intelligent cetaceans like whales and dolphins, where they communicate with enchanting cries, understand human speech and are endangered due to poaching. I do love how after so many years of pokedex entries telling us that Lapras is overhunted to near-extinction, by the time of the seventh generation apparently "following protective regulations, there is now an overabundance of them." so much that they're used as ride Pokemon in Alola. Lapras is pretty cool, even if her design is somewhat simple. It's not going to reach any top-whatever lists in my head, but Lapras is a neat design.
3/6.
No comments:
Post a Comment